Star Wars Andor S1E12: "Rix Road"

Rix Road is the name of the street that Cassa's adoptive father was killed by the stormtroopers (or were those still clone troopers at that point? I'm still unclear on when exactly they started phasing out clones and putting recruits in that armor. Or when the military was reorganized to make the "stormtroopers" an official term) on. The street that Mom couldn't bear to walk down again for the decade and change since then, until she heard the news of Aldhani. The same street that her funeral procession is planned to go down.

Yeah, I don't know exactly what it is she's planned, but I suspect it's going to involve a large quantity of explosives going off in the vicinity of that ISB-occupied hotel. Possibly set by Mom herself while they march the decoy body on passed. Possibly something else. "Is she actually dead?" is one of the many questions that this season finale will surely answer.


The episode opens with Dierdre returning to Ferrix, looking her most intimidating and fashy yet, to watch the funeral proceedings in person. I feel like realistically she'd be off overseeing the ambush of those ex-separatists, since she was also the brains behind that Axis-related operation and that's a much bigger, more urgent, and more delicate task, but as I've said before Dierdre is basically a composite character for "relevant elements within the ISB," so whatever.

We're also shown Bix in her squalid prison cell, still not recovered from the vogon poetry.

I'm not really sure why they're still keeping her in town, considering how trigger-happy the Empire is with shipping convicts offworld. And how heavyhanded Dierdre in particular is being with this investigation; I'd think she'd want any suspects and witnesses brought far away from rebel activity zones ASAP.

Maybe she has some kind of ploy in mind, planning to use her as bait? That's my best guess at least.

For whatever inscrutable reasons, Dierdre - after checking in on the prisoner in a way that still feels really sexually predatory even if she doesn't enter the room - takes a single guard and goes out onto the streets, dressed as a pair of Ferrixian civilians. Seemingly just to get the lay of the land and hear the tone of whatever conversations they overhear snatches of, before the morning of the funeral, but I wouldn't be surprised if there's more to this than just that. Dierdre might be crazy, but either due to force sensitivity or just plain uncanny luck her craziness seems to consistently steer her in the right directions.

Even in their local-flavored civvies though, she and her bodyguard still manage to look shady as fuck.

As for what is in fact going on around town, well. The friend who Cassa talked to at the end of the previous episode quietly informs other trusted locals that he's heard from him. It is probably fortunate for all involved that he has no more information to share than that; just that Cassa called, said he was doing alright, and was informed in turn of his mother's death. He didn't have time to tell him about the funeral, so that's good at least...but he also says that Cassa "would have to be crazy" to actually come and attend it. Which is some pretty heavy-handed foreshadowing.

Eh...I'll wait and see if he actually shows up before I start ranting about travel times again.

Meanwhile, behind closed doors, others are secretly working on...something. Welding. Wiring. It looked like bombs at first, but then we see the shape that the metalworking side of the project is taking, and it seems like a more elaborate device than just that.

There's definitely going to be explosions, but it's also going to be a bit more sophisticated than just that.

...

Man, this town has got to be the absolute worst kind of place to do counter-insurgency operations. Machine parts, fuel, and industrial tools everywhere. Everyone knows how to use them. Labyrinthine urban sprawl, even before getting into all the hidden nooks and passageways doubtlessly winding though the junkpits and scrapyards.

Dierdre is having them squeeze in the hopes of provoking a reaction, but unless she's already planning to just flatten the entire city I'm not sure if it's a reaction she actually wants to deal with.

...

Meanwhile, on Coruscant, Mon Mothma appears to be indulging her new favorite hobby of sitting around looking completely miserable. This time in her hover-limo rather than her living room, for a change of pace. However, it quickly turns out that she's not just moping this time, but steeling herself for something kind of darkly impressive.

When her husband follows her into the limo from whatever ritzy event the two of them were just attending, she accuses him of relapsing into his old gambling habit. A habit he (truthfully, as far as I can tell) insists he kicked before they ever came to Coruscant, but she's hearing none of it. Cold, exhausted marital rage seeps out of every pore in her skin and resonates in every syllable of her words as she rants about how disappointed in him she is and brushes away all his objections and offers to prove himself innocent with a few emotionally deep-cutting words.

