The Series is now over. we can now officially declare we avoided it! Not one Jedi, not one sith, not one appearance of Vader of the emperor, not one lightsaber, not one physical manifestation of “The Force”. They actually did Star wars with zero bullshit.
These couple of weeks, Hexbear has been full of Andor posts. Considering these last 3 episodes were probably the best television I’ve ever seen in my life, I figure there are gonna be a lot of people who want to share their thoughts on the finale.
I’ll be honest, until episode 10, I thought Season 2 wasn’t for me. it’s wasn’t bad but I just felt it didn’t have the punch of Season 1. that season gave us novel tropes like a gold heist, a prison break, a riot, etc. season 2 was a more character focused set up for rogue one.
but the last 3 episodes, they changed everything. every minute was amazing.
Andor is often called perfect for someone who doesn’t think they like star wars. If it was just a standalone sci-fi spy thriller, it would be still be the best thing on television, but what’s truly the crowning accomplishment is that if you do know a lot about star wars, it somehow becomes ever better. This show redeems other media in this franchise. it redeems rogue one, it even strengthens Episode 4.
How much the destruction of the death star cost. In episode 4, the audience is shown “It was a longshot, but somehow a backwater orphan pilot managed to score the killing shot and destroy the battle station.”
in Rogue One, they’re shown “Okay, it was an even longer shot than that, because before they got to that point, they had to do a big adventure culiminating in getting the plans off Scarif with just seconds to spare”
And I always thought that was sort of weak, because it’s a work of fiction. fiction naturally collects around the execution of extremely lucky acts. how ever unlikely their success was is ultimately arbitrary, they can always be written to succeed in spite of the odds.
But it’s not about their luck, it’s about their sophistication. it’s that the rebels were doing all of these things collectively and competently, that they had become what they needed to be at their finest hour, and all the contributions, all the sacrifices of every single character all lead to this being possible.
Or I’m just high an none of this makes sense.
Also I can’t believe we learn some of Luthen’s backstory. I just assumed he was someone a bit like Mon Mothma, using his real name and the real identity he had during the time of the Republic as an antiquities dealer as a cover for his rebel activities. Much more interesting to learn that he was an NCO with a penchant for artifacts who got fed up one day and made a choice of where to stand, just like the people he recruits. Interesting that it seems no one, not even Kleya, will ever know Luthen’s real name or who he really was before he rebelled.
Also it’s contributes to the fact Ghorman and Alderaan were simply the violence coming back to the imperial core, the empire was slaughtering people across the outer and mid rim for years, Cintra’s family, Kleya’s, hanging Cassian’s adoptive father etc.
I like that Luthen’s backstory preempts Clean Wehrmacht Myth style talk of the Imperial Army which I think Solo played into a bit
I mean Solo wasn’t exactly making fancy desserts on Mimban. And if you recall Cassian was with the rebels there.
I had completely missed that one, good catch
Cassian fought on Mimban but we don’t know where that lines up with Solo.
Cassian also says he wasn’t even fighting imperials but other rebels/partisans, so a backwater civil war between separatists.
Then the Empire came in later to mop up is possible.
Cassian was there with the empire. Remember it was a penal unit, he was jailed for attacking a trooper with a stick, spent time in prison, got sent as a penal battalion according to him though Luthen says he was a unit cook. He was 100% on the side of the Empire as prison labor. The Mimbanese had been Republic aligned and trained by clones, but fought against the Empire sometime later. The scenes are too dark to make anything out, but the costumes for them have them using retrofitted or broken clone armor.
I re-watched the scene, read wookiepedia and a few Reddit threads and the phrasing is pretty ambiguous and there’s a bit of disagreement.
Out of a cell and into the mud could definitely be read as penal unit or a just released prisoner volunteering in a flash point on another planet.
I did actually read it as penal unit the first time I watched and then as separatist after listening to “A more civilised age” podcast on Andor, where that was their take.
Make sense, I was misremembering.
I suspect Mimbaan was a 9 way clusterfuck between the Empire, Republic rebels, Sepratist rebels, Random wierd space-trots, and 4 different types of localist fascist.