Lord Varys

I'm sure the ST writers named him Ben because it sounded nice. They didn't want to imply he was named after 'Ben' Kenobi, of course. I'm sure Luke would have named a child Ben rather than Obi-Wan as that was the name under which he knew Kenobi. To him he was always Ben. But to Leia he was Obi-Wan Kenobi. And there is little chance that Luke and the Fetish Guy brat ever had a close relationship - not exactly implying that Leia turned to Luke when looking for a name for her child. If you are a sane and normal uncle or foster parent you never give your nephew the impression you want to slay them with your lightsaber. I'm an uncle, too, and so far I'm parsecs better at it than fucking ST Luke, lol. It seems rather likely that Leia and Luke would have named their children after, say, Bail and Breha Organa. Leia could have wanted that something of Alderaan lived on in her kids. Or possibly after Padmé and Anakin as they did in the EU. But Obi-Wan isn't the guy they should necessarily want to honor in that way.

I forgot about those, but they are another glaring example of Johnson shitting on anything Abrams introduced to the ST. Whatever silliness they and the name of Fetish Guy was - who the hell would give himself the infantile name Kylo Ren - they had been established as existing in TFA, meaning the next movie should have explored them more. But, no, that was too much to ask from a guy who was directing a sequel. Also, of course, how stupid was it that Leia and Han named their son 'Ben' - as if either had any strong connection to old Ben Kenobi. Leia only knew him as Obi-Wan and Han effectively mocked him throughout the five minutes he knew him. Luke was the guy who knew him well and adored him - and he is the one who names his own son after him in the EU. Which does make sense.

And thinking on TFA a bit more ... does anybody else think the movie sucks totally at the concept of introducing or dealing with Force stuff - which was the titular issue. They constantly use the wrong characters to explore this with. Han Solo who is literally the same guy - although rather decrepit now - he was in ANH and who never knew jack shit about the Force, some weirdo centuries-old cantina lady evoking Yoda but clearly not actually being a Jedi or Force practitioner, a former Stormtrooper resisting his indoctrination for opaque reasons seemingly feeling a strange calling occasionally, an old lightsaber which is clearly somehow and for some reason 'magical' in a certain way, etc. This all feels as if a three-year-old was trying to write bad Star Wars fan fiction. But even the title sucks conceptually. The Force shouldn't have had a need or reason to wake up. The Jedi returned 30 years. It said as much in an old movie title. So the Force definitely shouldn't have slept 30 years later. I mean, if you think about it - what the ST did is akin to ANH opening with some big republican conglomerate again having tax issues and deciding to blockade another backwater world ... because Palpatine's so-called 'first Galactic Empire' didn't last five years and was replaced by some new inefficient Republic, not to mention that the Jedi were never totally gone and quietly returned between the trilogies.

Sure enough, you are right there. But the MacGuffin as such could have been not so bad with a proper reason for his disappearance and his character still being that of Luke Skywalker and not that degenerate ruin they put in his place. What TFA didn't do was ruin Luke's character as such. That was done by TLJ. Of course, conceptually the whole thing of Luke being nothing but a lousy loser who failed at being a Jedi Master, an uncle, a decent human being and the restorer of the Republic - together with his equally loser twin sister and best buddy - is all Abrams fault. He created that silly setting with the silly names which still makes one feel one is some kind of videogame for toddlers. First Order, Resistance, and then later Final Order? How did JJ come up with that shit? If Lucas was good with anything it was names. For characters, planets, and institutions. But there could have been a way in which Luke's disappearance could have been an interesting plot element in a larger story - say, one in which there would have been a working New Republic as well as a new Jedi Order founded by Luke. I'd still have not liked such a plot very much but I assume that Lucas' original treatment for the ST supposedly including such a plot intended to use this as a way to introduce the new generation of heroes - new Jedi, descendants/family of the old guard, etc. I don't mind the disrespect so much, either ... but it certainly contributes to the fact that the ST totally fails as a trilogy as well as on the level of the individual movies.

I think they are all garbage, so I won't argue which one is stinking more. What I'm going to say, though, is that TLJ specifically sucks in the way it is also disrespectful to TFA and the character of Luke Skywalker - who wasn't messed with much in TFA. Not sure what the AI comment is supposed to accomplish. I think Abrams decisions are so weird, especially the Vader mask and lightsaber fetishism, that it is actually very unlikely an AI would have come up with that. Ditto a black Stormtrooper character. Whereas I think it might have been rather easy to get to the basic outline of TLJ by telling an AI to produce a story that plays with Star Wars tropes established by TESB and ROTJ as well as the directive to mostly ignore and mess with the original characters introduced in TFA.

