You Have A Lot To Learn About Pirates

If you have limitless money…and money is power…and absolute power corrupts…folks, I’ve done the math on this, and I don’t like how it looks! That is, of course, if what we’ve just seen is as it appears, and the roguish but generally decent-to-children Jod Na Nawood really has turned on his four companions because the treasure held on their home planet of At Attin is too immense for him to resist. Sorry, did it sound like I was talking about something else?

The journey to Jod’s heel turn is a fun one, at least. The further we get from the sight of those ghastly outer-space suburbs in the premiere the better this show gets. This episode in particular feels like a roll of double-exposed film, where someone accidentally filmed The Goonies or an Indiana Jones movieon top of an episode of The White Lotus, starring various big ugly creatures taking mudbaths. 

Reprogrammed by KB, a no-longer-hostile SM-33 kicks things off by recalling his time with the crew of the notorious pirate Captain Tak Rennod. If they travel to Rennod’s mountain lair, they can find the coordinates back to At Attin, where his crew mutinied but perished in a crash he engineered with his dying breath rather than let them get the treasure.

But to SM-33’s dismay, “Skull Ridge Mountain” is now a luxury resort spa, into which Jod has to bribe rather than blast the crew’s way. (They pose, rather hilariously and unconvincingly, as a gaggle of “Wise Elders” from a race of very short aliens.) Guests include a Hutt, who eats an attendant for what is apparently not the first time (eww), and a giant sea monster named Cthallops who helps the kids out because he’s hoping to find out how their story ends someday. 

There’s also Kelly MacDonald as a bounty hunter named Pokkit, which as a Kelly MacDonald Enjoyer I very much enjoyed. Pokkit, who knows and was betrayed by Jod under one of his many aliases, rats him out to Captain Brutus the space werewolf, who’s still pursuing the man he knew as Silvo after his jailbreak. With guards and pirates alike chasing them, the crew head underground in search of the pirate lair.

After some Spielbergian shenanigans involving booby traps and decodable poetry, Jod, 33, and the kids make their way into Rennod’s (heavily booby-trapped) treasury. A keen observation by Neel unearths the chart back to At Attin — but Jod wants more. Demanding to see a recording of Rennod himself (the Captain’s face is obscured in the hologram), Jod learns that At Attin isn’t another treasure site: It’s the home of the last Old Republic mint in the galaxy. An infinite source of the most valuable currency there is? Money, power, corruption, et cetera. 

Next thing you know he’s got a knife at a little girl’s throat. Invoking the old pirate code still honored by SM-33, Jod challenges Fern to a fight to the death, then violently threatens her until she surrenders the captaincy of their crew to him. But the kids escape their protector turned betrayer via a trap door they trigger. Jod grabs a lightsaber Wim tried (and failed) to use against him to, presumably, give chase. 

Meanwhile, back on At Attin, the kids’ parents (well, not the lesbians, sorry) plot to defy the Supervisor and find a way to get a sort of interstellar Amber Alert about their kids out past the Barrier. We still don’t know much about that authority figure, or the extent of the safety droids’ “security protocol,” but I have to say the “At Attin is a dystopia and that’s why there are conformist suburbs on it” theory isn’t looking good if it turns out they’re just making silver dollars with Yoda’s face on them or whatever.

It’s likely Jod’s heel turn won’t last, certainly not after all the hints he dropped this episode that he was a Jedi-in-training at some point in the past. (And that’s before he picks up a lightsaber.) It’s even possible this isn’t a heel turn at all, and that he has some other motive besides personal profit for assaulting a child. Maybe he needs the money to raise a new Jedi Temple, or fund another Star Wars show by Tony Gilroy. Y’know, something really noble.

One last thing: Wim. Sure, it’s funny to see him mean-mug Jod with a lightsaber in hand as if this is his moment of destiny, then promptly switch it on upside-down and drive it into the ground, knocking himself ass over teakettle. But “I wanted to have an adventure, and now I regret it because adventures are scary” is a movie motivation, not a real-person motivation. Luke Skywalker was a bored teenager wanted to see the universe, not have adventures in it. Indiana Jones wanted fortune, glory, and presumably tenure. The Goonies wanted to save their parents’ homes from foreclosure, for crying out loud. None of them was like “Oh boy, I hope I get into all kinds of danger so I can show how kickass I am!” It’s both unrealistic as a motivator and unlikeable as a personality trait. 

Compare and contrast with Fern. Her, I get. She wants to get home, and (monkeying around in luxury hotel rooms aside) she wants to keep everyone on task about this. On a deeper level, she needs to feel in control because her mother is too strict to reward her for showing autonomy, and because the situation is terrifying. If Fern grabbed a lightsaber she’d probably just throw it at Jod’s head, reasoning this would be a more effective way for her to use the weapon. I get her, because with her, there’s something real there to get.

Sean T. Collins (@theseantcollins) writes about TV for Rolling Stone, Vulture, The New York Times, and anyplace that will have him, really. He and his family live on Long Island.