The Star Wars saga of Lydia Matthews

Warning: May contain spoilers for “Rogue One: A Star Wars Story”


A long time ago (September of 2017) in a galaxy far, far away (my living room) my husband and I found a rare free kid-less evening and decided to watch a movie together.  I’m a Rom-Com or light-action-with-happy-endings kind of girl.  He’s got a very specific and complex taste regarding cinema.  We rarely agree.  On this particular evening, I was tired and figured I was going to fall asleep anyway, so I just let him pick.


He suggested that we watch a Star Wars movie.  I really had no frame of reference for this; I’m pretty sure I’d seen most of “A New Hope” about two decades earlier and could remember maybe one scene from the whole thing.  It felt too old to be modernly good and not old enough to be classic…  He had a newer one in mind that he thought I might like.  Ten minutes and a few bags of burned popcorn later (you can never trust the popcorn button) we were cozy in front of “Rogue One.”


Perhaps it was the addition of 20 years of maturity, or the better cinematics, or the compelling storylines…  but I did not fall asleep.  Instead, I was drawn in by these newer characters, and I was really, surprisingly, enjoying myself.  K2SO quickly became one of my favorite personalities (ironically not an actual person) and I was actually thinking I just might like Star Wars after all.  And that is when disaster struck.  Just as Gin and Cassian were limping off of the elevator it occurred to me that, despite their success, the planet was still about to blow up and they needed a lift.  I looked at my husband and blurted out, “But how do they get away?”


He turned - too slowly - to face me, with a guilty look on his face.  


“Oh NO, NOPE, nah-uh, NO WAY, you did NOT just make me watch them hero their way right to their very deaths!”  WHY?!?!?  😭  He knows how I am about my happy endings!  


I did not recover quickly.  I refused to watch anything else even remotely connected to George Lucas for several years.  He suggested it a few times, but I wasn't having it.  I’d learned my lesson, there was nothing for me in that pain.  He swore that I might like some of them.  I reminded him that he was the picky one when it came to movies; the one who thought everything would be awful until he saw it, and who didn’t ever like the movies that I did.  I had a much simpler set of standards, and based on the evidence he’d shown me, I was sure that I would hate them all.  That was my story and I was sticking to it.


COVID changed things, man.  


On Friday, March 13th, 2020 the world quit working.  Pretty much all of it just stopped, somehow, and we holed up to starve out the Coronavirus.  

“Be a hero and stay home!” they said.  Finally!  This was the kind of hero I was born to be!  

I busted out my spandex uniform (a.k.a. leggings) and my standard-issue baggy hoodie and got busy saving the planet one relaxing day after the other.   For once in my life I had the time to do things like read and watch movies!   For the first couple of weeks it was positively glorious.


Somewhere along about week three of the lockdown we were getting desperate.  We implemented a family fitness plan to get outside and burn off energy, and that helped a lot.  We took up a world culinary tour and mixed up the dinner menu with dishes from all over the world.  We went through every puzzle and board game we owned.  All good things, but we truly needed some family-friendly television to watch in moderate doses that we could all enjoy.  


My husband isn’t stupid.  I’m fairly certain this was a very strategically planned strike.  He knew we were desperate.  He knew it was appropriate for all ages in our family (he’d watched the whole series himself first), and he knew how I am about cute things.  (Note: this includes things that are so strangely ugly that they become adorable, like opossums.)  He sent in “Baby Yoda” to do the dirty work, and I took the bait.  



I mean, look at that face!  How could I say ‘no’!?!

I agreed to watch the Mandalorian Season One on Friday nights for the next two months.  


You all know the line, say it with me…

 


Indeed, it was.  


After 8 weeks of The Mandalorian, I agreed to watch the 9 full-length trilogy movies, in order, with the family.  (We had to skip parts of Episode 3, but other than that we all got through them.)  

we (re)watched Rogue One as well, and enjoyed it much more the second time around.


By the time we finished with that Mandalorian Season Two came out, and we all watched those together on Friday nights again. 


Then came the Bad Batch (Season One).  I positively loved that series, despite being an animated kids’ show.  I watched it with my girls after homework and chores were done during the winter months. 


Then came Clone Wars.  Yes, all of it.  I didn’t really want to watch all of it, but it was suggested that I would understand the other spin-offs more if I did, so all of my treadmill workouts for the next year were accompanied by Anakin, Ahsoka, and company.  The episodes were short enough that I could get in a couple with every run, and they took my mind off of exercising.  Most weren’t terrible, I’ll give them that.  


It was a bit of a blur after that.  There was another season on Bad Batch, and Ob-Wan Kenobi’s series, and more Mandalorian…


Then, somewhere toward the end of the first episode of Andor, I realized that I had become a Star Wars fan against my will, and I just didn’t want to watch any more.  I shut it off without finishing it.  That was about a year ago.  


Ahhhh Ahsoka, why do you taunt me so?  I have to admit that I really want to watch the new series.  I’ve tried to ignore the trailers, but it looks quite promising.  I mentioned this to someone who has seen (part of) it, and was informed that it is, truly, a great series, “as long as you’ve seen Rebels so that you know what’s going on.”


🤦🏼‍♀️


So here we are.  And that is why, your honor, my morning treadmill runs are, once again, accompanied by an animated children’s show that I am only invested in for the bits of information needed to help me understand - and therefore better enjoy - the live-action series that I hope to get around to watching when I’ve done all the homework for it…


 How do I escape it?  Do I even want to?  What have I become?!?  I think maybe I AM a Star Wars fan 😬 at least to some (less psychotic than others) degree! 

Oh well.  I surrender.

I guess the saga continues.  Maybe forever at the rate the franchise is growing.  😅


Soooooo…


To General Ackbar: I should’ve listened to you from the start.


To my husband:  I may have been wrong about hating Star Wars.  Maybe.  


To my spicey Togruta girl from Shili: I really hope you don’t let me down.


And to my favorite Jedi:  Not to contradict, but I’m convinced that it is actually George Lucas who has the high ground.  

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