Yeah, but then TLJ is still 'Scream II' rather than the 'Jaws II' you were expecting. TFA is a serious and proper Star Wars, not some kind of meta-SW deconstruction movie. I'd like one of those, just as I like the Scream movies - but not if they pop up randomly when I expect a proper movie that takes itself seriously within the confines of what Star Wars is. Subverting something somebody else has set up is an asshead move in any case - and it doesn't even matter if Abrams knew what he wanted to with the character or not. It is disrespectful to the character and the actress and the setting. Seriously, what is that? I meant Luke being a fat, lazy alien milk addict, drinking said milk from the teats of alien cows. Which is literally the most disgusting thing I ever saw in a SW movie. That the guy was kissed by a girl he had no clue was his twin sister is a completely different thing.

Sure, she can be important as anyone can be important for some reason. But anyone usually isn't a desert-born orphan with a mysterious/unclear background - which this character was. You can't deny that the character was set up to have a meaningful secret backstory ... and then the 'revelation' that this was supposedly not the case came totally out of the left field - just as the later 'revelation' that Miss Nobody was actually 'Madam Palpatine' was shoehorned into the plot in an equally ridiculous manner. All that feels like a bunch of jokers were trying to write a bad South Park parody of Star Wars. And to be clear - having a special relationship to other characters doesn't mean they become special because of that. Luke ain't special because he is Vader's son, just as Leia isn't any way more or less special in her own right because she was born Leia Skywalker rather than Leia Organa. Those are as much soapy plots as they are 'special destiny' elements - the latter clearly played a big role with Anakin in the PT where his mysterious background has him as being 'conceived by the Force'. Not to mention that the way this was written is totally silly as the lying scumbag of a character who 'revealed' the background there was not exactly a trustworthy character - much less one who in-universe characters and audience should view as a well-informed character about the ancestry and parentage of desert-born heroes. How and why should the son of Han and Leia know who Rey's parents were? Where is the connection there? When Darth Vader - also an evil villain - claims that he is Luke's father he also claims to have intimate knowledge about his own identity, sex life, and marriage status - this is all fine. A crippled, disfigured version of Anakin Skywalker would still know who he was. And it does make sense he would want to tell Luke the truth. He still could lie, of course, but he could also tell the truth and be well-informed. But in this scenario there we almost have a hard-to-believe meta commentary/deconstruction. We have a character saying something the writer wants to shoehorn into the plot, not something this character would actually know or care to say. Fetish Guy has no knowledge of Rey, doesn't know her background or backstory. Them seeing each other doesn't tell him who she is, where she is from, or who her parents might have been. There is no reason to believe he could know anything about her. We have another such instance when we have Luke complain about Darth Sidious and the Jedi. That sounds like Luke Johnson having watched the PT and complaining about it, not like the Luke the OT and George Lucas created. That Luke wanted to be a Jedi, believed in them and their teachings to the point that he brought his father Darth Vader back to the light. He believed in the Jedi to the point that he threw away his lightsaber and told the Emperor that he was a Jedi like his father before him - which, in the context of everything that happened there is a really powerful thing to say. He is the last character to complain about the Jedi failing to stop Palpatine. If he was, he would have spat into Ben's face, telling him to go into the desert and die as he failed to stop the Emperor and was a stupid puppet of a corrupt and evil Republic anyway.

It chose to reference all that by partially recreating it and then giving them an unexpected twist or undermining or mocking it in another way: Ugly hologram mastermind -> gets killed like a moron Luke Skywalker -> is a degenerate worse than swamp hole Yoda fighting with R2 desert-born hero/savior -> is a nobody nobody should make a fuzz about (this is especially striking as it is quintessential Star Wars to expect the desert-born person has a special destiny and/or is connected to other characters in the story in a special manner) And so on and so forth. I don't mind people having their own ideas. But Johnson deliberately played with those tropes and plots. He chose to reference those things and then mock and/or ridicule them. It is not accident that TLJ constantly references both TESB and ROTJ, recreating the same scenarios and scenes only to deconstruct or mock them. And I think mocking is the right word there as one has to think how ridiculous especially Leia looks as a politician/general when she desperately cries out for help and literally nobody gives a fuck that her own degenerate son is hunting her down. Last time she was in danger at least Luke and Ben answered her call. And later still they had the strength to attack Palpatine himself. But 30 years later nobody gives jack shit about that woman and her cause/people. That is disgusting if you think about who those people would (or should) be within the narrative framework of the Star Wars universe. Thinking a bit more about Leia specifically - back in the OT the great thing about Carrie's portrayal of Princess Leia is that even as a damsel in distress she is never never portrayed as afraid or terrified nor is there ever a situation where she is not in control of the situation. She dominates the screen with her presence with Tarkin, Vader, etc. Historically, I think, that is what makes this portrayal so special and gripping, to this day. What they did with her in the ST is a disgrace. Her big stunt in space doesn't change that at all. It just neutralizes her as a character in a movie where she should have been a main lead. And of course she should have wiped the floor with her ingrate brat, not the absent poor excuse of an uncle - both physically and mentally. She is fucking Leia Organa and not some old homeless woman in ragged clothes. You can argue that there could be a different Star Wars - and even a Star Wars which undermines and deconstruct established Star Wars plots and tropes. But not within the framework of a Star Wars trilogy which is supposed to be Episode VII to IX of George Lucas' sets of trilogies. That is where you should take Star Wars seriously. Which TFA tried to do - in a very bad way, of course, focusing way too much on recreating the OT. The only way the second movie could continue the story was to take what Abrams began and continue it in a way that created a convincing larger trilogy. But TLJ clearly never tried to do that.

