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In the beginning of this episode, in the Writers' Room

where we come up with all the ideas,

I knew that we wanted to do a training episode.

We wanted to train Sabine to use the Darksaber.

And just finding a way in on that was a bit of a challenge.

A lot of people didn't think that we could suspend the story

just on one plot about Sabine training.

You wanted to speak with me?

But I and a couple other people did.

So, we decided this is all about sword training.

To make it interesting in the beginning, and remember

a lot of people won 't know what the Darksaber is.

I added really late in the stages of the story

this history of the Darksaber,

which explains that it was created by a Mandalorian,

who was the first Mandalorian that was ever inducted

into the Jedi Order as a child.

I created that history and a lot of it

while I was actually visiting the set of Episode VIII.

I had to storyboard this sequence here

where you see these shadows

that would later be animated by Justin Ridge.

But he and I combined to do this

as we have many things over the years.

But it was an exciting thing 'cause there I was over in London,

seeing what Rian was up to,

and that was really inspirational for me.

Again, challenging us to tell a great story and to push things

and do things that we hadn't.

So I thought this shadow play would be a fun way to do it.

Something that inspired me for that shadow play would probably be

Ralph Bakshi's Lord of the Rings.

He had a great opening sequence

where he explained the whole War of the Ring using shadows.

So it was something that I told Joel Aron, the CG Supervisor, about

just as a reference point of, "Here's one way this has been done,"

and had a wonderful texture and look to it.

This next shot here was really important

because I wanted to get across this idea of Sabine's current family,

and then the birds below the painting represent the Wrens,

her actual family.

It's always fun to see artwork in Sabine's room.

So in this case,

I had that special painting done by Kilian to make a story point

just out of that visual.

And that there is one of my favorite things, when Chopper purrs.

Chopper, I've always said,

at heart is actually a really nice character,

a good character, but he's often gruff on the outside.

But I thought the animation really sells that, the kindness in that moment.

This is like a family intervention moment.

These scenes can be really difficult

'cause they have to give you a lot of information.

But one thing I really wanted to do in this episode

was explain and express a lot of emotion.

I was very careful about how Hera would react in this scene.

You see a lot of this scene is not Hera talking at all,

but Hera observing. Watch her observe.

She doesn't like what Ezra is saying there.

She's waiting, she's picking her spot because Hera's the most aware

of what Sabine's past is

and what's causing Sabine to react the way she is.

It's also very like all these characters, all these men in the foreground,

to be explaining this situation to Sabine

and why she should be doing these things.

And, frankly, not really listening to what Sabine has to say,

or what she's actually feeling.

And I felt like Hera needs to be the counterpoint to that,

this almost inquisition.

They want her to do something,

but they're not really thinking about what she needs emotionally.

And Hera is now supporting that,

but she's also cutting through to the bare facts of the thing.

She empathizes with Sabine,

but she also knows that this needs to happen for a greater good.

She's trying to appeal to Sabine on that level.

For me, I always thought that Sabine would assume

that Hera would be supportive of her and her reluctance to do this.

So she's a bit surprised

when Hera actually supports the training of her with the saber.

But it's 'cause Hera's playing a bigger game here.

She understands the bigger picture.

Kanan holding onto the saber there with Sabine,

he's not just impressing upon her the importance of the training,

but also it's reflective of his actual reluctance to let her train,

or to train her the way that she probably needs to be trained,

which will become a bigger theme as we go forward in the episode.

And she actually tries to learn.

So this is kind of a classic Star Wars stance with a lightsaber,

but it's not turned on yet, so it's a little twist.

You need moments like this with these little skittering guys

just to give the full atmosphere of Star Wars.

Star Wars needs to feel like a big world,

always a vast galaxy outside of the little main plot here.

And since there wasn't going to be a big B plot,

I tried to let some of the things in the environment,

like the spiders and the Bendu play a little bit of a vastness role

to give depth to the galaxy.

