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

Tiny subtle thing I like - the Senate security staff is still wearing the blue of the old Senatorial Guards.

 

Spoiler

^ finishing episode 9

 

Episode 8 was I think better then 9, just for me personally. But the bit that really really hit me, was the ending, the last broadcast of the Ghorman radio to the world. It reminded me of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution, the way that just . . . no one listened. You can read, too, the transcripts of the rolling last broadcasts of station after station being destroyed or conquered as the USSR rolled in. It's all stuff like that.

 

I had to watch Secret Cargo after episode 9. Couldn't leave that Mon thread dangling.

Spoiler

The tension of Ghorman ... Wow. The media presence on Ghorman really did make it feel all too familiar, the protest and Imperial riot cops.... But the stormtroopers just standing there on the steps was so menacing.

The Senate plotline hits a bit harder in light of Reign of the Empire: The Mask of Fear. Knowing that Mon and Bail were both interrogated/tortured immediately after ROTS adds a whole layer of nastiness to their situations that might not be there for anyone that doesn't know that. The show has done so much to hammer home how aristocratic and opulent Mon Mothma's lifestyle is even under the Empire. She's not of the proletariat as Cassian is.

The Alliance really is a bourgeois revolution in so many ways.

Still, the leaders of the Alliance and New Republic were suspect from the start and subjected to torture, imprisonment and humiliation and attempted assassination very early in the Empire.

I couldn't help but feel so sad for Bix during her farewell. If she survives to see the Empire's fall she'll never find Cassian because he makes the ultimate sacrifice to strike the first mortal blow against the Empire. I hope, if she sees the end of the Empire that she knows Cassian gave his life to secure the Death Star plans.

That Force healer... To me there was something very moving about her entrance. It was like the faintest touch of the mythic part of Star Wars entering the narrative of the "mundane." It was very effective to me. To sort of say, the mythological and supernatural is close to taking center stage and it does so in Rogue One.

 

I’m trying hard to just be a Star Wars fan, and geek out about those masterful episodes in not only Star Wars but in every aspect of writing and television.

I’ll get into it the episodes themselves more later, after processing for a few days.

But I just can’t help but say what’s truly on my mind with these episodes. They hit differently. Something outside of Andor is completely intertwined with my experience of these episodes. My heart breaks because I know this has happened in other countries. In Putin’s Russia. In Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. In the Iran of both the Shah and then the current regime. In Assad’s Syria. In Afwerki’s Eritrea. In Kim’s Korea. In Mussolini’s Italy. In Franco’s Spain. In Hitler’s Germany. In the last several governments of China. In Pol Pot’s Cambodia. In Pinochet’s Chile. In Salazar’s Portugal. In the Saudi Family’s Arabia (yes, Saudi is just the name of the royal family, the House of Saud, they renamed the country after themselves and made it synonymous). In several regimes of Pakistan. In Indira Gandhi’s and Modi’s India. In Orban’s Hungary. In many recent regimes of Egypt. In Netanyahu’s Israel. And, in the country most on my mind, as a citizen here and now, due to its current status and trajectory, Trump’s United States of America.

It just hit home all the more as I rewatched Episodes 8-9 of Andor with my father just now, and in between episodes I checked my phone and saw Columbia University further submitted in cowardice to the anti-constitutional agenda by making a show of inviting the NYPD to storm in to end peaceful protesters in a library for raising awareness to their argument that what’s happening in Gaza is genocide, especially with Netanyahu recently announcing they’ll expand occupation to all of Gaza in the near-future, possibly selling it to Trump to develop luxury real estate, and the Trump administration’s overzealous defense of Netanyahu’s actions as well as using it to bend or just break the constitutional order of the country.

The United States has been here before or worse, during previous scares/panics, and had moral outrages like slavery at the very beginning, but we’ve walked back from the precipice and had some progress. I don’t know where we’ll be in a year or decade, we could walk back again, but I have just found even deeper empathy and understanding for people throughout the world and history in similar or worse situations. That baggage really carried into Andor with me, and then from Andor back out to my perspective in real life. I felt I could be watching breaking news in real life, it was too seamless. That’s how I feel right now.