I'd not say that TLJ is a bad movie as such. It is a bad middle part of a Star Wars trilogy and a bad serious Star Wars movie as such ... but if you watch it as a parody or mockery of Star Wars in general or at least relating to the most common known/used tropes and plot elements it works remarkably well. The reason folks actually liked this movie at first was because of that - the unexpected twists and turns of the rollercoaster ride the first watch was. I laughed out a lot during that first sitting. Later on not so much. In a very real sense one can interpret this thing as a modernistic critique of the more child-like and silly aspects of Lucas' filmmaking. Pretty much everything Lucas used in earlier SW movies is ridiculed there - desert-born heroes, special saviors, ugly and cackling hologram villains, special ancestries and hidden kinship, successful rebel movements, defiance against authority figures, wise mentors in hiding waiting for the hero to show up, etc. Of course, if you take Star Wars seriously then you should come up with something new which fits in the larger/general setting rather than effectively doing little more than mock the things that came before.

I'd rather say they remembered that they are a money-making machine for their shareholders and not some kind of charity for average filmmakers. But this doesn't change the fact that he wrote himself into a corner with TLJ. The characters the movie didn't kill he burned by racing their story to a point where they should have been in the final movie. Perhaps he knew where he would have gone had he been given the chance ... but I'd not be surprised if he wasn't actually keen of doing that. And of course neither the character of Rose nor the actress was deserving of any hate. In fact, I'd say focusing a bit on 'little people' wasn't a bad idea in general. It is what Lucas did throughout most of ANH. But doing that with a character - Stormtrooper guy - who was clearly introduced and set up to be a major hero in TFA was obviously a rather vexing decision on their part. The problem there was the distraction/weirdness of this romance coming out of the left field and ignoring previously established relationships/connections. You would have gotten the same reaction if the OT love triangle had suddenly disappeared in TESB in favor for Leia, Han, and Luke making out with weirdo newbies.

Harrison Ford apparently only agreed to come back if they would kill him off in the first movie. But Luke's death in the second movie is again Johnson turning the middle part of a trilogy into the final movie. It is one of the many pieces which make any kind of sequel suck. In context of the ugly murder of Han one really has to ask what kind of 'redemption potential' there was for Fetish Guy. With Vader we do have a son reaching out to his dad. That is an easy concept to understand, just as anyone can understand why Vader ends up intervening to save Luke. Nobody ever wondered how it was that Vader turned against the Emperor. But Fetish Guy apparently mainly gets confused in his 'evilness' by a random chick he has visions of. In what world does this make sense.

Another big issue is the fact that nobody went back to overhaul TLJ after Carrie died in post production. Getting rid of Luke while there was literally no chance to continue the story with Leia in a proper manner was quite silly. The way to go would have been to keep Luke in the story while giving Leia a nice and proper exit in TLJ. Those ghoulish Leia scenes in TROS are not totally bad but they are clearly not ideal, and it would have been easy to not do that.

Well, in a sense stupid Abrams kind of admits how much of a fuck-up those movies are when they decide to bring in Ian McDiarmid 'to save the trilogy'. The way they neither explain nor justify this is such an insult that you don't really know how to begin. Even more so as Abrams effectively sort of insulted and mocked McDiarmid with his Evil Hologram Dude character in TFA. That was him trying to create a 'cooler version' of Palpatine. To then decide to not fuck with Johnson in a self-respecting manner by bringing back his own Evil Hologram Dude character - who certainly could have faked his death somehow - but rather cannibalizing Lucas' long dead Emperor - presumably because they were expecting his return could draw in a bigger audience - is the entire ST crew admitting they cannot write/create compelling characters of their own.

