My kids and I were having a debate as we are want to do from time to time the other day

about who's the most irreplaceable, most important character in Star Wars, all those movies.

And we thought about all the impressive ones and the big names.

And ultimately what we decided as we went through all the little plot beats in our heads

was it's a little blue and white rolling trash can.

It's R2D2.

If you take R2D2 out of the thing, there's no point in anybody else showing up because there

are a hundred little inflection points in the story where everything just goes off the

rails and everything is ruined.

And I have no idea if George Lucas or the people who took the baton from George Lucas

to continue telling the story, well, took the baton then fumbled the baton, then barfed

on the baton, then accidentally kicked the baton into a flaming dumpster as the dumpster

was being picked up and loaded onto the back of a runaway train and the runaway train

was headed toward a tire fire and then the whole thing went off a cliff, that kind of

baton handoff.

I don't know if any of the people involved with this were trying to make some kind of deeper

point, but it sort of accidentally does about all of these little things that had to bounce

just the right way for good to win out in the end.

And in that regard, surprisingly, she where I'm going, you can always see where I'm going,

a little bit of an ester flare to this whole thing because ester has got a mountain of

little inflection points, most of which have nothing to do with big flashy things or the

biggest, most imposing, most impressive characters, it seems like a bunch of little off the cuff

...