Andor Ahsoka Mon Mothma

Huh? She’s risking her life and limb for the rebellion. She’s not “working herself up to commit tax fraud.” She’s been making illegal money transfers to people tied to the rebellion, and she’s working herself up to collaborating with a notorious criminal to HIDE those transfers. She’s already committed major sums of money to the rebellion and is trying to commit more, putting herself in serious jeopardy. You may need to go back and rewatch her scenes because it looks like you’ve missed a number of very important details.

Yeah. This is the first I’ve heard of a viewer being unsympathetic to Mothma.

 

Nah I saw the details, it just comes over as a bit less than committed especially given literally ever other rebel in the series is doing far more. Including Mon's own contacts.

She's so far been having family drama while others actually do the work of Rebellion. I dunno, the Mothma family hour just doesn't come over as having the same risk to life and limb as literally being the spymaster for the Rebellion or actually being in constant danger. Yes, she's dead if she's exposed- but at that point others have probably already died- but Mon's sacrifices kinda don't- and we know never will- add up to equal those of others.

 

This is literally the worst take I’ve ever seen. Mothma isn’t a soldier but that doesn’t mean she’ll be any less dead if the Empire catches her. She may not be a fighter but she’s an organizer, a planner, a fundraiser, a diplomat. These skills are incredibly important for a fledgling Rebellion. She’s putting the resources together to have a chance at overthrowing the Empire. Without her there is no Rebel Alliance.

 

But there literally is and it consists of people getting very irritated at her for refusing to accept the obvious. The cult of Mothma eventually destroys the Rebellion and the Republic. She herself just...is a parasite on the Rebellion who insists on running things into the ground the minute she has input on how things are run.

There's definitely a need for an organizer, a planner, a fundraiser, and a diplomat, but Mothma is or will be exactly the wrong person for all of those.

I mean, hell, in canon, it's hard not to feel Mothma would have been far more useful as a martyr than she ever was alive!

An organizer that consistently makes bad calls, a fundraider whose organization is perpetually broke, a planner who demonstrably cannot make useful plans to literally save her life, and a diplomat that alienated the most vocal revolutionaries repeatedly and failed to effectively coordinate, then couldn't even get her cronies to agree on fundamentals.

She ran the Rebellion like a prequels Senate committee: which is to say, poorly- and with her explicitly throwing her weight around at times so it wasn't even any act of principle.

Hell, Leia is going to eventually be Mothma But Actually Competent And Not Mismanaging Things And Being Bad At Threat Assessment so...?

 

Which is exactly what all the other Rebel cells lack. Which is why they're all fighting each other and not the Empire.

So far Mon is acting very much like the 'classic' politician that she's always been. Cautious. Leading from behind society. Acting last. And I suspect that begins to change when she abandons her 'mask' completely and unites* the alliances.

 

Unties may be a typo but...is kinda what happens when she finally "helps" out so...

Also the rebels aren't fighting each other, they're at worst disconnected but if anything MORE effective.

 

Yeah, someone’s clearly trolling so I’m just gonna go ahead and move on from this asinine argument.

 

How are they more effective when the Empire is currently growing, getting worse, becoming more aggressively evil? Is that how you define 'effective'?

And the rebels are fighting each other. There's more than just one definition of that word. They're feuding with each other. Refusing to work together to take down the Empire, because of minor gripes, and working alone isn't getting them anywhere. And as we've learned (if you were paying attention) is actually the Empire's strategy. To be so oppressive and galactically dominating, that each of these cells spends its time chasing each act of oppression, while the Big Bad Empire is already on the next, without care.

Not sure what your gripe about Mon is though. Seems misplaced and excessive. Especially when her story isn't even done yet.

 

I'm completely serious about finding Disney Mothma kind of awful.

1. In new canon, she's basically been handed the idiot ball from day 1. Aftermath, Rebels and now Andor have her basically make situations worse by being the person the others have to deal with/whose choices that day just messed things up. Rebels in particular adds insult to injury by having her be a roadblock to the very heroes that saved her, with her throwing Lothal under the bus several times over for very dodgy reasoning.

2. The Empire growing worse isn't really on the proto-rebellion.

3. Minor gripes like "they'll get you killed" and "human cultists and Seps"...

Coordination is good, pragmatism is better and so is actively pushing groups like the Seps or "human cultists" under the bus. The issue isn't the idea of coordination, it's that Disney Mothma has consistently been written as a walking disaster for everything she touches.

 

@Proteus, sorry, but you are injecting so much of your own headcanon into what Mothma’s effect is, and how the early rebellion compares to her, that it comes across as…I don’t know. Really odd.

 

One of the things I really enjoy about this show is how almost every character is written to show how they are trapped - in roles, in prisons, in institutions, in fear. It's a well-writtem commentary on oppressive and self-indulgent regimes. Some brilliantly written scenes and dialogue and acting get this across so well in my view.

Mon is trapped as she knows she is ineffective in the Senate, but cannot openly rebel in order to achieve what she can - providing long-term funding for a Rebellion and act as a figurehead for such a Rebellion. Her secretive efforts reveal further traps awaiting her, such as marrying off her daughter and becoming indebted to a criminal. She's really having to think her way out of the box! I'd like, and trust, that kind of person to head up a rebellion.