Are you kidding me? Things make perfect sense! Don't you believe Han and Leia would raise a brat who not only idolizes the dude who brutally tortured both his parents, who helped to blow up his mom's homeworld, but also craves the feeling of being unable to breathe on his own. That is not only totally normal but something anybody intuitively understands. The whole thing is not only disgusting, it just doesn't make any sense. Even if the guy had anger management issues or wanted power ... he would never idolize fucking Vader. Even the Jacen Solo fall story in the EU had the grace to have him idolize pre-suit Vader/Anakin, not the ruined mask man. While I agree a time skip would have been hard, it would have been doable with flashbacks or doing exposition scenes after Luke and Rey had returned to Leia. After all, only the Luke plot element made it hard. Everything else would have benefitted from a time jump. But, of course, the 'Luke is missing' but 'there is a map to Luke as if Luke was a landmark not a person' nonsense plot is the biggest issue of the ST. That sucked on a lot of levels as it was clear from the start that a Luke without a new Jedi Order certainly could not save the galaxy or contribute anything useful to the story. So there could never come anything good from a movie which had 'the search for Luke Skywalker' as the main plot. Just think how much ANH would have sucked if everyone had been looking for Obi-Wan Kenobi throughout the movie.

I'd not say that. Lucas didn't really have a detailed outline for the OT when he made ANH. But he still wrote the trilogy in such a way that the movies built and elaborated on each other ... rather than fighting or erasing each other. Which is what the ST movies did. That is an interesting question but the answer is quite simple. TLJ wasn't written as a movie which was supposed to have a proper sequel ... and Johnson obviously never planned to write and direct one himself or he simply wouldn't have made the movie the way he did. TLJ effectively finishes the story. The good guys/heroes effectively lose. There is no organized resistance to the villains left ... so the only hope left is Another New Hope in the next generation. The villain issue is one of the more obvious ones ... but you could just as well ask who could be the hero(ine) in a movie where Rey turned to the dark side. The problem is that those movies failed to really build up the characters they introduced. That is why we also have no proper romance etc.

In light of the fact that Illyrio was (supposedly) married twice - first to the cousin of the Prince of Pentos and then to the Serra woman - we should assume that all that took quite some time. First he and Varys had to get rich and respectable - so respectable that Illyrio could court and eventually marry a member of one of the Forty Families of Pentoshi nobility. It is possible that Varys digging up dirt on the Prince or him helping the Prince solve a really vexing issue helped with that ... but still, it would have taken time. And then the Prince's cousin wife wouldn't have disappeared or died quite suddenly ... and only some time after that would Illyrio then apparently marry Serra. Which then damaged his reputation to the point that he was no longer welcome in the Prince's palace for a time. The latter is a serious issue as the council of magisters actually meets in the Prince's palace. It makes it exceedingly unlikely that anyone as savvy as Varys/Illyrio would have ever thought a former whore could become a pretender to the throne - that would be as unthinkable as a eunuch hoping he could do that job. But the biggest issue is that Aegon possibly being 2-3 years younger than Rhaegar's Aegon - if Tyrion's assessment turns out to be accurate - strongly indicates that the Aegon plan was only made after the Sack when the convenient way of the (apparent) death of Aegon made his future return a possibility. You have to keep in mind that both George and Varys seem to have flown with that idea because it is very gripping tale to feed to smallfolk and readership alike. People want to believe that this little prince may have survived after all, especially if he comes back in a crisis and promises to save them. That is why they go with that instead of having Aegon go as a Blackfyre. This is not a plot you come up with from scratch, it is something that forms in your mind when there is a tragic death that shouldn't have been. It doesn't answer what Varys' earlier plan was ... but that really revolves around who Varys is and what he wants. Because if we take his speech from ADwD at face value - and we should, at least insofar as what he wants Aegon to do - then he actually wants to save Westeros and create a good king for the people. His agenda is clearly not revenge driven by hatred. If it was then he could - and likely - would have just told dying Kevan as much.

