Main cast: Jude Law (Jod Na Nawood), Kyriana Kratter (KB), Robert Timothy Smith (Neel), Ravi Cabot-Conyers (Wim), Ryan Kiera Armstrong (Fern), Nick Frost (SM 33), Tunde Adebimpe (Wendle), Kerry Condon (Fara), and Alia Shawkat (Kh’ymm)
Director: David Lowery

We are in Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island territory now, folks, as Jod Na Nawood is shaping up to be the Long John Silver-type of dashing scoundrel on this show. 

As an aside, really? They cast Jude Law to play a character called Jod?

Back to the show, we all know the drill, I’m sure. In Very Interesting, As an Astrogation Problem, Jod promises the kids that he will bring them back home to At Attin, but it’s not that subtle that he’s actually trying to win back the good graces of his former crew after the fouled-up heist in the first episode… by helping his former teammates have a crack at the kids’ home planet. 

Of course, the mini-me girlbosses think they are in charge. 

Meanwhile, because this is part of the mega-flop New Republic offshoot of Star Wars—a line of books that nobody really bought or even thought about because these books were written by mostly authors of young adult fiction that are obsessed with pronouns, shrieking on social media about how so and so needs to be cancelled for wrongthink, and changing their hair colors to match their mood swing of the day—one shouldn’t think too hard about lore and continuity.

So, yes, Jod is “Force-sensitive”, but then again, every other fellow and their dog is Force-sensitive in the era of Kathleen Kennedy’s baby New Republic, so who cares. If anything, “Force-sensitive” is becoming a contrivance for various characters to pull out convenient superpowers out of their ass, so I’m expecting Jod to be able to do the same sometime later in this series.

Then again, maybe I’m too hard on this show, as it’s designed to groom little kids into future faithful adherents of the Cult of Kathleen Kennedy’s Very Feminist and Progressive Star Wars Church, so maybe those impressionable kiddies need to be subjected to that talking owl thing Kh’ymm not so subtly dropping hints about Jod to the dumb kids on the show as well as those watching it. 

Still, this is an alright episode, mostly because the past Star Wars shows on Disney+ were so wretched that I am actually relieved and even happy to watch an episode that has some decent acting, a story that doesn’t insult my intelligence too much so far (knock on wood), and dialogues that don’t seem to be mined exclusively from Reddit and X.

However, I can tell that they are trying to stretch things out as much as possible, because this episode is just a little below 40 minutes long, and much of it is spent on kids running around, explosions happen now and then, and exposition dumps. At the end of the day, the plot moves ahead probably by a few inches from the previous episode.

Because of this, I feel like this show probably started out as a movie, only for someone to realize that making a Star Wars movie at this point in time is likely to be just flushing money down the drain, so they pivoted to this being a Disney+ filler. Alas, redoing the script is expensive, so they probably decide to instead just to stretch things out as long as they can until the episode count is met.

I have to hand it to Jude Law, though. I know, I know, I’ve made fun of his aging looks in the past, but he seems to have settled into his DILF years very nicely. Maybe it’s the grime and the murky brown color palette of this show, but I am starting to find him very easy on the eyes. Then again, when he’s acting next to obnoxious kids and CGI’ed critters, it’s easy to become the sexiest thing on screen, I suppose. Nonetheless, I am glad he’s getting more screen time, because he brings an easy charm and a wink to the grown-ups watching this thing—a refreshing antidote to the stilted acting and line deliveries of the kiddie cast. 

Where is this show going? Well, there are eight episodes, and we are three down, and they’ve barely moved past the “Oops, we accidentally got lost in outer space!” phase of the show. 

Wherever the show is going, I have a feeling that people that have read Treasure Island or watched the numerous big and small screen adaptations of that story would have a good idea of what to expect. I just hope that the show gets there a bit faster because so far there isn’t much mystery or suspense worth stretching the show out for.