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

If the Empire only suspects her of being an annoying do-gooder, why devote resources to spy on her?

 

The Continental Army used asymmetrical warfare against the British Army. They were significantly weaker than the British. The goal of kicking them out was as seemingly unachievable as overthrowing the Empire might seem to early Rebels.

When people believe in their cause, the seeming overwhelming might of their opposition doesn't necessarily suppress their belief in their cause and the inevitability of its victory.

 

Well the equivalent of the American colonies winning independence would probably be the Outer Rim territories kicking out the Empire. That might have been a potentially realistic goal. Claiming that you intend to restore the Republic however, requires marching on the Core Worlds and taking Coruscant. The Rebels did eventually do just that, but during the early days of the Rebellion that was almost certainly out of the question.

 

Course, over in Chinese history, you had small bands of peasants out in the sticks proclaiming their desire to overthrow the ruling dynasty surprisingly often. Sometimes, they even won, and even some of the failures got real close before the end.

 

This new episode of Andor is glorious again!

And only now hearing it spoken out loud many times do I realize that Chandrila sounds like Shangri-La!

 

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Andy Serkis' appearance surprised me.

But then Melshi of all people!

Hi Saw! Is Jyn around? (Lol if she turns up briefly).

We're getting interesting now, aren't we?

 

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Does anybody know if Melshi is played by the same actor in R1?

 

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The credits mention Duncan Pow, so yes, it is the same actor. Honestly, I didn't even realize he was someone we've seen before while I was watching the episode.

 

If the web Andor is spinning is contracting further and further with every episode, the series finale will be glorious. It's coming all together now already! But lots of surprises still await.

What trailer and tv spot shots have not yet appeared in the released episodes?

 

Really smart episode.

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Clever use of contrasts between the politics on Coruscant, in the prison and on Ferrix. We get some more info on various characters, along with what is going on.

The Empire cloaking its nefarious plans in more respectable guise was clever. PORD sounds so uninteresting, then you find it stands for Public Order Resetencing Decree.

The whole line sequence that shows the scale of the single prison Cassian is in was well executed. And there's an entire planet with numerous prisons replicated on it. Along with the vicious design it made for quite the Imperial portrait.

 

Amazing stuff as usual.

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-Loved the bit with Saw listing the rebel groups and their various differences.
-Though he seems to list the Partisan Front as different from his group, I though they were the Partisans
-Luthen has a point of needing all the help they can get, but it is ironic if not hypocritical given how he keeps secrets on his allies and even discards them when no longer needed.
-Good to see that Bix's falling out with Cassian doesn't stop her from caring about Marva
-Here I was expecting Deedra to see Syril as a kindred spirit. He has got a nasty charisma penalty, doesn't he?
-That is one nightmarish prison. I especially appreciate how its operating system turns the prisoners against each other to an extent, though some of the prisoners are finding ways around that.
-Going to be interesting to see how Cassian escapes, or better yet brings it down.
-I wonder if we will get to see the operation Luthen is planning with Saw, and if it will intersect with the prison arc somehow.
-Also should be fun seeing Cinta fit into the chaos that is sure to erupt on Ferrix.

 

It’s also a ridiculous way to govern and rule. What was lost on Aldhani is negligible. Contain news of the theft, beef up security, punish all the personnel that let the theft happen and then move on.

Vicious and punitive overreach like this achieves nothing except fostering fear and pushing people into the arms of the Rebellion.

I wonder just how much of this absurd policy comes straight from Palpatine’s advisors. Then again, I suppose we’re talking about a galactic government that sunk quadrillions of credits into a planet-killing battlestation. So any concept of rational and reasonable policy is beyond them.

 

Is this the first, chronological appearance of

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X-Wings?

 

“I’m listening...”

What a vibe.

 

I mean this isn't even that out their for our world, if you can't hit who you want hit someone you can to 'scare' others.

Fear is how the Empire thinks, everything it does is about generating fear.

