Andor Ahsoka Mon Mothma

Mon Mothma was badass. She manipulated both her husband and the ISB at the same time, and she showed how subtle and clever she could be. Honestly, I had sympathy for her daughter, since she's a kid and she can change. But her husband was a dick, and he needed to shoulder the blame for messing with her money. She was spending it on important stuff for the galaxy.

 

I don't think he messed with her money at all. It looked to me like Mon was throwing him under the speeder bus so she'd have a scapegoat when the Imperial Revenue Service notices financial discrepancies in her tax returns and moves in for an audit.

 

I know. But he also seems like the type of bum who would steal his wife's hard-earned accounts or other finances just to spend it on a pointless vacation or something. I'm sorry to say that, but some of the dudes in this show were inspiring. And he was not one of them.

 

I too really hope for this as a sub-story / side-story to the overall story in Season 2. I hope that Leida comes to recognise her mother for the amazing woman that she is and be in awe of the lengths that Mon goes to protect the humanity of the galaxy - I used this term "humanity" to describe it in the sense of both the human-like characters and the alien characters too because I couldn't think of another word that describes this kind of trait.

All season long, we see Leida's "lack of life experience" frustrations directed towards her mother because at her young age, she cannot contemplate much broader ideals and happenings. But hopefully something happens to Leida that changes her perspective and outlook significantly and she finally sees the sacrifices her mother makes in trying to prevent the kind of event that happens to her.

Basically she has an awakening and finally sees through the Imperial propaganda and how her mother is fighting back. And it would be a significant emotional payoff for the audience to see the pride and tears in Leida's eyes and a reward of some kind towards a character that deserves recognition by someone close to her; who is not part of the Rebel Alliance. A tearful embrace and "sorry" between mother and daughter would be a very beautiful moment indeed.

In a way, a "sort of" way, I was hoping for an "awakening" in a character where they come to recognise the errors of their ways and have a really deep and meaningful conversation and acknowledge this and their issues and their errors of thinking. Maybe a much better director in Tony Gilroy can achieve this with Leida and Mon.

 

This has probably already been covered, but I was thinking about Mon's scene with Vel in episode 11, which a few people felt was repetitive and unnecessary because it was just Mon talking about her money problems, which we already understood.

But I think what was key about it was what Vel says at the end - she echoes Cinta's line that "the Rebellion comes first. We take what's left". This is the moment that convinces Mon to introduce Leida to Sculdun's son - this is the moment she's all in for the Rebellion. She needed to hear that Vel was holding nothing back in order to take the dreadful step of sacrificing her daughter's future.

The irony, of course, is that even though Vel says that, she doesn't fully believe it. Cinta and Luthen do, but Vel struggles with it.

 

Also it's going to be all for nothing. Eventually Mon will be outed as a rebel so marrying off her daughter and throwing her husband under the bus to cover up her money issues won't stop the Empire from knowing she's a rebel. That said, her daughter might be better off with her new family instead of having to live on the run with Mon. And as for Perrin, well, he sucks so maybe it's not such a bad thing that he's being set up as the fall guy.

Speaking of which when Mon accuses Perrin of gambling she is visibly upset but obviously she's not upset that he's gambling because we all know that's a lie. What I think is cool is that Mon is taking all of her anger and frustration about her financial bind and using it as a way to appear being angry at her husband. Her emotions in that scene are real even if the reason she states for being upset is false.

I have a feeling that if Perrin does take the fall for Mon's money laundering we'll learn along the way just how terrible Perrin is so the audience doesn't feel too bad for him when the Empire goes after him. In fact we might even cheer a little bit when he goes down.

 

If you wish, you could use the word sapientkind. I invented it is for my novel series and it applicable to what you mean. Oftentimes, we refer to nonhuman beings (who can both speak and think on human levels) as fellow sentient beings, but the proper term is sapient.

I hope she does, as well. And I agree with what Regular Mustache said. I'm not in the betting business, but I'd bet good money that what he laid out will be what transpires.

 

I actually think Gilroy will go the other way and give us a reason to also empathize with Perrin a bit. Feels to me that he’ll learn towards nuance and complication there, not fist-pumping. And while we’ll be definitely be on Mon’s side, what she does to Perrin won’t be pretty. And we’ll hesitate to cheer.

 

You may be right. That would be interesting, as well.

 

Older scifi is the reason and so far Star Wars canon too has referred to "sentients" when they actually mean sapients. But you are right, it's bit controversial what sentience and sapience actually are, and where do their borders go. I think it's obvious that apes, dogs and pigs etc. are sentient animals just as are cows, chicken, snakes and fish too etc. most vertebrates and certainly cephalopods too, insects or slugs are a bit questionable though, as are many worms etc, even plants of fungi could be sentient on some level, but human is surely both sentient and sapient.