It’s always a threat in every government, but it’s hitting differently today. That’s what make this message so powerful.

I don’t want to derail the thread, and I’m mentioning many present and past governments.

But, like Mon Mothma, I think it’s important to say what’s on my mind and to name names. I can’t talk about this episode without getting that out of my system, it’s colored the entire experience in the last 24 hours for me.

I’m sure some fans in Russia or Saudi Arabia or wherever watching Andor may be feeling the same way about their current government, and this theme continuing to at least some people in most countries.

Star Wars is powerful when it returns to its roots. Like how it’s important for everyone, even in fully-functioning democracies with protected rights, to:
always question their leaders, remind them of the social contract, and hold them accountable.

It’s every person’s duty to not:
get lazy, take it for granted, accept the messaging of others without question, justify a “little” decision of moral “discomfort” for some “reasonable/deserved/overdue/fair” personal gain, let temptations of blissful ignorance creep in, trust authority as good and be patriotic without question. Much later, the truth could be revealed to confirm the worst, but could be too late to change course and make a difference for a while. So it’s best to always question. This key theme of Star Wars is demonstrated excellently here.

Andor being a “messenger” is very meta. It’s not only the messages he delivered in these episodes.

He is a key messenger of the Death Star plans.

And he is the messenger of the show named “Andor” - to bring important themes and lessons to the audience, wisdom applicable beyond this show (or Star Wars, or television). This show turned out to be much bigger than just Andor the character. Andor the show was written and directed to be a messenger of these themes, and they just happened to select Star Wars as its vessel and Cassian Andor from Rogue One as its hook. This show, to put it simply, really has a lot to say.


Before I forget, we really need to praise whoever came up with the song and its language.

Spoiler

I’m honestly not sure. He could still be doing his own galactic-scale version of what Dera did, and what he did with the Clone Wars.

Palpatine could be happy to have some Senators expose their Rebel ties. Mothma openly choosing rebellion in a speech on very Senate floor could be another reason by Palpatine to justify the near-future of: abolishing the Senate, announcing the Death Star, increasing control as well as other security measures due to this new and manageable yet prominent threat, and hoping any rebel Senators who do escape will help flush out any remaining Jedi like Yoda and Kenobi.

I think you’re misunderstanding Syril, Mothma, and Bix.

I think many others are misunderstanding Syril in particular.

I’ll try to elaborate later, but things I noticed in the episodes gave me a very different take from what you wrote in this post on those 3 characters.

(Though I do very much agree with the rest.)

I am completely with you here. I have to mention this too.

Said above, and I’ll get into it later, but I have a completely different take than you on Syril.

Also:

Spoiler

I do think it’s important to not have Palpatine.

The shadow of his omnipresence is so deep and dark, that’s what makes him even more scary here. In this show, he’s elevated above them all like a dark god-king. Which he is, or is becoming, in the last years of Imperial reign.

Mothma feels like she’s declaring herself as Rebel #1. To show him, and depict her as his new equal, defeats the entire tone of the show and main saga as well as how this is a rebellion. He must seem to be above her, nearly untouchable. This power gap shows her sacrifice and courage, show what the war will be like. She’s taking a step down, to join the fight on the ground.


On the character of Wilmon, I’m somewhat with you, expectations and tropes were subverted slightly, but I also understand what they’re doing now. Although we do have 3 episodes to go.

 

Honestly if Mon was the one to break the “good tsar bad boyars” dynamic around Palpatine, that would be an enormous win.

 

The whole entire Ghorman protest made me think of the BLM protests and 2 specific events within that time period. The federal forces sent to Portland to snatch up protesters, and the attack on protesters in Lafayette Square so Trump could have a photo op.

The latter specifically has "lore" about General Milley refusing to kill those protesters. The mass murder of demonstrators is the ever present fantasy of the reactionary right wing, and there's the fear that Trump's regime is just looking for the slimmest excuse to do just that.

