‘Star Wars’ Announces Another Chapter of the Skywalker Saga. Plus, ‘Lioness’ Season 3 Finale With Van Lathan.

Key takeaways

• Disney has hired John Watts to direct and Simon Kinberg to write the next Star Wars trilogy, with Daisy Ridley returning as Rey; the hosts frame this as a retreat to safe, bankable hands after years of stalled meetings with directors like Steven Soderbergh, David Fincher, and Vince Gilligan that never produced a finished film.
• Both hosts worry the new trilogy will recycle the "chosen prodigy fights an evil empire" template, but note Kinberg has had years to develop something distinct; Andy argues the real test comes with the first logline, since Star Wars projects don't have to be self-referential to past films to work.
• "Lanterns" episode 7 ("The Jordan Boys Legacy") is praised as the show's best fusion of grounded procedural storytelling and big cosmic ideas, exemplified by a storage-locker portal leading to Sinestro's home planet Anton, a toxic-gas-induced vision of John Stewart's father, and Kyle Chandler playing multiple versions of Hal Jordan (young, old, "Hallogram") across timelines.
• The hosts flag unresolved mysteries heading into the finale: who killed Hal Jordan (with Noah, possibly a young Manhunter, floated as a suspect), why Sinestro was trapped on Anton's planet, and whether the waitress blackmail subplot pays off—alongside a long tangent mocking Noah's implausibly small high school offensive line.
• Van Lathan calls the "Lioness" finale underwhelming: after a strong mid-season rescue shootout in Texas, the reveal that Aaliyah (daughter of a season-one target) orchestrated Joe's kidnapping from a bathtub with two phones feels disconnected from the season's elaborate mole-hunt buildup, and a supposedly brilliant analyst character reaches the correct conclusion almost by accident.
• Van defends enjoying the show despite disagreeing with its politics, arguing it's honest about its worldview (American exceptionalism, shadowy foreign threats) rather than smuggling propaganda in dishonestly, and that the human relationships (Joe's found family, Cruz's arc toward redemption) carry real weight even when political monologues go unchallenged.

Notable moments

• Andy on the trilogy pivot: "the absolute retrenchment to... we are back in the Skywalker business" after years of chasing auteurs with nothing to show for it.
• Chris pitches a mock "lone wolf and cub" Star Wars concept where Rey trains a kid, which Andy ranks as "number two in my least interested in Star Wars draft."
• A riff on Noah's Nebraska offensive line being implausibly undersized for a five-star recruit, complete with jokes about NCAA redshirt eligibility and "Willie Lampkin."
• Andy calls the Anton's-planet sequence "a pure comic book idea... a Grant Morrison idea," praising its childlike inventiveness.
• Van, on the analyst character: "This dude is wrong... It was Aaliyah in a bathtub calling in favors with two phones," and no one in the show's intelligence apparatus catches it.
• Van's assessment of the Ukrainian character's death: "these super powerful people murdered somebody with their incompetence," calling it Goodfellas-style "she knew too much" logic.
• Van and Chris riff on Taylor Sheridan's recurring obsessions (guns, horses, private jets, and gratuitous nude/ass shots) joking that 42% of "Lioness" takes place on tarmacs.
• A closing bit about a feud with Tracy Letts (from The Big Picture) over being called "third chair" and compared to Pat Buchanan and Lyndon LaRouche.

Time saved: 1 hour, 12 minutes.