A/V Just Announced 7 Years Ago: Andor!! It happened!!!

And how do you think that's going to work out? For those that get stomped on? Luthen's problem is he wants that kind of collateral damage and will commission activity to increase it. He's clearly going for ends justifying the means but won't be the one paying for the consequences that result.

Which is likely the trigger for later Rebel activity being far more covert, so as to reduce the ability of the Empire to respond. Of course, all of this is leading to the Death Star....

 

Very badly. But at least a small percentage of those will become active rebels and that was Luthen's plan.

Phoenix Squadron's actions and Mothma's eventual declaration of the Alliance were far from covert.

 

But neither likely had a nice, clear target for the Empire to hit back to.

One of the strengths of the series is it engages in the right kind of moral complexity without invoking relativity much. Luthen's diagnosis might be accurate but does it follow his prescription is? Mothma's planning things more slowly. The Empire is opportunist in its expansion but is far from the united front it wishes to present. Cassian doesn't want in but is going to be forced to be because the Empire doesn't know where to stop.

We're more used to "back this side, don't like that side" but this is sharply departing from that. I also like how it is delving into how a good few rebels were ex-Imperial.

 

Nice, clear target for the Empire to hit back to? The Empire is sending beach patrols to prison for 6 years for looking over their shoulder too much, because they don't have any way to identify and punish the Aldhani thieves. The Empire's expanded brutality in this episode is BECAUSE they don't have a nice, clear target to hit back to.

 

Depends how you look at it. The Aldhani permitted the theft, thus all are guilty. Everything is a target if you look at it from the properly imperial viewpoint.

The rebel viewpoint? Too many people got hurt by it, thus they need to be more careful. Doesn't matter that the Imperial response would likely be the same no matter how careful they were.

You can say that if there hadn't been the trigger of the Aldhani robbery, then something else would have been found or invented, but there does seem genuine surprise at it happening in the ISB.

 

I don't disagree, I just don't understand the distinction you are making to future Rebel activity under Mothma.

 

I think the difference is the tolerance of collateral damage versus a desire for it. Luthen clearly wants that, he sees it as beneficial and crafts activity to that end. In contrast, I think Mothma knows she cannot do this without getting hurt or killed but wishes to minimise it.

That's the best I can probably put it.

Of course, the Empire's gonna be the Empire and crack down, with or without cause.

 

The way I read into that scene isn't that Luthen is willing to accept collateral damage and Mon Mothma isn't, but rather that Luthen is ready to escalate the conflict to the next level and Mon Mothma doesn't seem to be ready to go there yet.

 

And now we have seen it all.

 

Frankly, if anything Mothma's methods seem more overt - having a fleet and base for the Empire to hunt for rather than spending its energy rounding up civilians.

I mean, not that the empire doesn't go from brutal retaliation on civilian populations anyway but the connection does feel less direct.

Actually, thinking about it more, the Rebel Alliance is an interesting grey area between conventional warfare and guerilla warfare. The Alliance has armies and fleets and uniforms and such, but they don't try to take and hold territory, relying on hit and run raids. Yet, unlikely more guerilla groups they try to avoid hiding in civilian populations, and instead prefer hanging out on uninhabited planets. There isn't really any direct historical parallels, but it still works given the sheer scale and established technologies of the galaxy.

 

I think one of the cool things that we've been seeing in the new EU is the development of multiple, somewhat disparate rebellion groups that occasionally, but don't always, work together. This is way more realistic than a proto-Alliance that existed by the end of ROTS and carried on consistently through ANH. Even Andor's Mothma isn't sure what type of Rebellion she wants yet.

 

Isn't that what happened in Legends as well, with the Corellian Treaty?

 

I wouldn't say they're comparable. Despite his grumbling, Garm's views mostly fell in line with Mothma, and the background to that treaty was never really fleshed out. With Andor and all the Saw Gerrera stories we've been getting, we're seeing a lot more different kinds of folks dissenting against the Empire. Garm never came close to Gerrera. And so far unless I'm missing a story, we've never seen the Disneyverse Rebellion formally unify different organizations. Rebels came close, but even then the Partisans didn't want to play along.

 

Both Legends and Canon does have many smaller uprisings the Empire puts down that seem to be unconnected to the Rebel Alliance, particularly planetary governments and internal coups, but the Partisans do feel unique in that they share a lot with the Rebellion, especially goals (I think...do the Partisans actually want the republic back? Have they thought that far ahead?) but have very different methods.

Course, there was the Justice Action Network, though they didn't appear very much I believe.

 

There are plenty of other names out there that would work though..

 

I mean, IIRC "Rebel Alliance" never becomes an actual official alternate name for "The Alliance to Restore the Republic." So it's not like there's a clear distinction between lower-case rebels and Rebels to begin with.

 

When did we start calling it "The Alliance to Restore the Republic" out-of-universe? Also it does seem a bit odd for the Rebels to call for completely overthrowing the Empire when they're so far from having the military strength to make this happen, as opposed to just being a generalized resistance/insurgency group.

 

Proportional military weakness has never stopped revolutionaries from calling for the overthrow of governments and empires in Earth's history. Hell, they've succeeded a few times.

 

The impression I got was that she was helping people like Senator Singh from the Bad Batch - people who joined the Separatists for ideological reasons rather than opportunistic ones and were under pressure from the empire, though that is just an impression.

 

I guess, but I can't imagine it's great for the troops' morale if you're raising expectations and promising things that are wildly in excess of what you can achieve. It'd be like if George Washington promised to invade and conquer Britain during the American Revolution.

 

Indeed.

In particular Singh was given the option of cooperating - and while he refused, perhaps other CIS senators accepted similar offers. Or even former Separatist worlds had their governments replaced, but the new governments are still held up suspicion (like how Seranno is treated in Agent of the Empire.)

Might not even be anything especially brutal, just so much as constantly sidelined, ignored, and put at the bottom of every waiting list while being the first to be squeezed for taxes and tribute so and etc, and Mon Mothma's group is about helping their issues be heard. Something enough to make her an irritant to the empire without coming off as outright treasonous since officially the empire is all about welcoming everyone back (at least I remember there being a line about that in the Bad Batch)