 

People die in US prisons for stealing backpacks without haver ever being charged.
Most of those policies wouldn't bat an eye for a lot of people

 

Was very excited to hear Belsavis mentioned. Did not expect to see Children of the Jedi referenced. It was mentioned in the TV discussion that it's also a locale in The Old Republic game, but never played that one. I'll admit COTJ was not my favourite of the Bantam era (actually I think it started a pretty big decline in Star Wars hard cover quality, though Crystal Star came first, I think) but I did think Belsavis was neat planet. I will take these type of easter eggs over a big name character making an appearance any day. Thankfully Andor was also masterful with the latter this time around as well.

 

Obi-Wan Kenobi actually referenced Children of the Jedi as well, since Roganda Ismaren, Nichos Marr, and Djinn Altis were some of the names carved on the wall of a safehouse on Mapuzo.

 

Another thought on Saw's political rant:

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Saw lists separatists, sectorists, and Galaxy partitionists separately, which makes me wonder what the actual difference is between them. Just disagreements on how exactly the galaxy should be divided?

And it is interesting that Saw seems to have gone from a monarchist to an anarchist if I understand the implications of Luthen's comment correctly.

 

Wow, what an episode. I thought last week's was a little disappointing (too all over the place, seemed to be killing time in places), but man, this delivered.

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It's so good to see a portrayal of the Empire that is more than just vague Nazi tropes and British accents and filmic villain shorthand. The prison stuff was absolutely chilling and terrifying in a way that few things in Star Wars ever have been: because it's not just style, but style in the service of specificity and because it always maintains a human, personal perspective on everything. We discover the prison as Cassian discovers it, and we see its effects on him and on other characters. I feel like most other Star Wars projects would just insert one giant gods-eye-view shot of tens of millions of CGI people working at a prison factory--here, though, we see everything on a human scale, in great detail, in different characters, and build out from there, and it's so much more effective. It's not a special effect--it's someone's life.

This show is honestly making the Empire seem way more like a threat and absolute evil and an overpowering, dominating force on the verge of total dystopian victory than ever before--by not just portraying it as a bland symbol of absolute evil. Which I think in the long run actually makes the OT's storyline even stronger.

Also, this portrayal of the Empire is obviously way more relevant to contemporary political and social stuff (Amazon warehouses! high-tech labor monitoring! prison labor! security state!) than the Empire has been in quite a while, without there being any clumsy real-world inserts. Which, again, was very much GL's original intention back in the '70s, just rendered in a different mode than GL ever did.

I also very much appreciate this show's respect for its audience: the episode keeps cutting back and forth between Andor in prison and Mothma at the reception, but at no point does anyone go "Mothma's political high-society life is a prison too!"

The stuff with Luthen was also good, and the talk between him and Saw was something we've needed to see for quite some time: namely, an interaction making clear just how impossible the basic idea of the Rebel Alliance is. The show has a very clear vision of the Empire as fundamentally a military-industrial-imperialist-security system growing exponentially and aiming at totalitarian Galactic omnipotence, and it makes sense that that would provoke responses, but it also stands to reason that those responses would all come from very different places and ideologies all over the Galaxy and be very hard to weld together. Rebellions work best where a single relatively homogenous population are being oppressed together--the Empire, though, is not only Galactic, but by its very nature seems to atomize and divide. This is the thematic connection between the prison being run on a competitive, individualized basis and Luthen's struggles to get different rebel groups to work together, and it's brilliantly done.

It also is both logical and a great character beat that "what Luthen is" as the guy trying to build a network among all the different anti-Imperial groups is primarily just a coward--someone who can see the Empire's coming total victory and is more scared of that than of any other scenario.

Of course, we're all waiting for what is supposed to eventually happen in Canon and the EU alike, and Mon Mothma stepping forward to provide a more positive idealistic vision of the Rebellion capable of uniting different groups. That looks very hard at the moment, but I suppose we've seen sparks that it's possible. And when it does happen, at the very least, it will make the Rebellion seem like a much bigger and more momentous accomplishment, and not just a fait accompli.

 

Amazon has probably taken ideas from this episode!

 

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Partisans, Partisan Front.



I could see the Partisans and Partisan Front being off shoots of one another due to infighting. Not at all uncommon.

So, is Saw a political anarchist or was that just hyperbole by Luthen?

The Imperial prison is both very fitting for the Empire aesthetically, while also seeming sort of like the generic sci-fi of the pre-Star Wars yesteryear.