This scene is all about your expectation

of going to be trained with this lightsaber,

but there's a lot of work that surrounds it.

So them having to set up camp,

all the not-fun things that go on when you're wanting to do this adventure

or do what you would like to do.

But discipline comes in many forms and training,

and that's what Sabine has to learn here.

They're just very old motifs, to be honest,

when you're dealing with this type of story,

a master and apprentice in training.

Probably you wouldn't think of it, these little wooden sabers

are one of the more difficult props to make because, ultimately,

they don't look like much of anything.

You want to accept them as wood without being too designed.

Kanan wouldn't have had a lot of time to make these things,

but they have to be effective as a prop.

So I always find those designs and models

can be actually the more difficult kind of props to make.

But in the end you don't really think about them,

which I think means they're effective 'cause you just accept what they are.

But every little thing needs to be designed.

Here you see Kanan pretty hard on her right at the start

because Sabine is cocky.

She is a good fighter, so we have to get that out of the way,

that she is a capable warrior, but she hasn't fought like this,

with a weapon like this.

And in a lot of ways, Kanan thinks that the knowledge of the weapon

and the danger of it, he's being overprotective of her.

He doesn't realize that.

He just thinks he's being a diligent master

when he's actually being a more limited master

than he was even when he taught Ezra.

So, this type of thing here,

with the posing you see going on with the lightsabers and the stance,

that's something that we would research.

Steward Lee, the episodic director on this episode,

he and I have worked together now for pretty much 12 years on Star Wars.

And I know he's very adept at sword play and martial arts,

so it was important to have him do this episode

to make sure that the sword fighting would be locked down

and believable and based on some reality.

And he did a wonderful job with that.

This Hera-Kanan scene is really the first of several scenes

where the mother figure checks in on how the father figure is doing.

And she is, again, a bit more wise

because she's looking at the bigger picture

as to what Sabine actually needs,

and how Kanan might be limiting her based on his own fears.

Fear of, you know, allegedly that she could hurt herself.

But I think there's also with Kanan a fear that he's not as good a master.

He might not be able to teach her well enough.

He could barely, in some ways, teach Ezra in the long run,

and now teaching Sabine.

The truth is, it's probably more difficult for Kanan to do

than it is for her to learn because she's such a skilled warrior.

In this scene here again,

there was a big challenge with Ezra in the episode.

The easy thing to do would be

to have his kind of mocking and barbing of Sabine

become something

that's way overplayed in making fun of her.

And when Taylor, we were performing this,

he did several versions,

and I think between me and Tiya and the cast,

we could sit there and kind of say,

"Okay, he's trying to tease her, but he's not trying to belittle her."

He doesn't want to be mean.

For Ezra, it's hard to understand, where it's been difficult for him to learn

to lightsaber fight and use the Force,

how can Sabine learn this

without even having the ability to use the Force?

But you don't want it ever to come across that Ezra is saying these things

and mocking her basically because she's a girl.

"You can't do this because you're a girl."

That's not relevant here whatsoever.

She's easily as good a warrior as he is.

This is just a warrior that needs to use a different tool.

And that type of learning can apply to any scenario,

whether it's about fighting with weapons

or learning some other skill.

Here we have Uncle Rau.

He's playing the role of kind of a mentor

more from her side of things, a Mandalorian side,

and kind of how they would deal with the situation,

which is to upgrade their technology.

Mandalorians are prideful, brilliant warriors in their own right.

They're also technologically savvy and advanced.

This is how they've fought the Jedi.

So again, this kind of plays into the opening with Tarre Vizsla

in the images of them fighting.

So you're seeing here almost a small reenactment

of a Jedi-Mandalorian war

and how a Mandalorian would get the upper hand

surprising Jedi with technology and then cutting them down,

finishing them off.

So they'd get this advantage,

but while it's kind of fun for Sabine

and it lets her have a little bit of bragging rights,

it also undermines her in Kanan's eyes.