While this is certainly one of the theories put forth, the idea that this Blackfyre link goes through Serra is not necessarily very convincing. It seems clear that he main purpose was - if she is Aegon's mother - to produce a child with Valyrian looks so Illyrio could have a son passing for Rhaegar's Aegon. The idea that Varys is also somehow related to Serra seems to be a lot of wishful-thinking in my opinion. Just because both seem to have ties to Lys doesn't mean they are related. And so far we don't even have a hint that Varys ever knew or met the Serra woman. That is indeed an open and rather interesting question. One idea could be revenge for his family if he is a Blackfyre descendant. The goal would then be to ruin Aerys II and his family. Clearly, though, there was no plan back then to crown a Blackfyre pretender as Varys and Illyrio made no move during Robert's Rebellion - a war they should no only have foreseen but actively helped to cause. So where is the Golden Company after the war starts? Robert is an unlikely and late pretender, only coming forth when the rebels are really successful and he himself gains the reputation of a super general and war leader. The Golden Company could have coopted that movement if they had come over the water early with a Blackfyre pretender supporting the rebels. Varys comes in when Aerys II already mistrusts Rhaegar, his own wife, his court, etc. He supposedly helped fuel that mistrust but that was his job description. He is not the one behind the divide of father and son - that was Aerys' paranoia and madness in and of itself. Rhaegar eventually had to think about whether it was good for dynasty and Realm if his father was to rule unchecked or not. In effect, Varys seems to have postponed or prevented a clash between Rhaegar and Aerys by convincing the latter to attend the tourney. It was what stopped Rhaegar from making a move against his father. Here we have to think about how old Varys and Illyrio - they don't seem to be the same generation as Tywin and Aerys, but somewhat younger. Varys would have gotten to KL in his mid-20s, I imagine, very shortly after he helped Illyrio to become a respected magister marrying he cousin of the Prince of Pentos. He would have already been wealthy guy at that time but hardly super rich.

But Tristan Rivers clearly knew that there was an agreement with Illyrio Mopatis and that they were following his game plan. That is actually a lot. If the Golden Company were kept more in the dark about things Rivers may have known or learned from other sources about Viserys III's Dothraki invasion deal ... but he would have never believed or thought they were to join with them, the Golden Company. To know or suspect that Rivers had to know they were working for Illyrio and Varys. And that they do. And Illyrio would never actually tell the Golden Company that the plan is that they and Viserys III/Drogo were to work together if this wasn't the plan. Why should he do that if the actual plan was for Viserys III and Drogo to launch an independent invasion?

The botching is obviously planned. Not just because Varys and Illyrio both sent letters to Jorah informing him about Robert's 'evil plans' ... the entire timeline makes it clear that the poisoner wineseller was a patsy set up by Illyrio and Varys. Reread the chapter. He is part of a trading caravan from Pentos, we even get the name of the trading captain (a Pentoshi) and the timeline makes it clear that this would have been the first caravan reaching Vaes Dothrak after Robert authorized an assassination. The wineseller is clearly not an independent opportunistic would-be poisoner, acting on the promise of a lordship or whatever reward Robert was offering to whoever killed Dany ... he is a guy who has a sealed cask of poisoned wine in his stash. A cask he brings out immediately when he recognized the khaleesi in question as Daenerys Targaryen. So it is clear the guy was briefed by somebody - and that somebody would be Varys/Illyrio's agents. And as this is the case I daresay chances are very good that the wine cask in question was not actually poisoned but that the wineseller merely believed it was - because he was given it by the people who told him they wanted Dany dead. After all - Jorah was told about a poisoning attempt, so it was clear he would prevent it before any of the Targaryens would drink it. This whole thing was a ploy by Varys/Illyrio to speed things up. Their recent meeting in KL established that time was running out in Westeros, that Varys could not much longer preserve the peace so they had to come up with a way to speed things up in Essos. Without the poisoning plot Drogo might have postponed thigs for months, until after his son by Dany was born at least. And then he might only have given Viserys III a part of his khalasar, not all troops. With the poisoning plot Drogo got his act together and started immediately, and clearly planned to get his troops to Westeros fast by way of Slaver's Bay. No, no, that doesn't really work very well. Mostly because it was clear the poisoned wine - if it was poisoned - would kill Dany and Drogo. Remember, Dany planned to share it with her husband. And likely also with her brother had he still been alive. Possibly even with Jorah, too. And if it was real and good poison like the Tears of Lys then it would be tasteless and mimic a natural illness, so any potential survivors might not even believe that foul play was involved. As Viserys III was already dead when the wineseller arrived Dany's death would have firmly cut the bond between House Targaryen and the Dothraki. Khal Drogo would be a childless widower if he survived, free for new wives and new conquests. He might think about avenging himself on this Robert chap if he suspected foul play, but I doubt he would go through with it if there was no Dany, no Viserys, no Rhaego with him as a daily reminder to commit himself to this thing. I don't think it could have worked sending he Golden Company and Aegon to Westeros on their own without the other Targaryens. That said - a Robert warring in Essos would open up things for the Lannister to grab power in Westeros. The biggest problem for a Targaryen restoration would remain Tywin. He could be dealt with if Robert called him to court to take care of things there if he and Ned both went to war - and then Varys could eventually and easily take him out there. But if not, if he stayed in the West then Tywin could become the biggest problem after a successful Targaryen landing in Westeros. Even after the Baratheon dynasty imploded when the whole twincest thing came out. Dany's wedding is still a big question mark insofar as who came up with it and who convinced Drogo to want this. Illyrio may have Dothraki contacts, but what got Drogo of all people interested in the last dragon princess? I think that revolves around the Stallion prophecy and Drogo's desire to realize it. We might learn some more about that when Dany meets the dosh khaleen again.