In the driver's compartment, their definitely-not-ISB chauffeur listens to everything on the mic that's not supposed to be on. And looks exhausted himself.

Now, when she moves all her money into the Twisting Nether to be guarded by Gul'Dan's friends on the other side, the ISB will have a boringly noncriminal explanation for it. Even better, it's boring in a way that ties into some high society drama that will make their brains melt out of their ears to think about too much and will also risk ruffling the feathers of powerful people if they poke at it. Furthermore, any existing discrepancies in the Mothma finances can now be dismissed as her husband having surreptitiously gambled money in and out of their accounts while trying to make it hard for his wife to tell.

It also makes Mon Mothma herself seem moody, unstable, and irrational, to be reacting to this discovery of hers by moving all her money into a semi-criminal money launderer guy's care. And then going back on her professed lifelong beliefs by pushing her daughter into an arranged marriage for said money launderer guy's son. She's basically pulling the Roy Mustang gambit, making it seem like she's cracked under political pressure so that the regime will underestimate her going forward. Any other suspicious stuff she does will have a chance of being dismissed as "crazy lady doing weird shit," and letting her keep her senate position might even be seen as a way to discredit the opposition as her antics get more publicly embarrassing.

All it costed was being cruel to her husband and breaking the little trust and respect that had still remained between them.

Then again, if her husband wasn't such a useless fairweather lib, she'd have been able to bring him into the conspiracy, and he'd be equipped to play along with this ruse. So, you could say that he deserves this.

Granted, the "little" trust and respect might have already been "zero," going by how we've always seen them interact in the show thus far. He's essentially been framed as an enemy, whether he intends to be one or not. So, maybe Mon isn't actually sacrificing anything here. Maybe she's just ripping off the bandaid of pretending she still has a family.

So, maybe she isn't actually losing anything. Maybe she's making things better for herself, cutting off emotional dead weight and freeing herself to act the way she always wished she could. It's still painful to watch, though. And, for all that her husband is a twit, it's hard not to feel bad for him in this scene.

The worst part is that there's no guarantee this will even work. Maybe the ISB will see through this. But if there's any chance that this will work, Mon has to do it. The hard fact of the matter is that she has nothing left to lose as far as domestic harmony is concerned.

Back to Ferrix! Sinta has managed to ID the plainclothes ISB agents wandering the nighttime streets. And is startled when Val suddenly shows up in the middle of her snooping.

It turns out that, since Mom's death, Sinta has been focusing her observations on the new ISB garrison in town, which is how she was able to know Dierdre and her companion for what they were when she tracked them from the hotel.

I want to say it's a better use of her time than stalking Cassa's mother and friends was, but...honestly, it really isn't. Like, let's be real, even if Cassian did come back home and the ISB caught him, what would they be able to learn? That the guy who recruited him was an old man? That he gave him a crystal necklace as insurance? I guess that last detail might be a hint connecting Axis to Luthen's front business, but that's a real longshot. Cassa could tell them the details of how the heist was carried out, sure, but they've probably already put most of that story together via basic forensics.

Hmm. I gueeeess if he told them about the planet where they made the unsuccessful doctor visit to try to save Namek, they might be able to figure out where the stolen ship departed to next. Okay, that's actually a pretty big risk now that I think about it. That might justify the need to keep Cassa from talking.

Anyway, Sinta and Val have a bit of a cold reunion. It's clear that Val still has feelings for Sinta, and Sinta is still insisting they never actually had anything. It also seems like Sinta is monofocusing on this somewhat questionable mission to a degree that even Luthen wouldn't, and that it's a coping mechanism for her. Her distancing of herself from Val also feels...off.

