Star Wars Andor S2E4: "Ever Been to Ghorman"

A year has passed since the events of the previous episodes. We are now a mere three years before the Battle of Yavin IV. I'm guessing we're going to jump ahead another year after each three-episode arc of the season, ending us off right at the start of "Rogue One."


We open on Bix and Cassa, asleep in a bed together. Where are they now? How did they get away after Cassa's brazen attack on the Space ICE crew, and where have they been since? Mystery! Anyway, Bix is still having Vogon poetry flashbacks, only now they're intermixed with attempted rape flashbacks, which might be bringing their awfulness to near Grunthos the Flatulent levels. It's actually getting pretty dangerous. She's sleepwalking now rather than just having horizontal night terrors. And she's picking up guns and aiming them while she sleepwalks.

They have a pretty nice apartment, wherever they are. Would definitely be a shame if she burned it down in the throws of a PTSD flashback. Especially if she and/or Cassa were still inside of it at the time.

And, of course, this is hardly something she can get proper therapy for without bringing the imperials down on them. Unless there's a market for back-alley psychosurgery or something, but even if there is that's the kind of thing that's liable to just fuck you up even worse.

So, all Cassa can do is keep talking her down from the cliffs, pulling her out of the fugues, and trying (mostly without success, on account of him - like most people - just not having the necessary skillset) to help her recover. Bix, meanwhile, seems to be just barely functional at this point even when she isn't mid-flashback. Obsessing over safety and security. Hating the fact that they have glass windows that can be seen through, and the like.

Looking at who Bix was at the start of this series - the confidence, the risk-taking, the general in-control-ness - and remembering that this has all been going on over the course of a couple of years, the tragedy of what we've seen happen to her speaks for itself.

Also, the camera pans out through the window at the end of this scene, revealing them to be in...is this Coruscant? I'm not sure. It's a big, heavily developed metropolis that looks like it easily could be somewhere on Coruscant, but it might also be someplace else.

On one hand, I'd just been thinking that Coruscant might be the best place for them to lay low for a while. Closer to danger, further from harm, etc. On the other hand, you'd think that if they were going to do this, they'd go down into the underhive where cops rarely go and censuses are rarely taken, rather than up on the surface. For both security reasons and cost reasons.

Well, we'll see where they actually are and why they are actually there soon enough, I suppose.

We now cut to the planet Ghorman - a world that's been discussed extensively onscreen, but not depicted until now. As a refresher, the Empire needs to strip-mine this planet for the death star project, and they're trying to figure out how to displace its population while keeping the construction a secret. Last that we knew, Dierdre had been assigned to fomenting a psyop-rebellion on Ghorman in order to justify a crackdown that could eventually escalate to displacement. Dierdre was less than thrilled about this task, not for moral reasons so much as just thinking it's a waste of her time (she obviously doesn't know about the death star project). Anyway, Ghorman, we're going there now!

Looks like a pretty okay place. Too bad it's going to get peeled like an egg to build the death star. This series being a prequel does kind of make some things foregone conclusions.

Zooming in on the planetary capital city of Palmo, we arrive on a young-ish man waking up in a ritzy apartment, preparing breakfast, and walking to work. He briefly stops to set up some kind of hidden string (or silk? this is the spider-farming planet, after all) contraption by his apartment door before heading out. Surprisingly earthlike pigeon-analogues take flight as he strides across sidewalks and into a government complex to work.

Oh, and, it's Cyril.

Probably should have mentioned that earlier.

I guess he was able to get a temporary transfer to the Ghorman planetary administration center so he could be with his girlfriend. Given how clandestine this task of hers is supposed to be, I'm surprised they were able to get away with this. But, well, fascist government, Dierdre can probably get away with just about any selfish bullshit she wants just by glaring at the right desk jockeys. However it ended up happening, we soon learn that Cyril is now the head of the local customs and standards department for...either the city, the region, or the whole planet, I'm not sure which. Which means he has a nice office rather than being one out of several hundred cubicle-less drones in the Coruscant facility. Or even being one out of the several dozen assholes who walk around bullying said drones.

The funniest (and simultaneously most infuriating) part of this is that I'm pretty sure Cyril genuinely believes that he's risen up through a meritocratic system by virtue of his honest hard work and skill. Or maybe he only believes that he believes it, and a haunting awareness of the truth is always festering at the border of his consciousness. Probably the first one, though.

