【Dear Utol (2025): Itch Follows Episode 23】

It's time to pack it in,Dear Utol (2025): Itch Follows Episode 23 my fellow Star Wars fans. The atrocious(ly amazing) Holiday Specialis officially canon.

Jon Favreau treated Instagram followers to a teasing visual nugget tied to his upcoming TV series, The Mandalorian. You might look at the photo and think, "So what? It's just a funky Star Wars blaster, right?"

SEE ALSO: Star Wars has its first ever non-white, non-male directors. It's a start.

Right. And wrong. This image contains multitudes. Look upon it and weep, Star Wars faithful.

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That's not just any blaster, you see. That blaster contains multitudes. It bears a strikingresemblance to the one an animated version of the notorious bounty hunter carried around in the infamous Star Wars Holiday Special, a made-for-TV assault on the senses driven by hilariously bad writing and excessive holiday schmaltz.

The Holiday Speciallives on thanks to the magic of the internet (just Google it, folks). But you can see the blaster right here. Favreau's is much fancier and more detailed, but it's clearly a spiritual successor to what you see below.

Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable

Now sure, the "canon" thing is a bit much. It's just a blaster with a cool design, and Favreau -- and the many creators he's working with -- should be afforded the creative license to pull visual elements out of Star Wars past and imbue them with new meaning. That's a cornerstone of what makes the broader fictional universe so successful, frankly.

But it's still shocking for a Star Wars fan to see this relic from the Holiday Specialsurface in this way. Or, really, any serious reference to it at all in modern culture. It was a bad time, folks.

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