Munkun did survive the Regency era ... but he did not, in fact, serve throughout the reign of Aegon III. From TWoIaF we know that Alford was Grand Maester in 153 AC - he advised Aegon and Naerys after the birth of Daeron II, telling them that another pregnancy might likely kill her. It is true that Munkun is back in office in 171 AC when King Baelor starves himself to death ... but the implication here is that Munkun actually did suffer a similar fate as Pycelle would later - and Grand Maester Orwyle did when Rhaenyra came to power. He was sacked and replaced - and possibly exiled or imprisoned - and then eventually reinstated. How this took place we have no clue at this point. But as it is clear that king who sacked and replaced Munkun as Grand Maester was Aegon III (possibly with the help/input of Viserys II) one has to wonder if Aegon III was actually happy with Munkun's performance and actions during the Regency era - most notably with his working relationship with the likes of Unwin Peake and Marston Waters. One also imagines that Munkun ended up writing his big book while he was no longer serving as Grand Maester - it would have given him sufficient leisure time to do all those interviews and research he apparently did. One doesn't assume a fulltime Grand Maester has actually sufficient time to do much scholarly work - at least not the type of work that includes a lot of research. Not to mention that writing a history about the Dance - and possibly exonerating Rhaenyra, Daemon, Aegon's half-brothers and Aegon III - might have been a way to regain royal favor. If that were true then Aegon III likely only sacked and replaced him - without imprisoning or exiling him. Then one could also assume that Munkun was restored to the office after Grand Maester Alford (or any other Grand Maesters that might have served prior to Munkun's restoration) died of natural causes, possibly only after Aegon II himself was dead. If Munkun had been sacked for an actual crime chances that he would have been allowed to resume his office later - especially while Viserys II was still Hand - are pretty low. What we can say is that Munkun clearly was one of the younger Grand Maesters - I'd think he was only in his 30s or early 40s when he first took office. If one wants to look for a maester secretly messing with dragon stuff during the reign of Aegon III we do have a candidate in Maester Rowley, former student of Archmaester Sandeman (reputedly one of the wisest healers of Westeros at that time) who was named Lord Confessor by Torrhen Manderly after George Graceford's death. This would have been a maester ideally suited to work under the radar as many people wouldn't have viewed him as a maester - or not first and foremost as a maester. Yet his training would have made him an expert in poisons, etc. The Grand Maester is too much in the spotlight ... and mostly glued to court in KL. Whereas the dragons and dragon eggs were mostly on Dragonstone. If, for instance, any maester messed with the seven eggs Aegon II tried to hatch or the egg the Velaryons put in the cradle of the second Laena Velaryon ... it would have been the maester of Dragonstone or Driftmark, respectively. At least the Dragonstone maester would have been a new guy, coming in at the end of the Dance in the wake of the murder of Grand Maester Gerardys.