Because having that kind of advantage isn't going to work,

he knows in the long run.

We actually see Kanan get a little mad here.

This is a bold move.

As a kid you were all often challenging your parents,

sometimes you know it, sometimes you don't.

But challenging Kanan was important here.

She oversteps, and Kanan gets rather aggressive,

more aggressive than we've seen probably,

especially towards Sabine.

But he's reacting emotionally

because he's actually inward about himself and his own concerns,

and now he feels like she's not taking it seriously.

It's just excuses, excuses for not wanting to do things.

But now she gets very angry and compliments Ezra.

I thought it'd be important in this moment

she had some clarity and she said something nice about Ezra,

that he must be very good with the Force

because he's learned to be skilled from Kanan,

which is proving very difficult.

I love the environments the team comes up with.

I think that you look here,

the environments very believable and integrated, the ground plain,

and everybody just does a wonderful job when rendering this.

This moment, I mean, every moment, it just adds up

and becomes important in this episode for me.

But these quiet moments are equally as important

as the moments when they're fighting.

This is the look inside Sabine's mind, what's really bothering her.

When you're mad at your parents,

sometimes you can talk to your siblings and you have a lot of clarity.

So this is that moment

where Ezra really gets behind the wall for the first time with Sabine

and learns about what's truly troubling her, what's blocking her.

This moment was a big deal for me.

I love moments where there is no dialogue,

where the characters aren't saying anything,

but they're expressing things through the lack of dialogue.

You get inside their mind.

In a 21-minute episode, there really is never enough time

to have the characters think and come to conclusions

and thought processes.

So that moment of stillness, of quiet, I think,

helps land this wonderful acting

that Tiya and Taylor are doing in this scene.

And I just threw a little Bendu in here, I think, as just the observer again.

People wanted to read a lot into this.

But I think Bendu's always curious of his surroundings

and why would the Jedi teach this non-Jedi.

Here again, in this series of scenes with Hera and Kanan,

this was a scene when I, very early on in writing the episode,

this was one of the first scenes I actually wrote.

I actually took this bit of dialogue,

and took it to Tiya and Vanessa, and I said,

"I want you guys to read this scene and see if this makes sense."

It was very important to me to get input

from the women working on this show.

I get a lot of input from my wife constantly

on female characters and their portrayal.

And how to attack these portrayals

and express the portrayal of these characters

and to have some authenticity.

The only way I've been able, I think, to achieve that

is by sharing information and then listening and paying attention

to their reactions and their thoughts on this.

If this becomes more believable,

then it's in large part

due to their efforts and inclusion in this process.

Vanessa and Tiya very much liked this scene.

Vanessa said it really related to her, some of the ways she feels.

And I think that you hear her in the line when she says,

"I know you don't, but it's not about you."

"This isn't about you."

It's a key moment for me, for Kanan to try to understand,

and is he going to listen to her?

Is he going to pay attention to what Hera's saying

or is he going to kind of go along as he always had,

as this Jedi that has these skills?

He's overcome a lot of things himself,

but is he applying his experience to Sabine?

Is he allowing for her own experience and her own thoughts?

How can he become a better teacher for her?

What does she need to achieve this rather difficult task

of learning to use a lightsaber?

The stage is set by Act 3.

I think it was very important that both characters admit

some level of error here,

that it's not really all on one person ever in this situation,

but both people need to take a step back,

and kind of apologize and say, "Let's start over."

We don't really get enough of that these days from people

when emotions run high.

So any chance you can set an example

and say, "Let's do this the right way, let's start over,"

I think is a good thing in a story.

So here the training is basically starting over again

and starting properly and with more formality.

This is going to be with the actual saber.

I think everybody's curious, Fenn Rau, Ezra, as to how this will go.

These ideas here where the blade has energy,

and it seems to have a lot of weight to it,

are ideas that I used to talk about with George when we would talk about

original lightsaber combat as he envisioned it in A New Hope.