Speaking of people with zero self-awareness, Cyril is irritated at having his workday interrupted as soon as it begins by a call from home. His mother hasn't gotten any more pleasant to deal with since being threatened by Dierdre. He's had to deal with her less often, and she at least has to shut up when he politely asks her to now, but she's still fundamentally herself. And furious all over again at him having relocating from Coruscant to another planet.

She seems to believe that every single planet other than Coruscant is a barbaric wasteland where people eat each other. Or maybe she's just acting that way because she's butthurt about Cyril being out from under her thumb again, and so she's just trying to short-sell any place that she doesn't live. Or both. Probably both, tbh.

The conversation gets a lot more interesting than just "Cyril's mom is a bitch, more news at 11" though. The nature of her complaints starts to shift as she whines about Ghorman specifically, rather than just "planet other than hers" more generally. Surprisingly, Cyril expresses some sympathy for the locals (a human ethnicity referred to as the Ghor) in the face of the renewed imperial scrutiny being applied to them in recent times. People are scared. People in his own office - direct underlings and colleagues of his, men and women who he's grown fond of for - are being harassed, threatened, and unduly investigated. His mother is the one who keeps insisting that they deserve it. When Cyril tells her she's been watching Space Newsmax too much, she smugly tells him that she's ALWAYS felt this way about the Ghor, it's got nothing to do with the propaganda, and then recites some of the propaganda talking points that we heard in the evil meeting room last arc almost verbatim.

Also, despite having said that she's always hated Ghorman, she also claims - almost in the same breath - that she's never going to buy Ghorman silk again. "Again." Implying that she was doing so up until recently. Or at least, she would have been doing so if it was the kind of thing she could afford. It's more like she's started telling her rich brother who she never shuts up about to stop buying it, most likely.

Basically, this lady would be the epitome of Palpatine's voter base if this was still a democracy. Or...was ever a democracy? IIRC, Palpatine took over as chancellor by a senate vote, and the Galactic Senate at the time was not exactly what could fairly be called a democratic institution. But regardless, IF he'd ever needed a popular vote, she'd have voted for him were she placed to do so. And, Cyril doesn't seem to have much patience for it right now. Even less than he does for all the other dumb annoying bullshit she likes to talk about.

Buuuuut, before I'm tempted to think there may yet be hope for Cyril, things get twisty. It turns out that Cyril's conversations are being listened-in on by a local Ghor dissident embedded in his office. Her cell has been reviewing the recordings with rapt attention, and - while his mother terrifies them as a look at what the core really thinks about the rest of the galaxy - are starting to think this latest Imperial official might be someone who can be made sympathetic to their cause.

The Ghormani language sounds like a mix of French and German. Interesting aesthetic choice.​

It's not yet clear what their cause is. I don't think anyone knows about the planet-looting plot yet. Does the Galactic Empire have any other operations on Ghorman that are worth sabotaging? Obviously, everyone in the galaxy is being oppressed to one degree or another, but what would local Ghorman rebels be working against? Just trying to free dissident prisoners and sabotage the local tax apparatus, or something of more galactic relevance?

We'll probably find out soon enough. But regardless, given that Dierdre was the one who suggested creating or coopting a local Ghorman rebellion that will play into their hands, it's pretty unlikely for this to be a coincidence. A while back, I observed that Cyril has a pretty good skillset for a rebel infiltrator, and that same skillset would make him equally good at infiltrating a rebellion.

Whether or not Dierdre actually has authorization to deputize him in this way is another question. I guess it probably depends on how much she's letting him know. Either way, she's essentially indulging his action hero fantasy, and even expanding it by letting him be a SPY too. Just by virtue of saving the life of a hot Space Fed who fell for him(?).

He's literally living a YA adventure novel.

...

God I hope this series ends with him being on fire.

It took quite a while for me to start actually hating this douchenozzle rather than just being sort of grimly amused by him. But, we've gotten there.

...

After leaving the office that afternoon, Cyril finds himself approached by a man being very pushy about wanting him to take one of those plastic spiders that they're always hawking at tourists around here. Only, he wants him to take it for free. And says that there's an invitation to a meeting that might interest him hidden inside.

Looks like they bought it already. I hope it falls through. Not because I think it'll save Ghorman (again, this planet's fate is a foregone conclusion), but because I don't want the destruction of Ghorman to be Cyril's accomplishment in even the smallest part.

