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Marco Polo is Netflix’s new sprawling historical adventure series. Click here for all of Decider’s coverage and here for a handy guide to who’s who in Marco Polo’s world.

It is night in the city. Hundred Eyes (Tom Wu) senses a disturbance in the Force. Or he just hears something weird. Out of nowhere, a band of stealth assassins climb the walls of the palace, kill the guards, and attack Kublai Khan (Benedict Wong) with a dart. Marco (Lorenzo Richelmy) does his best to fight off the assassins. Luckly, Byamba (Uli Latukefu), the Khan’s bastard, and Hundred Eyes rush in and help out. It’s a pretty cool fight scene.

Finally, there is only one assassin left. Marco tells Byamba not to kill him because they can interrogate him. So, Byamba just chops off his hand. It’s a victory, but also a defeat because they do not know if Kublai Khan is still alive…

Empress Chabi (Joan Chen) sits by the Khan’s bed, while Prince Jingim (Remy Hii) calls the war council. Everyone’s arguing about how to handle this egregious assault on Kublai Khan. Then, Hundred Eyes tells them that the assassins must have been trained by “the old man in the mountain.” They must be “Hashshashin.” Everyone gasps because the Hashshashin are all dead. The Hasshashin are phantoms. The Hashshashin are long-lost Jedi Knights or something.

Then, Hundred Eyes points out they were just trained by Hashshashin and they should send an exploratory mission out to find out who hired these impostor Hashshashin to kill the Khan. Marco Polo crashes the war council and says that he heard a rumor about a story about Hashshashin-trained assassins offering to kill people for money. So, he and Byamba are sent to find stuff out.

Hundred Eyes gives Marco a pep talk that includes words like dark and light, water and vessel. This whole episode is very Star Wars without the spaceships or lightsabers or handsome X-Wing pilots named Poe Dameron. The Blue Princess, Kokachin (Zhu Zhu), meets Marco in secret to give a very different piece of advice. She tells him to run.

Back in the Walled City of Xiangyang, the baby Emperor plays with toys and Chancellor Jia Sidao (Chin Han) plays the court. He uses the ambassadors that he had murdered to convince the court to give him the Emperor’s army. And now, between the useless Dowager Empress and her scheming Chancellor, we are in full on Phantom Menace territory.

In bromance news, Ahmad (Mahesh Jadu) suggests to Jingim that Marco might betray them, and Byamba and Marco develop a friendship on the road. They talk about their moms and dads. Byamba tells Marco that “Fathers are destined to disappoint their sons, and sons their fathers.”

Mei Lin (Olivia Cheng) is screwed. The Mongolian court will be looking for spies, and she still is sending messages to her brother. She’s told that she should return to China, but Mei Lin knows that if she returns before Jia Sidao sends for her that her daughter will die. Mei Lin presumably doesn’t know that Jia Sidao has already bound her daughter’s feet.

Yusuf tortures the last living assassin and Prince Jingim has a little talk with Daddy Polo. It’s weird. Jingim finds out that Marco’s dad cares more about his own fame and fortune than about Marco. Jingim freaks out and takes Daddy Polo to task. You get the feeling that he’s working out a lot of his own issues on Marco’s dad.

Marco and Byamba arrive in an inn. Marco goes incognito by wearing a dumb hat, but he eventually takes the hat off. It turns out that the guy who owns the inn has the hook up to the “gatekeeper of paradise,” or, you know, the dude who knows which dude sent the dudes to kill Kublai Khan. There are threats and insults, but of course, Marco works it out.

Prince Jingim is upset that Jia Sidao ruined his precious peace treaty. So, Ahmad manipulates him into taking control and preparing for war. Something tells me that Ahmad might not be the bro Jingim thinks he is…

Marco, Byamba, and their innkeeper friend ride out into the middle of nowhere and smoke some drugs. The Hashshashin show up and Marco starts seeing weird stuff.

When Marco comes to, he sees an old dude who speaks in riddles. Marco asks the old man who sent the assassins after the Khan. Like every person on this show, the old man is inexplicably impressed with Marco. He gives our young Italian hero a note that reveals that the assassins were hired by someone in Kublai Khan’s court. The handwriting is the same as the tax collector Marco followed around.

Yusuf and Ahmad argue about whether or not they should go to war, Jia Sidao plots and sleeps with Mei Lin’s friend, and Byamba tells Marco that he should run. Oh, and Jingim has a Prince Hal moment and decides to try sitting on his father’s throne before he’s dead. So, naturally, Kublai Khan makes a recovery.

Marco decides to return with Byamba, and the two new bros break it to Kublai Khan that there is a traitor in his midst. They all agree to keep this news a secret and Marco has been tasked with confirming who the traitor is. However, all this doesn’t spare Marco from having to choose his uncle and father’s fates. Marco decides that they will be spared, but branded as thieves. This mark will make it much harder, if not impossible, for them to continue to trade along the Silk Road. For the two merchants, it might be worse than a death sentence. [Watch “Hashshashin“]

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[Photos & Gifs: Netflix]