The electricity of the blades and the energy

really drew the sabers together.

There was kind of a heaviness to pull them apart.

Mark Hamill actually talks about in some interviews

how they would use the lightsabers in the original Star Wars.

So I tried to keep that alive here and express it.

I thought that while the Jedi we've seen since the prequels

were very skilled with lightsaber fighting

and could move them all around acrobatically,

for Sabine, she would be expressing more of that experience Luke had,

which is, this is a completely new thing.

And again, in the training with the lightsaber fighting here

is paralleling the emotional state of the characters.

It's all very important.

And Steward Lee did a great job with his team

of bringing this action to life when we set the stage.

Brilliant choreography by him.

But it's all about the attitude, the move,

the speed of the lightsaber swinging,

the speed of the training is matching

what's going on in the characters' minds.

I prepped Tiya for this well in advance.

I started talking to her

a couple months earlier about this episode,

about the emotional range that would be required of her

to sell this, to make it believable, to get inside the character's mind.

We wanted to establish a bit of the backstory for Sabine

and why she would be so emotional,

and what was her comfort level.

I think as a director you have to be responsible

for your actors and how they're going to be handling these emotions.

She was so professional and amazing, take after take as we did this.

And we didn't have to do many, to be honest. She was really on.

She was well prepared for the moment.

This scene and most of this episode was recorded

with just her and Freddie for these moments

so they could both really dive in

and have a space where they could really get at each other

and experience these emotions.

So, again, now she's using the tools in a smart way,

not as an aggressive way, but as a way to help herself out.

You gotta get burned a little bit, this isn't a perfect thing.

I think little setbacks and injuries are a part of the learning process.

That's what that little damage there. It also frustrates her.

And now, Kanan, look how much better he is.

Of course, he would be better, right?

He doesn't need his lightsaber on.

But what Kanan's doing here, unfortunately for him dangerously,

is he's underestimating the emotional power behind Sabine,

what's actually driving her, how hurt she is.

There's a real risk here for him that if she unleashes this anger,

that it's powerful. That's true of anything.

It's not just true for Jedi and Sith.

You'd think like, "If you tap into your anger..."

The warning there in Stat Wars is that that anger,

tapping into anger is dangerous for anybody to do.

And here you see Sabine embracing her anger,

and look how powerful she becomes.

Kanan's backing off, he doesn't want to hurt her,

but now he's at a clear disadvantage

as she just gets absorbed into this emotional state

and lets her anger and her sorrow empower her.

Does she even see Kanan, or does she see Kanan in front of her

as embodying all that hurt and all that pain?

And these are the things that you have to go through

directing it, writing it, acting it.

What is this emotional state? What's driving her?

It fuels the renders,

Joel can make these crackling electricity,

it fuels the animation for the expressions

and this breakdown moment.

There's a real chance, she could have killed Kanan here.

What could he do? He's not going to hurt her.

They've brought this upon themselves.

But she can't do it because the emotions peak.

Your anger is often followed by tremendous regret and remorse.

People that lash out, you come to your sanity.

That's the terrible thing about it, is that then you see clearly

everything that's gone on and everything you've done wrong,

and you've made things worse.

That's why you can't give in to these emotions.

But what you need is support in these high emotional times.

Young people get confused when they're emotional

and they express themselves. They're vulnerable.

And so, what she needs more than anything

is support of the people around her,

of this family.

She lost a family. It's hard for her to accept a new family.

And here, in a very symbolic gesture,

I wanted this kind of archetype of the warrior, Fenn Rau,

to kneel before her, her brother.

They're showing respect.

They're showing respect for her for this expression of emotions,

for this empowering. It becomes an empowering moment.

It's not a weakness to feel remorse, to cry.

And in the end, she's a lot stronger

for having the support of these people around her.

And that's what this story is ultimately about.