Andor is the anti-fascist art we need right now.

Addendum: You can also definitely imagine, when Mon is giving her speech about truth before the Senate, that there are hundreds of holos circulating the Holonet of the massacre of Ghorman by independent journalists and citizen journalists and random Ghor with holorecorders. We've seen the same, which pretty much the identical propagandist coverup in media and politics for a year and a half.

 

It’s very easy to peg this show to the political moment, but I think that does it disservice. Ghorman could be Hungary and East Germany under the Warsaw Pact, it could be Czechoslovakia in 1938, it could be Ethiopia under Italy, it could be Xinjiang or Tibet or Manchuria or Morocco and so on and so forth. It’s talking about something bigger than just this current issue or that.

 

That's absolutely true, and it's also insanely timely and not independent of the political moment in America. Just as the OT was much larger than it's contemporary politics, even as George continually invoked Nixon and Vietnam.

 

I wanna discuss Luthen

Spoiler

So I am convinced that Luthen didn't just know Bail's team was corrupted, he ensured it was. The ISB agent belonged to Lonni Jung, Luthen's pet ISB Supervisor. He could have ensured that Bail's team wasn't discovered, instead a ISB agent appears on the team. And Luthen doesn't want Mon to tell Bail that his team is untrustworthy? I think Luthen doesn't want her trusting anyone but him, he wants her to be his puppet.

I think this is gonna come out next block and Mon is going to order Cassian to kill Luthen.

 

Lonni, though, the MVP again. Luthen, eh, who cares. Luke Skywalker? Nobody. Admiral Ackbar? Poser. Lonni Jung is the hero of the rebellion.

 

I really want to know if we'll get the "origin story" of Luthen Rael and Kleya Marki in the last arc. I have a feeling we'll see Luthen's ship and its tricks again too.

To me, while it was never officially "announced," this was a show with 3 main characters: Cassian Andor, Mon Mothma, and Luthen Rael. While Luthen has had less screen time, he's been casting a shadow over the season, how often his agents and former agents bring him up and their growing discomfort. Yet we do see where Luthen is coming from too.

I really wonder what the fates or futures of Luthen, Kleya, Lonni, and Dedra will be. I think those need to be touched on. Probably Wilmon, Bix, and others too.

I could be wrong, but I at least won't be surprised if we see some things concurrent with Rogue One.

* Andor is missing for part of Rogue One, he's on Yavin but not at its big meeting. Could he have learned Bix is back, and have one last scene with her, before going on the mission to Scarif? Or a visit with Wilmon, or an exchange between Cassian and Mon, while Cassian is on Yavin for the last time? Diego Luna did say we'd see Rogue One in an entirely new way. Each arc is basically a 3-hour movie.

* I'm kind of expecting each of the last 3 episodes to have a time card, like a countdown

Episode 10: 1 year BBY

Episode II: 1 month BBY

Episode 12: 1 week BBY

It's why I tried to name several dictators and authoritarian regimes very specifically in my post too, I know this is a universal theme, I know this isn't just about the United States.

But as a U.S. citizen, I can't help but have certain emotions. This wasn't an intellectual argument of comparison. I was actually crying when I watched it because it reminds me so much of what's happening around me right now. And I'm sure it does for people in some other countries, or that other Star Wars has for other countries in the past, and I had 'intellectually' seen a link back in 2005 with political themes of that time. But this is the first time it just hit me at a deep, emotional level.

I also think there is some precision, some very intentional precision, use some language kind of "new" in the vernacular here, other language that is old but very particularly politically-charged lightning rod right now.even if to describe a timeless theme. I just feel very much like, while this is a timeless theme, the writers, actors, production design, even some "little things," were clearly choices made due to what's been happening in the United States. And if not, that might actually make it even stronger. It's hard to describe, but it felt like there were very timely and U.S.-specific "dog whistles" for lack of better description. While still being universal in theme.