Some do question entire concept of sapience though, since it's hard to say is ability to speak or have language bit unfair requirement and how to prove one can think on human level without language? And on how advanced thinking needs to be to qualify as "sapiency"? Even octopus can think on level of human child. Sapience could mean existence of language, understanding signs and having some sort of culture and social interaction on level of complicated societal structures. Metacognition could also be requirement. It is surprisingly hard to say what makes one sapient though. Some animals we consider sentient, but not sapient have complex social interactions(even ants and bees), they understand signs (dogs, apes) and some have sort of language even (like dolphins and many birds). Crows and pigs can also recognize themselves from mirror that may be sign of some sort of metacognition.

Yet it kinda feels like they still obviously do miss something that humans just have, and we are used to call that just "humanity".

Just felt I had to say all that when I saw your post. I think this is very interesting topic.

 

I could see that too. On a related note, as bad as Perrin treats Mon he still is Leida's dad. Pretty dark of Mon to be throwing the father of her child under the bus. Mon might not care as much about what would happen to Perrin but her daughter certainly would.

It could be interesting to see Leida learn that her mother sold her father out to cover up her rebel activity. I can't imagine that would make Leida a big fan of the rebellion. We could see that to Leida the rebellion is the reason her family fell apart. Marrying her off to a thug's son, Mon framing Perrin, Mon being outed as a rebel, causing her presumably to leave her family behind and go on the run? That's not going to make Leida a huge rebel sympathizer.

 

Agreed. I ponder about those things, as well.

But in the context of this universe, I can understand why the aliens known as near-humans, humanoids, and other sorts of aliens would be offended by being defined in relation to humans. Similarly, I consider speciesism in both the old EU and the new canon to be an analogue for real world racism, just as it was in the 1970s Planet of the Apes films. What we can all agree on is that Mon Mothma is anything but speciesist. We can't say the same about high-ranking officers in the Empire.

 

Racism/Speciesism in Star Wars context could be explored a bit more. It would be rather interesting. Many things in Star Wars galaxy seem to be designed for humans or at least humanoids, that in itself would be constant frustration for many species not fitting into that mold. Imagine how frustrating it would be to be Anx or Hutt and see that you wouldn't fit most standard sized speeders or through the doorways on many cities. Or being Zilkin or Patitite you would need to fear for your life at streets not to be stepped upon and crushed.

 

That's a good point. Those should be explored more. I think the fact that alien physiology was superior to that of humans made up for that, but Luceno and other authors wanted to break the mold about how certain aliens were portrayed in terms of personalities. However, the Muuns were often more greedy than humans, and I don't know if a Muun Jedi. It's not good to portray a species all having a particular emotion or character trait, since that is, quite simply, racist.

There's less to be done about humans having a lower lifespan than other aliens, and I believe that helps explain how impatient we are, and on the dark side, how avaricious we can be for immortality.

 

I think too that real diversity means that there should be more than just stereotypes. Star Wars still has bad habit of portraying all weequays as pirates, all muuns as bankers etc. And while it makes certain sense that some species have culturally acceptable roles they are expected to fulfill that is still quite racist for real. Not that racism couldn't explain in-universe too, between wildly different species it would be only natural some people would become xenophobic. Sure it shouldn't be portrayed as acceptable.

In general I think humans are not all weaker than aliens though, but not all stronger either. Humans are often said to be galactic standard since they are the most usual species and they represent sort of average between sapient species, some of which are physically stronger, some weaker than humans, some live shorter lives, some longer lives etc. That is alright explanation, while real reason is of course that it was too expensive and hard to create galaxy filled with mostly aliens back in 1970s. So for internal consistency humans have to be most numerous species.

I agree these things should be explored more. I think it would be interesting. I would like to see more and learn more about aliens and their culture.

 

She deserves an award.

 

Agreed. She was phenomenal.

 

Shouldn't she look at least a decade older than in Andor and have a shorter hairstyle?

 

^ Maybe she had some work done.

 

I adore Mon Mothma. From Rebels, it didn't seem like she was discovered as rebel, rather things came a point where she spoke out against the emperor in the senate and had to flee. Is there something in the EU about her being found out?

Regarding her daughter, I thought Mon Mothma only agreed to an introduction. Not having an in-depth knowledge of Chadrila traditions, can it really be determined she marries into a crime family. I do think it's entirely possible, her daughter is a teenager, who is clearly rebelling against her Mother. If the tradition is to marry early, and it's clear her mother is against, she might well do it to spite her mother.

 

A decade of aging can be barely visible (esp. if using even basic makeup), and her hairstyle may simply stay the same (hairstyles tend to change slowly in politics). So…yeah. I can’t see what the problem is.

 

I think the hairstyle might be more to do with she's only in this briefly whilst her main role in Andor requires longer hair.

 

The problem is she should be played by Caroline Blakiston.

 

Huh? Blakiston is 90 years old.