My best guess is that the consequences of the Aldhani heist for her own people is giving Sinta some serious guilt. She's dealing with it by burying herself in whatever work she can find to bury herself in, and cutting herself off from her emotions, letting "the revolution comes first" be the only thing she'll let herself think about. Just a guess - there could be something else entirely going on with Sinta that hasn't been hinted at yet - but it fits.

Val starts trying to get Sinta to calm down. Part of this might be selfishness on Val's part, but I think she also sees that Sinta is running the risk of self-destructing if she keeps treating herself the way she's been treating herself. The revolution comes first, and that means preserving the lives of personnel for as long as possible.

Elsewhere in the city...Cassa arrives.

O...kay. So he apparently heard about the funeral. And, despite needing to hide his identity, obscure his trail, and find transport to a place as seemingly obscure as Ferrix at zero notice, he was still able to get back to his hometown within a few hours.

It's really starting to feel like nowhere in the galaxy is more than a forty-five minute drive from anywhere else in the galaxy. Which I don't think was ever the vibe Star Wars went for prior to this.

Ah well. No use in continually harping on it. Just...had to register my annoyance at this particularly baffling example.

As Cassa explores the nighttime streets of what was - until recently - his city, he reminisces on an old memory of his adoptive father Clem.

It's a fairly mundane memory, on its face. Clem finding some old rusted machine parts that were overlooked on account of their dust and oxidation coating, but that when (easily) cleaned up and unbent are actually surprisingly valuable. He used this opportunity to tell Cassa that looking where other people don't bother to look, examining the forgotten and ignored and underfoot, can yield great opportunity.

Meaningful words, in light of...well...everything. Including Cassa's own origins, as an orphan from an abandoned mining colony(?) growing up to become a deadly weapon against the people who forgot about it. Including the Narkinian fishermen, disgruntled by the environmental damage caused by the industry, but too weak and impotent for the Empire to pay attention to their complaints.

...

The appeal of the kind of swaggering authoritarianism that the Galactic Empire represents is that of not having to care. Of being untouchable and unaccountable and not having to pay attention to who you're stepping on. If the Galactic Empire took inventory of the grievances it generated, no one would want to work for it. It would ruin the fun. So, it's demise will come from all the places and peoples that it constitutionally has to ignore.

That's entirely separate from the intentional scapegoats that they're performatively cruel to, to be clear. But Andor hasn't been as focused on that side of fascism.

...

After the reverie, Cassa tries stealthing his way up to the back door of Bix's house. Unbeknownst to him though, that house is currently being babysat by whatsisname the pig guy who runs the old shiplot, and he has his pets with him. The pigs come snapping at Cassa, probably intending to pee viciously on him, but Cassa manages to hold them off without even needing to taze them until their owner shows up. He's a lot happier to see Cassa than he was the last couple of times they met.

As aforementioned, the death of Mom is likely making everyone go softer on Cassa than they otherwise would be at this point. Last time he was back here, Cassa was told in no uncertain terms that the neighbourhood hated him for bringing the imperials down onto their world.

Anyway, pigguy tells Cassa about Bix's situation. Still in Imperial custody. He may or may not know that they still have her in that hotel they've taken over. But anyway, Cassa now knows that she's been arrested and probably tortured because of him.

As night turns into morning, Cassa thinks over what DadClem told him. And also listens to more of Namek's audio manifesto.

Tyranny is unnatural, Namek says. It takes constant effort. It breaks. It leaks. Its authority is brittle, and its oppression a mask over its fear. Any act of resistance, no matter how small, forces reaction. Forces it to pay attention to more places where it didn't think it had to pay attention. And, eventually, stretched too thin, wound up too tight, it shatters.

Many of these small agitators and insurrectionists don't know that they're contributing to a larger cause. Many of them are bound to be killed, or worse, by the regime. But as long as more of them keep popping up faster than the regime can crush them, victory is inevitable. Victory at great cost, but that's the only kind that can be had against a regime like this. The monster is already loose. It's going to do damage - lasting, irreversible damage. But after it's been defeated, life in the damaged world it left will still go on.


This finale is an extra long episode. Don't know how many parts it'll end up being.