I'm not lying when I said it seemed I was just watching breaking news, or a documentary taped within the last couple months. Even my dad, who's not really a Star Wars fan, and moderate, but I had him watch Episodes 8-9 with me... and he was physically shaking and curling up in his seat, and said he didn't think he'd be watching the news.

Definitely. There's also the evidence in the Prequels: Nute Gun-Ray (New Gingrich & Reagan), Anakin using a Bush quote in ROTS, Palpatine using post-9/11 language on the debate between national security vs civil liberties at the time, and more.

I saw it differently:

Spoiler

There was a plan for there to be an ISB agent on Bail Organa's time. Lonnie said one of his agents would be up for the job, and so was able to leak some of that info to Luthen.


I really do wonder how Bail Organa was able to get away with so much. We know he must resign soon, and Leia become the new Senator of Alderaan. I wonder if this is what does it?

 

I often see a refrain that Andor doesn't tell you who's bad and who's good, unlike those other "less mature" Star Wars shows and movies. I don't at all see it that way. Andor is very clear about who the bad guys are, it's just real about how messy a revolution actually is.

The thing that Andor does is bring the pov down to the mundane level. Almost every other Star Wars is telling the story from a mythological frame, including Solo. Andor takes us into the GFFA on our own everyday level of existence. You can imagine yourself as Luke Skywalker in a fantasy, but you can literally see yourself as Cassian.

There is very little difference between the safehouse and a real world apartment.

It works with Cyril as well. One could easily see oneself being him. Getting criticized by your mother while eating cereal. Going to a crummy desk job, imagining yourself with Great Purpose.

It's jarring, because this is not Star Wars as a kind of escapism. It's almost not even allegory at this point.

 

I know what you're going for here but I wish my apartment had been that big.

 

Fair point. I shudder to think of the rental prices on Coruscant

 

Maybe the Empire introduced rent controls? (for humans only of course) to get support.

here is a nice video about Mons speech.

Spoiler

 

Ok, getting into Syril and Dedra, and addressing what I think some people are misunderstanding about them:

Spoiler

Dedra hated the idea from the very beginning. In all of her conversations with her supervisor, she showed how much she didn't like it.

She knows it is wrong.

But the key is: she still did it.

Because she follows orders, as she was probably indoctrinated to do at this Imperial orphanage/boot-camp. And it will help her career rise, so can then better do what she wants to do.

She's also a coward. She has panic attacks and freezes in terror when she's physically in situations, as we saw even in season one.


Dedra did care about Syril, and Syril cared about her.

How did Syril get started in all this? He thought Andor had murdered two people. He really thought he was going after a murderer. When his supervisor wanted to let it go, he refused to, because he thought it was a murder case. Syril is a Boy Scout. But he didn't have information on what really happened, how could he have?

And because of his Boy Scout persistence and integrity, he stayed on this, it's not like he has anything else in his personal life. That put him on a path that he went on in Season 1. He really did think the Empire was trying to keep the peace, and that the rebels were overreactive terrorists.

Dedra put him in this position on Ghorman, and it's made clear many times that he was not to be told. I wouldn't say he was dumb... Syril still knew more than probably all other Imperials on the planet until Dedra arrived.

He really didn't think the Empire killed people, he wasn't a witness to any of its Season 1 atrocities. He's appalled at the civilians being killed, and he realizes the Ghorman Resistance were the good guys after all.

He HAS already turned, when he jumps into the plaza. He wants his fate to be the same as theirs. Him attacking Cassian has NOTHING to do with Empire/Rebellion. He seems Cassian as the cause that put him on this path, probably still thinks he's a murderer, and he just snaps. He has that "temporary insanity" mental breakdown. He thinks Cassian is why he was put on a path where he was made into a tool of genocide... and technically, that's correct.

Syril does recover his senses, at the very end. Realizing that Cassian doesn't even recognize him, that he was less than a footnote for him. But the words themselves... it's what he's been asking himself. It brings him back into sanity. I'm not as sure on this, but I don't think he was thinking "I'm inconsequential," I think he's thinking "we aren't mortal enemies, he doesn't know my story and I don't know his story, maybe he's like the Ghorman resistance too."