Also, there seems to be some kind of protest going on outside of this government center. Against an imperial construction project of some kind.

I think they mentioned something about a military base back in the evil meeting scene? It was very brief and very vague. Maybe it's related to that, maybe something else. In any case, the Ghor are clearly being given something to protest that's more specific and local than just general authoritarianism. Whether or not this controversial construction project was ever genuine versus just being invented as a provocation in the interest of enabling the REAL construction project, not yet clear.

...damn. I just realized. As an infiltrator, Cyril has basically become a near-exact mirror to Cassa. What was it that Luthen said in that big speech? "Being molded into the likeness of my enemies?" Talk about irony.

Well, speaking of Cassa, we get back to him and Bix now. Turns out that they are indeed on Coruscant. They aren't just here to lay low, though. They're actually on a mission. Which explains why they're in this ostensibly middle class neighbourhood on the surface rather than a hidden warren in the undercity.

There's also been an important change in these characters' status quo. Back on Ferrix, Bix was just a scrap dealer who had some criminal contacts. On the farm planet, she and the Rix Roaders seemed to simply be hiding out in the wake of their past transgressions. I'm pretty sure their only ongoing dissident activities were in sheltering Cassa between his missions. Now on Coruscant, though, Bix and Cassa talk about them being on a mission. Not him. Them.

On one hand, massive character growth for Bix. She was a damsel in distress on Ferrix. She was a damsel who managed to get herself out of distress on Mina Rau. Now - despite the serious mental health issues - she's regained some of her old initiative and moxy, and is out there looking for trouble with the best of them. Killing those two Space ICE officers was likely what served as her point of no return. After doing that, guerilla warfare would have been just about the only path through life remaining for her.

She and Cassa buy innocuous-seeming plants, food items, and machine parts in different places, careful not to shop at the same place twice within too short a timeframe. In their apartment, they seem to spend much of their time tinkering with something. Not a bomb, it doesn't seem like. Something else.

They're also spending a good deal of their time having a serious argument about what they're doing and how they're doing it.

Bix has noticed Cassa being overly protective of her. In ways that she thinks might be compromising the mission. He counters by pointing out that she's having sleepwalking episodes every other night, some of them involving weapons, and given her psychiatric state there's no way in hell that he can't be protective of her. The question of what she even thinks she's doing participating in ops in the state she's in isn't one either of them dare to raise. They actually take pains to awkwardly avoid that question. They both know that the answer is "there's nothing else she can do with herself, and there's no one else to take her place."

Watching Cassa lose his temper and flip out a little during this argument is...honestly sort of refreshing. He looks and feels like a stressed-out husband having a heated - but very normal - argument with his wife. Cassa and Bix might not be married, but they're implied to have been living together for the better part of a year. At least much of that time, they spent alone together. In their make-up at the end of this fight, they both express regret at ever having broken up (before the time of the series) in the first place, and wish they could have spent more of their lives together. But, that in turn just brings them back to their source of conflict.

The fact is, Cassa has already proven he cares more about his loved ones - Bix in particular - than he does about the cause. Or, at the very least, he cares about them equally enough that he'll bend one to serve the other. The fact that she does need help is, unfortunately, irrelevant to the fact that he can't afford to be the one helping her. The most important thing is winning. That's all she, or he, has left.

A big case in point that's been weighing on both of them is an (unfortunately offscreen) incident that took place during their previous mission for Luthen, whatever that was. They ended up killing someone who Bix wasn't sure actually needed to die. Sure, this someone was an imperial soldier, but still, she thought he seemed like an okay guy personally, just ignorant.

It...is very much a show of moral character for Bix to still be saying that in the wake of her accumulated experiences with imperial agents. Damned impressive, honestly. But I digress.

Cassa thinks that she's the one failing to show proper commitment to the rebellion, with that kind of attitude. Bix, however, thinks that Cassa didn't actually believe that killing that soldier was the pragmatic choice; she thinks that it's because the soldier saw her face, specifically, that Cassa decided no chances could be taken. He has trouble denying it, when she holds his feet to the fire on the subject.

So, which of them is really more compromised?

Who is more reliable, as far as the rebellion goes?

And...do they really have nothing else to live for besides that? Should this be the way they judge everything about their own and each others' lives?


Splitting it here.