On the other hand, I thought it was obvious in Saw's and Luthen's scene that they are almost competing against one another in the "open warfare" front and are so paranoid about revealing success because they don't trust one another. They are trapped in their ways too. Divided and ruled. They can't even sell arms to each other as a result.

The show presents how different characters seek their "freedom" but no-one has yet "unified" on a large scale (until we have the prison revolt).

Outside the prison, we still have Ferrix, but Mon's gonna play a big part in a unification across worlds, both "behind the scenes" and as a figurehead in which rebels can trust. Luthen's role as an agent is clear and wonderful, but he is one who could easily leave you to be sacrificed or a martyr to the cause. At some point, you need to live in less paranoid times but Luthen is trapped. His speech is not just about his past sacrifices but his future.

Mon is perfect for leader of the rebellion and we haven't seen all of her personal struggle yet. She is fighting for freedom of others - including her rather ungrateful and self-indulgent family - at a huge cost. Even if she "wins" she has chosen to live all these years in fear in order to try and break the means which give rise to fear. Truly courageous stuff and different from how others reveal their courage (like Nemik, Luthen, Kino, the Imperial officers who defect, etc).

Yet, all are similar in that they are like Raddus..."I say we fight!"

 

I mean we can look at specifics if you'd like.

Aftermath, where- poor writing aside- we see the NR is a complete shambles and how it's doomed to roll over in a stiff breeze. Mon Mothma was clearly asleep at the wheel.
Rebels, where Mothma gets in an argument with an "extremist" and can't make a good point to save her life, and basically throws an entire planet under the bus for rather dubious reasoning, and has the nerve to cite her own planet as a justification.
Andor, where Luthen has to yell at her to get her head in the game.
the ANH short story from the collection where she basically comes over as a feckless coward blithely dismissing the cause she's supposed to lead and planning to surrender to the Emperor rather than keep trying to do something about the Death Star

Like, once is a bad story, but every story with her is a pattern and not a pretty one.

 

Also not sure what was meant to be done about the instant-win button that was Starkiller Base. Not a fan of it as a story decision, but I don't know what Mon Mothma was supposed to do to prevent it. Not to mention Exegol.

 

Thing is by the time Starkiller exists and has fired, it's already over.

They put all their eggs in one basket, ie: the fleet after intentionally hamstringing themselves and burning their legitimacy outside their rump state by basically letting things go to hell.
Their system of government didn't survive the loss of Hosnian Prime- implying a lack of wider buy-in or local leadership..which was supposed to be the whole point of their decentralized system.
The FO had sympathizers because the Disney NR never rooted them out properly, which promptly start running the show.\
And to top it all off, they let the FO have huge swathes of the galaxy as FO territory in all but name once the war went hot.

And then they ignored all the warning signs and fired the people that tried to take action.

Exegol is ridiculous but more of an afterthought- though Legends NR handled its equivalent with far more grace.

tbh, to get the same outcome- best to have Mothma try and do everything right...but be overruled, and reluctantly accept that. Have her share Leia's narrative role of "Cassandra forced into the wilderness". But having Mothma be to blame and then giving her the job of That Politician That Makes Bad Decisions...just is baffling if the idea ISN'T to make her deadweight.

I mean, Saw is spot on about roasting her as having more passion for attacking him than the Empire, and that's...not really a good thing for her character if we're supposed to like her?

 

All of the resources and assets the rebellion has prior to the Aldhani heist seem to be due to Mothma’s financing.

 

1. Which rebellion?
2. Kinda meaningless when her scenes are mostly her complaining that the rebels are rebelling. She's supposed to be the fiery heart and soul of the revolution, not a very reluctant credit account.

 

1. The entire network of rebel cells that exist during this time period (based on Anton Kreegyr’s, Saw’s and Vel’s groups alone, that’s nearing 100 active fighters), and that isn’t counting some of the other cells we know about from other material, including Rebels.

2. While she’s working INSIDE the Senate, she can’t be an open, aggressive, fiery soul of the revolution because she’d be in jail the next day. Her job right now is to channel as much funding as possible to the rebellion without getting discovered and/ or jeopardizing the lives of her family. She’s in a far more complicated position as someone like Saw, but just as (if not more) important, given the absolute necessity of financing.

I suppose I’m just finding your view on this really simplistic and almost cartoonish. Revolutions in the real world, in order to be fully successful, always require a broad cross-section of participants, ranging from political insiders to firebrands in the hills. Mothma is the political insider part of that, and an indispensable one. And that indispensability is something I’m certain we’ll see much more of as the show proceeds.

 

It is the year 2022, when you can look directly at a fact and say nope, that fact is not that fact but a completely different fact, and perhaps even the opposite of that fact. And be considered a normal part of society.

 

Mon Montha fighting in armor with a blaster on Hoth's frontlines or she's done nothing for the rebellion!!!

 

I personally demand that she single-handedly destroy the Death Star with one of those huge Final Fantasy swords. Otherwise, she’s useless.

 

I believe Mon Mothma points out that pew pew and splosions militancy has caused problems for the Rebellion. It's a fine line she treads bringing all these different people together, getting them to trust one another.

 

“Lots of ‘splosions ‘sploded to bring us this information.”

 

You guys are arguing with someone who thinks the most moral outcome of the Rebellion would be a mass bloodletting. Maybe it is just different opinions on what makes for a heroic and successful character?