I really wonder what would have happened if he wasn't shot then, but I don't think he would have killed Andor. I'm not sure if they would have had a conversation or not, and there's still a massacre happening. I don't think Syril would have gone to Andor, that's for sure, but I think he would have either stayed on Ghorman to double-down and help those not killed, even if he's no longer welcome at the official resistance inner-circle (if they even reform). Or he would have tried to escape and get the truth out.

 

Yeah; Syril isn’t inherently a bad guy. There was a point, for most of S1, even, where he’s a perfectly fine guy. But he’s a follower, and followed it into being evil and atrocious and going into space hell. He reminds me a lot of Corran, actually. He likes order and regimen and authority, and trusted the empire to provide that. Corran liked order and regimen and authority and thought the Rebels could better provide that. Or, for that matter, Javert.

Like - have you ever seen Conspiracy? It’s a movie about the Wansee conference. S2E1 is clearly based on it. And the people at Wansee, they’re all lawyers and cops. That’s what Eichmann and Heydrich’s jobs were - they were in the Sipo, the political police. It was the Nazi police structure. And they’re all coldly discussing the necessary legal framework to do genocide. Because they’re fine with genocide. But not if it’s illegal.

 

I would say he is an anti-Corran or what Corran could have been if his dad had been killed by a rebel (or someone who joined them),Corran left the Empire cause it would not let him go after his dads killer, kinda like what happened with Syril. It is not a stretch to imagine a Corran who's dad got killed by someone who the Empire wasn't protecting/loosely allied with the Rebels and Corran doubling down on the Empire.

 

I don't think so. We've been told that the structure of this season is arcs taking place over a few days each, a year apart each. This last arc isn't 2 years before Yavin, it is just within the YEAR BBY 2. In the first arc of the season, events from the beginning of season 1 are described as happening "2 years ago", even though the show starts in BBY 5 and the second arc takes place in BBY 4. The only way this works is if season 1 covers almost all of the year BBY 5 (which Gilroy has said it covers about a year), and season 2 starts at the END of the year BBY 4. So the last arc took place at the END of year BBY 2, the final arc will take place at the END of year BBY1, and Yavin happens right at the beginning of the year (Year Zero or 1 ABY, whichever they are calling it).

 

That final broadcast at the end of the middle episode has made me cry twice now. I watched it again just to see if it was just the emotion of seeing it for the first time, and it got me again.

The sheer desperation in the voice of the actress. The fear. The plea for deliverance. The sense of the overwhelming power being brought to bear upon a defenceless people, and that it won’t end with this massacre, but only their complete destruction. Worse, we know no one is coming to help. The Death Star gets built. The Ghorman lose everything.

 

The Ghor are almost certainly completely wiped out l, except those off planet, and the planet itself mined to planetary collapse.

Jedha is blown in half.

Scarif itself is devastated.

Alderaan completely destroyed.

All before the Empire finally takes tide turning major losses.

 

On top of the Jedi, Force sensitives, Mandalore, Geonosis, Kamino, the Dizonites, the Lasan, Mon Cala, enslavement of the Wookiees.

In the end the Sith can’t wipe out everyone, and there’s only two of them. The people throw off their chains, and the Jedi return.

 

That's how I would read the situation as well.

Spoiler

I don't think Luthen would purposefully put someone on Organa's team. For one, that's way too risky when it comes to the survival of Mon Mothma. But more importantly, he couldn't possibly have planned this on such a short notice. Lonnie isn't available to him at all times, they need to meet up, and there was no time for it this time around. This was clearly Lonnie's doing.

And it's not the only time the show has done this in this season. Lonnie is also behind the killing of Dr. Ghorst. He gets the assignment to build up this new place for Dr. Ghorst together with a colleague, hands the lead straight over to said colleague, so he won't get the blame if things go bad, and then proceeds to deliver the necessary information to Luthen. Then Cassian and Bix can take out the leading ISB interrogator.

 

When did Anakin use a Bush quote?