Matt the Radar Technician

About

Matt the Radar Technician is a character from the Saturday Night Live "Star Wars Undercover Boss: Starkiller Base." In a parody of reality television series Undercover Boss, Adam Driver plays the character Kylo Ren from the 2015 science fiction space opera film Star Wars: The Force Awakens going undercover at Starkiller Base to learn what his employees think of him.

Origin

On January 16th, 2016, Saturday Night Live^[1] aired a sketch parody of the television series Undercover Boss starring actor Adam Driver. In the sketch, Driver plays Kylo Ren from Star Wars: The Force Awakens dressed up as Matt the Radar Technician. During Ren's attempts to see what his employees think of Kylo Ren, he accidentally outs himself as the villain. Within two years of the video being uploaded to YouTube, the sketch (shown below) has been viewed more than 29 million times.

Spread

Action Figures

Shortly after the episode aired, fans began posting custom made action figures of the character. As early as January 19th, custom toy creator Jim Heston built and briefly sold a Matt the Radar Technician action figure on his Etsy story "Toy Addicts."^[2] That day, Imgur ^[3] user JasonWelcome posted a picture of the figure (shown below, left) and received more than 2,300 points and 198,000 views in two years. On January 22nd, Instagram ^[4] user @huedaws posted a custom Funko Pop action figure of Matt. The post (shown below, center) received more than 540 likes in two years.

The following month, Redditor ^[6] posted a picture of a Matt figurine in the /r/StarWars subreddit. The post (shown below, right) received more than 7,400 points (90% upvoted) and 200 comments before archiving.

Image Macros

Shortly after the episode aired, people using shots of the sketch for image macros. In February 2016, Imgflip^[15] user KatrinaRen posted an image macro of Matt with the caption "Hi, my name is Matt, I'm a radar technician / Tell that to Kanjiklub." The post (shown below, left) received more than 2,700 views. Later that year, Imgflip^[16] user DebRogers posted one that reads "Radar Technician Matt approves this message." The post (shown below, right) receied more than 1,000 views as of January 2018.

Fandom

Shortly after the character appeared on Saturday Night Live the Tumblr ^[7] account matt-the-radar-technician launched. The account has been posting since January 16th, 2016 and continues to update. The account generally posts gifs from the sketch as well as posts from the perspective of Matt.

Battlefront II Mod

On December 31st, 2017, Nexus Mods^[13] user GameTSF uploaded a Matt – Radar Technician mod for the game Star Wars: Battlefront II, allowing users to download and play as the character in the game.

That day, YouTuber^[7] DarthVaderModding uploaded a video of Matt the Radar Technician as a playable character in the game Star Wars: Battlefront II. The video (shown below, left) received more than 8,000 views in one week.

Several days later, the account uploaded an updated version of the mod (shown below, right).

On January 1st, 2018, the YouTube^[9] account Star Wars HQ uploaded another mod of Matt in Battlefront II. The video (shown below) received more than 100,000 views in less than five days.

Several media outlets covered the mod, including Kotaku, ^[10] PC Mag,^[11] Polygon^[12] and more.

On January 3rd, Twitter ^[14] published a Moments page about the mod.

Search Interest

External References