It is your Glup Shitto. Now that you have one, you probably know a bit too much.
It isn't an official term, but it has been embraced by fans for a long time, a 2020 viral. It is both silly and loving, a testament to the fan community at its best when it embraces and enthusiastically loves even the smallest, fleeting details about its world building.
Sometimes, Star Wars is a deeply reflective franchise, one almost always more willing to return to familiar and less familiar faces and flesh out their backstory. Sometimes the world of loving a Glup Shitto can be weirder than you might think. In the latest episode of Obi-Wan Kenobi, the Jedi hero goes to the Fortress Inquisitorius to save his young protectee, Leia Organa, from the clutches of the Third Sister. Everything capital-S is Star Wars. Until Obi-Wan enters a dark, secret area of the Fortress and discovers chambers of bodies in amber. The camera lingered as he looked up at one.
This isn't just some random Jedi we're meant to infer, this is a familiar Star Wars character called Master Tera Sinube. The small part of your Star Wars fan brain that makes the connection is probably going to lose its shit because who is thinking about Tera Sinube in the year 2022.
The season two Clone Wars episode "Lightsaber Lost" featured a brief appearance by Sinube. It isn't a great episode of the series, but it does feature a Jedi investigator who helps Ahsoka get her lost lightsaber back. Ahsoka has a very cool and very silly lightsaber cane and he is a crotchety old Jedi who provides patience and wisdom to her. Sinube is a background character in a couple more episodes of Clone Wars. Prior to the Clone Wars he served on the Jedi Council and had a small role in the High Republic novels. In the bumper book of Glups Shitto there is an example of a small stitch in the Star Wars tapestry.
It feels weird to see him in Obi-Wan. The emotional impact of it on Obi-Wan and us as an audience would be the same as if it was a Jedi. It feels like Star Wars is metatextually in on the joke, that our favorites aren't the Obi-Wans or Leias of the galaxy, but the Tera Sinubes. In a world as nostalgic as Star Wars can be, and in a show that is even more nostalgic, it is possible to dig into the Glup Shitto bucket.
It feels like a strange new step for these Star Wars shows as they try to enrich the texture of the Star Wars universe with new sights, new characters, and new stories to fall in love with. At some point, you are going to have to get to those smaller and smaller characters as you dig through all the nostalgia. There is no one off the table at this poin, no matter how big or small. Do you know if your time is now?
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