That was what most readers believed ... until Tristan Rivers, leading officer and war council member of the Golden Company, told us the plan was that Viserys III and his Dothraki were to join them. Of course, this doesn't mean this was really *the plan* ... but it does confirm that it was the plan as per the leadership of the Golden Company. And it does mean that Illyrio and Varys actually did tell Strickland and his comrades enough that Tristan Rivers thought this was *the plan*. It is clear that to Varys/Illyrio the endgame is a King Aegon VI - certainly not a King Viserys III. But this doesn't mean the plan ever relied on there being two successive Targaryen restoration invasions, nor for Aegon to show up only after the Dothraki created chaos. The chances that the plan actually was that the Golden Company and Aegon were to join Viserys III and his Dothraki are actually pretty good. After all, a crucial part of making Aegon king will be to have some genuine Targaryens actually vouching for him and acknowledging him as Rhaegar's son. Without that his campaign would become much more difficult ... as we are likely to see in coming books. If Viserys III accepted him as his nephew and presumptive heir his road to the Iron Throne would be very short and smooth. Dany was a piece in the larger game ... but a rather crucial piece. She had to live as she was the glue tying Drogo and the Dothraki to the invasion plan. Without her there would likely be no invasion. Her value in the greater game would diminish if and when the invasion was actually happening ... but not until then. The same is also true for Viserys III. Although he was even more important, technically, as the plan had the best chance of success if Aerys II trueborn son were to actually spearhead a Targaryen restoration rather than some supposedly dead prince or Aerys' daughter, or Aerys' grandson by a Dothraki khal (Rhaego). But in the end they were placeholders, the means to pave the way for Aegon. Varys/Illyrio wanted to weaken Westeros by way of a civil/succession war when the Dothraki invasion was ready - and one imagines that Varys' idea was to keep it simple and basically destroy the Baratheons by revealing the twincest in a most devastating manner at the perfect time. That way pretty much all the Realm would quickly fall in line behind a Targaryen pretender. If Robert had lived longer something like 'King Renly' would have never happened ... and Stannis would never get a big following, anyway. Hell, it seems clear that Varys would have liked to draw Ned into the dragon camp if he had lived longer and not insisted to be as self-destructive as he was. This was not even guess. Varys himself informed Robert of Dany's wedding. He is the literal whisperer whispering into Robert's ear that there is danger brewing across the Narrow Sea. He is also the guy who ensures that Robert authorizes an assassination of the Targaryens. That is not a bad idea ... and it makes sense to entertain something like that in a scenario where Robert lived and news of Drogo's planned invasion reach Westeros. It could have been a good way to get rid of Robert to goad him into a preemptive attack in Essos. But in the short run Varys was keeping Robert informed about Viserys' plans to help bring the Dothraki invasion along as clearly a crucial piece there was to actually create a sense of genuine danger for Dany and Viserys. It is the attempted assassination of Dany - clearly both organized and botched according to Varys and Illyrio's playbook - that pushes Drogo to fully commit to the invasion. Even to a much stronger degree than he earlier promised Viserys III - we hear about him intending to give his new brother-in-law about 10,000 Dothraki warriors in exchange for Daenerys ... but after the assassination attempt Drogo commits his entire khalasar to the cause. It is a rather cruel irony that we could easily have seen a rather heartfelt union between Drogo, Dany, and Viserys had the latter lived until the botched assassination attempt. Had Viserys made less of a fool of himself he would have reaped a big reward then.

Aegon II may have been given an egg, but it seems just as likely - or possibly even likelier - that he was presented with the most beautiful dragon hatchling at a young age. We know it for a fact that Sunfyre hatched on Dragonstone, making it less likely he came from a cradle egg as that would have been with the little prince at court. Of course, it is conceivable that little Aegon was on a tour to Dragonstone with his father and Rhaenyra, etc. to Dragonstone at the very time his egg hatched - and that he brought it with him ... but that would just be awfully convenient. It actually seems as if the first generation of princes who all got cradle eggs were the children of Rhaenyra - and possibly also Alicent's younger children (Daeron). With Alicent's children a rather good guess as how things went there would be that Aegon was given a hatchling to hammer home the fact that the king's firstborn son was a proper dragon prince equal to his elder half-sister (who got a hatchling or cradle egg of her own in Syrax) ... but with Helaena and Aemond Alicent decided to not insist on them getting eggs or hatchlings but play the Maegor-style 'long game' in hopes they might bond with an older dragon later in life - which then first worked with Helaena-Dreamfyre and eventually Aemond-Vhagar. Daeron would have been given his egg along with Jacaerys who was born around the same time - there it would have looked odd if the queen had allowed the princess's brat to be the only who got a dragon egg in the cradle. Regarding the hatching of eggs we unfortunately don't know why Viserys' didn't hatch. He and Aegon III both lived on Dragonstone so it should have worked ... but then we have no clue how many dragon eggs don't hatch despite the fact that they are close to the fire of the volcano. Obviously many do not as the Targaryens have many leftover eggs when the dragons die out. Aegon II sits on seven of the most promising eggs when he wants to hatch his new Sunfyre. The idea that the egg not hatching makes Viserys II a Targaryen who couldn't have been a dragonrider - or who would have struggled at claiming one - isn't very convincing I think. In fact, as there are still dragons around at the end of FaB - and more might hatch up until the year the last dragon dies (153 AC) - it is even possible Viserys II does claim a dragon - either a new hatchling or Silverwing or the Cannibal. Ditto we also have no clue how many freak dragons like the one who attacked the second Laena in her cradle did hatch in the past when they didn't have the cradle egg tradition yet. We do know that the dragons were very fertile on Dragonstone after Queen Rhaena moved there, but as many of them must have died in the following years and decades there might have been quite a few misfits and strange ones among them. The Cannibal may not have just devoured healthy dragons but also crippled or weird ones.

