Wicket and the Dandelion Warriors

To Save Deej

 

Writer: Bob Carrau

Medium: Television

Air Date: September 28, 1985

Timeline Placement: 1 ABY 

 

Deej Warrick is out fishing with his three sons, Wicket, Willy, and Weechee, as well as Wicket's friend Princess Kneesaa. Wicket spies a strange, elfin creature in the forest, a Gupin named Mring-Mring, and plays with his new friend while Deej hooks a terrifying monster fish. Willy, Weechee, and Kneesaa help him reel it in, with Wicket arriving last due to having a healthy social life. For some reason the others bitch at him for this, even though a grown man-wok should be able to reel in his own fish. 

 

Willy's fat ass sits on the fishing rod and breaks it, causing the other Ewoks to go flying backwards. Deej tumbles into a tree covered in giant saw blades that the Ewoks weirdly think is some kind of fungus. Cutting himself on the razor fungus makes Deej deathly ill, and the other hurriedly take him back to the village where he lies unconscious in bed, suffering from some unspecified and unseen malady. Logray, the village medicine man, says that he has seen a case like this only once before, and the cure requires three ingredients that the Warrick boys must venture out into the forest to obtain.

 

Low-IQ Willy drinks a vat of Logray's Fizzy Lifting Drink, but this seems incidental to his assignment to retrieve the tail feather of a lantern bird, because nobody mentions it. He himself comes up with the idea to float up to the bird's nest to look for the feather, where the giant bird returns and sits on him. Weechee goes to retrieve a frosch egg, only to end up stranded on a tree branch growing out of a waterfall. 

 

Wicket's job is to get a star-shaped urchin from the Dandelion Warriors, a fierce race of flower people who look like this:

 

Their canon name is actually the Fftssfft but five-year-olds can't pronounce that.

Instead, Wicket finds his friend Mring-Mring the Gupin, who has been captured by the Dandelion Warriors and used for target practice. Mring-Mring had felt bad about Wicket's father being injured and wanted to help by finding the star urchin. How did he know about that, again?

 

Wicket frees the Gupin and they work together to distract the weedmen until they get the ingredient they need. They're racing back to the Ewok village when they bump into Teebo, who was coming to find Wicket to tell him that his brothers hadn't returned yet, even though Wicket himself hadn't returned yet. 

 

Wicket, Teebo, and Mring-Mring rescue Wicket's brothers, but find themselves surrounded by hungry frosches. The Gupin urges the Ewoks to envision a large flying creature in their minds, which enables him to transform into such a beast and he bears them all home in time for Logray to brew the potion and save Deej. 

  

Wicket and the Dandelion Warriors: An Ewok Adventure

Author: Larry Weinberg

Illustrator: Deborah Colvin Borgo

Medium: Picture book

Publication Date: November 1985

Timeline Placement: 1 ABY

 

We return to Endor to find all our Ewok friends now bearing the art style of their animated TV show. Which is a shame, because while those designs are fine, the unique charm of the old designs was a big part of what made those books so memorable. Oh well, RIP.

Wicket and Princess Kneesaa are out gathering blumfruit berries with Wicket's dad, Deej, when Wicket is almost eaten by ants, somehow. Deej pulls him to safely, but in the process he falls backward and cuts himself on the fungus of a Rokna tree. The illustration shows his blood dripping from the tree and everything, it's gnarly, man. Deej gets dementia and starts aging at a hyper-advanced rate. Logray, the Ewok medicine man, declares that there's only one hope for him: a potion brewed from the tail feather of a giant lantern bird, the egg of a frosch, and a star-shaped needle from a Dandelion Warrior.

Wicket's asshole older brother, Weechee, blames Wicket for their father's illness, so Wicket wants to go collect all the ingredients to redeem himself. Logray says that Deej's only hope is for his three sons to work together. Wicket will get the needle, Weechee will get the egg, and their overweight, dim-witted brother Willy will get the feather, which he accomplishes easily after accidentally drinking some of Logray's Fizzy Lifting Drink and floating up to the lantern bird nest.

On his quest, Wicket finds a Gupin who has been captured by the Dandelion Warriors, a race of fierce flower people who fire their quills at the two of them as Wicket frees his new friend. Fortunately, one of the quills that almost impales them has a star shape on it, so Wicket's part of the quest is already completed.

But when he gets back to the village, he discovers that he now has to go rescue his stupid brothers. Kneesaa and Teebo accompany him to find Willy, who got stuck up in the bird's nest when the lantern bird returned and sat on him. Teebo is able to speak the language of the beasts to convince it to move. Meanwhile, Weechee has gotten his egg but was chased by the frosches over a waterfall and is stuck on a tree branch. Wicket saves him but despairs because there's no way to get back to the village in time to save Deej. So the Gupin transforms into a giant bird and flies all the Ewoks home. Logray brews the potion and Deej is saved.

Logray tells Deej that he has three great sons, to which Weechee replies that that may be true, but Wicket is the real hero of the day. That's nice and all but this guy still deserves to get his ass kicked, Wicket shouldn't even have had to redeem himself since he didn't do anything wrong in the first place. Except almost getting eaten by ants.

 

Okay kids' book but I'd just watch the episode. Which isn't called "Wicket and the Dandelion Warriors," it's called "To Save Deej," which is an objectively worse title because no one knows who Deej is.