A nice red glass of cabernet sauvignon pairs well with lamb, while fancy chicken dinners are best served with a glass of rich white wine, perhaps a chardonnay. However, which Star Wars-themed marijuana strain pairs best with Episode VI: Revenge of the Jedi (original better title)? If you were to purchase a fat sack of Skywalker from the friendly neighborhood dispensary, which one of nine different Star Wars pictures should you stream on the Disney+ while it oozes around your nervous system? Thanks to the year’s worth of work done deep in the Arizona desert at Film Threat’s Auxiliary Research Lab (81 possible combinations with 27 screenings altogether completed to determine), we have paired nine different Star Wars-inspired breeds of legal cannabis with each episode of the main theatrical canon. While the experience is ultimately subjective, these pairings should enhance the viewings for either a room full of guests or alone in a dark bedroom with an old VHS and a bucket of Oreos.
Bubba Fett pairs best with Episode II: Attack of The Clones
Star Wars-themed marijuana tends to lean heavily on the Indica side of the breed spectrum: relaxing, dreamy ladders that climb past the clouds to what Permanent Midnight’s Jerry Stahl referred to as Uncle Snoozy’s House. Out of all of these tranquil strains, it is Bubba Fett that is the trankest of the trank danks. This cross between Stardawg and a pre-1998 cut of Bubba Kush will give the sensation of being inside a glass globe floating on a sea of rain. What better way to enhance that than with Episode II: Attack of The Clones trip to Boba Fett’s home planet Kamino, a storm-swept world where everything looks like wet mirrored sunglasses. Consciousness becomes optional in this turn of the century middle chapter as the Bubba Fett gets you out of the plotline and into the visual waves of the picture until the big punch out at the end.
Deathstar pairs best with Episode VII: The Force Awakens
A big stinky vial of this weed will have you rolling fat J.J.s for the first of the new chapters. The Sensai pot parent polices the mamma Sour Diesel into a steady throb in your receptors where you will be filled with wonder without suddenly cleaning the house. It marries well with the new chapter’s visuals as we are more than a decade removed from the early 2000s CGI, which seems as quaint now as the early 80s effects seemed in the late 90s. Be sure to take a long toke during Rey and Ren’s flash battle in the forest scene shot in Puzzlewood. It is the most splendid forest fight to zonk to since Scorpion’s tree tussle in the original 1995 Mortal Kombat. Also, you can medicate every time they say the strain’s name in the film, which is a game that can be played with most of these other strains as well, except the next one.
Jawa Pie pairs best with Episode I: The Phantom Menace
A lot of members of Generation Dr. Johnny Fever have not seen this one since the kick to the Jar-Jars they got when they saw it in 1999. The only way I could stomach it back then was the ancient Z Movie pirate download that lowered the state of the 90s visual quality to a mid-70s Irwin Allen disaster picture, allowing the illusion of this film being a predecessor to the 1977 original. However, a lot of millennials were the exact right age to eat all this up, so everyone gets back in the pool for the Darth Maul bits with a hefty slice of Jawa Pie to float on. It’s the crossing with the strain Alien Rift that makes this Key Lime Pie hybrid so discombobulating, which works if you are a millennial trying to see it through the prism of childhood. However, it works even better for Gen Fever members to obliterate all logic in order to get the bad taste of our collective mouth until the only appetite survives.
OG One Kenobi pairs best with Episode IV: A New Hope
With this one, we have a challenge of getting a fresh perspective on a movie that many of us have seen as many times as we have brushed our teeth. Enter OG One Kenobi, your ticket to far, far away with a spunky OG Kush backcross that has a psychedelic disassociation effect, like you are sitting next to yourself on an infinite row of couches. This will shake you up enough to be able to stop and smell the plom blooms on the one that started it all. Still one of the best entries in the late 70s, early 80s golden age of entertainment for children when we were treated to grand adventures without being pandered to, an age that ended with Episode VI and Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.
R2D2 pairs best with Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker
R2D2, where are you? Toking in the back of an x-wing, getting higher than Imperial Walker sn@tch. This nasty little spin on an Afghan Haze is exactly what is needed to plug in the Xmas lights on this dark and dreary coda. R2 will keep the balls in the air to get to the decent twists and to distract you from how Chewbacca was given nothing to do in this one. As the closer for the Skywalker saga, which most of us have lived in for over four decades, there is plenty of bittersweet after spray that the Afghan numbs out and the Haze lifts up; good job, R2! One really has to wonder what the Rian Johnson version of this would have looked like had he been allowed to proceed with it, which brings us to…
Skywalker pairs best with Episode VIII: The Last Jedi
By far, the most popular Star Wars marijuana strain is well paired with the least popular of the new chapters. Skywalker is how the classic opiate-like strain Mazar-I-Sharif gets enjoyed in this country, crossed with a fat bush of Blueberry to create this levitate three feet off the floor weekend favorite. It is the perfect strain to not only celebrate Mark Hamill‘s work in this picture but also to help wash away all the internet noise about how disappointing the film is. Maybe with a pinch of this weed, you can finally laugh at the funny parts, marvel at the color design and visual architecture, and enjoy what Rian Johnson cooked up for your head. For those who have not sampled this strain, it will make you feel like a bubbling stream is rushing beneath your skin to form a decorative fish pond in your temples.
Vader OG pairs best with Episode III: Revenge of the Sith
This trank dank powerhouse will put you into sedation for the clunky first half so that you arrive Tenacious D power slide style into the knockout second half. What really works weed-wise in the finale of the series not only harkens back to the Captain Blood sword fights in the old school episodes but also the whole 70s era that gave birth to the original. Anakin Skywalker surfing on lava deserves to be airbrushed on the side of a panel van. This San Fernando Valley OG / Larry OG cross will fill you with that sense of awe to the wonders displayed that make combining pot with certain movies so productive.
Wookies pairs best with Episode VI: Return of the Jedi
Grab ahold of this weed with both lungs as you are in for a ride. Wookies is the big hairy baby of superstar strain Girl Scout Cookies getting all caught in the mosh with The White, a powerful aphrodisiac and Grateful Dead legacy strain Chemdawg ’91. The Jabba the Hutt sequence never looked so good, even if it may be the late 90s version that adds the weird jazz number. Strong strains pair well will the weaker pictures, as Revenge of the Jedi was watered down into Return and pandering to children becomes panda-ing to children with the stuffed toy Ewoks. Let Wookies take hold, and soon you will be seeing all the trees of Endor covered in the Wookie treehouses from the holiday special, with big hairy m########ers screaming into the night instead of the teddy bear’s picnic.
Yoda OG pairs best with Episode V: Empire Strikes Back
If you find this one on the shelf of your local weed mart (ain’t the future swell?), grab some, as it will not be on that shelf long, the force is strong in this one. One of the creamiest of the OG Kush derivatives, this weed will make you feel like the Frank Oz Yoda puppet, hand up you and everything. You will feel the Yoda coursing through your eyebrows as you sink into Lando’s cloud city, which they did make some great late 90s enhancements to by adding windows to the white walls so you can see the clouds. The best way to intake on this one would be a gas mask hooked up to a bong, preferably with blinking lights like the one Ramon, my buddy back in Austin, had. It has the advantage of smoke passing under your eyes while watching the mist-covered swamps of Dagobah. A perfect pairing of weed and celluloid, especially if one day Disney decides to release the extended Japanese cut.