No finished story does 'need' a sequel. And expensive movies only get them if you can make more money off them ... which you can with Star Wars. That said - while the general story is finished in ROTJ - all the villains we know are defeated, all storylines finished - one certainly can ask the question how a Galactic Empire - which is much larger than one battle station and its Emperor - can just disappear. It didn't disappear at the end of ANH, so certainly there could have been potential to continue things after ROTJ. If one does care about the characters that were created in the OT continuing their personal stories could have been very interesting and worthwhile for the people who care ... which were basically the people who like Star Wars. It is quite clear that rebuilding the Jedi Order is a different kind of story than the one we got in the OT ... but so what? That seems to be a twisted perception on your part. Yes, there was an aging demographic feeling nostalgia for OT stuff ... but that is a rather aging demographic. There is also a younger demographic - the people who grew up with the PT and TCW and for them Star Wars is that, not junk ships in space. Abrams specific incompetence, though, revolves more about the writing and the content he created ... less about the look of the movie and the silly Vader mask, old lightsaber fetishism, silly repetitive desert planet, old people being exactly the same, etc. nostalgia. One could have had all the latter ... and still a good movie.

The one thing relating to Palpatine Lucas should have explained more is the backstory of the Sith and what they want revenge for. 'Revenge of the Sith' is the title of Episode III but we don't really learn in any of the movies who the hell they are and what they want revenge for. All we know is that there only two of them and that they are evil and have been gone for a thousand years. This is something TPM should have done when the concept of the Sith was first introduced. But there is indeed not reason to have Palpatine talk or explain more about his plans to seize power and create the Empire - here Lucas really developed rather well on the 'show, don't tell' front. We see what he did and how he did it, and it works pretty well. Just as Palpatine as a character is one of the few things that are really great in the PT. One cannot thank Lucas enough for immediately going back to Ian McDiarmid for the role. I remember when I first watched TPM I was rather confused that GL - who plans to make a six-hour-trilogy about the fall of the Republic and the genesis of Darth Vader - just wasted about two hours on a funny kid racing a futuristic car. How good were the chances that he could fit everything that had yet to happen in just four more hours? Not very good. And it didn't work out so well, after all, especially as there were still lots of sideshows going on (hello there, General Grievous). But this is actually eerily similar to a certain other George thinking he can wrap another rather big and sprawling story in just two more 1,000 pages books. That is not going to happen, either ... and if it did the result would suck much more than the PT ever could.

Disney/Lucasfilm released the movie under the title 'Die letzten Jedi', plural, in German. As those things are not done arbitrarily by random translators but have to be approved by the people who own the property we can safely say that the meaning is supposed to be plural. Which does make sense as the Jedi are really gone by the end of the movie. I'm not sure where you get the idea that Luke would have to be more powerful than any conceivable villain in a story taking place decades after ROTJ. That is something you presuppose - which shows a lack of imagination on your part. Both insofar as potential villains are concerned but even more in that you can apparently only imagine Luke Skywalker as some kind of super hero. The idea that you want to move on is also rather silly as the whole point of continuing the OT should be to actually showcase the characters we last saw played by the classic actors in the year I was born. I'm not saying that Star Wars couldn't move beyond the old gang there ... they were rather old already, anyway. More that if you bring them back after all those years played by the original actors then this should really be about them ... with the prospect of a newer generation taking over later. I didn't say Johnson gave all characters Abrams created the Cantina Lady or Captain Brienne treatment ... but he also fucked the main characters you mention by moving all of them into directions that were clearly not set up or hinted at in the TFA. However bad TFA is - and it is so bad that I haven't watched it in years - the movie gave us some mysteries the next two movies could and should have elaborated on, not to mention that there were certain plot germs in the character development and romance department that were clearly there in TFA. TLJ doesn't do that - and it undermines existing characters even more by introducing quite a few new characters - Asian side chick, Laura Dern, sleezy code cracker dude, etc. A big fuck-up, for instance, is the whole 'Luke is a sulking degenerate in the middle of nowhere because of something that happened years ago' twist. Everything in TFA from the opening crawl indicated that Luke Skywalker is somehow connected to the overall plot of this new trilogy, especially in relation to the villains and whatever plans they have ... but as we then learn the dude just couldn't stomach being a proper uncle and teacher to his (arguably) monstrous nephew, so he ran away like a coward. This entire story is totally unconnected to the main plot of the movie(s) - and this was clearly not the intention back in TFA. Evil Hologram dude and Luke had some kind of connection and history. Ditto, the sudden connection/attraction between Fetish Guy and Rey. That also comes totally out of the left field as the dude murdered his own father and her own mentor figure Han Solo ... and there was clearly some attraction between Stormie and Rey in TFA. Which is also why the Asian side chick story sucks. Even the actors know they were fucked over by those movies. They say so. It gets even worse in TROS, of course, but it is rather understandable that Abrams paid back Johnson in kind. Stormtrooper guy was already starting to play second fiddle in TLJ when he was clearly the male lead in TFA.