Star Wars Andor S1E11: "Daughter of Ferrix" (continued)

Back on Coruscant, Mon Mothma is watching her daughter Lita doing a...okay, I had to watch this scene a few times, and I'm still not entirely sure I'm getting it right. I think that Lita is undergoing religious instruction or ritual practice for the sake of preparing herself for betrothal. She's wearing this peculiar blue outfit, and sitting around a table with a bunch of other girls her age wearing similar outfits with matching hairstyles, and they're all going through this chant or recital whose words I can't make out.

I think there might be someone else at the head of the table, too? Like a priest or something? We don't get a good look.

Mon Mothma is watching this going on in her house from the hallway, with a tormented look on her face and a glass of wine in her hand (the latter seems to be becoming a bit of a dependency for Mon, going by her last few scenes). Val shows up, looking aghast at what she sees, and her conversation with Mon is what I'm able to make these inferences from. This is apparently a practice that's "oddly" more common on Coruscant than it is back home on their homeworld. Even Mon's conservative husband is sort of weirded out by it. This group was organized by Lita herself, on her own initiative, after she "found the elder." Not sure if that's like their culture's equivalent of finding Jesus, or if Mon is being literal and the elder is that priestly fellow who I think is officiating. From there, Val immediately segues to asking if there's been any marriage proposals yet, which prompts Mon to bring her into the know about Gul'Dan. Implying that Val didn't know about that until now, and the topic of Lita getting married was brought to mind entirely by what she's seeing now.

So, I think that there's this ultra-conservative brand of religious traditionalism sweeping their people's expat community on Coruscant, probably with tacit or overt encouragement from a regime that benefits from hierarchical, controlling social institutions. Lita is presumably planning to put herself up for marriage within this reactionary expat subculture. This was, again, all Lita's idea, with neither of her parents being all that happy about it (even if they underwent it themselves in their own youths). I suspect Lita's already planning her tradwife influencer career on Space Tiktok.

Anyway, this makes Mon Mothma's dilemma over whether to accept Gul'Dan's offer...either much simpler, or much more complicated. Maybe both at the same time. If Lita wants to be married off to someone that someone else chooses for her in accordance with hoary old traditions, well...Mon doesn't want to encourage that desire, but she also stands to benefit from it. Lita wants to get married off to own the libs. Mon wants what Gul'Dan is offering for (essentially) a dowry. But, Mon is also a lib, and she doesn't want to get owned. If anything, emotionally, this might make things more rather than less painful for her. She feels like she should be doing everything she can to pull her daughter BACK from the tradwife algorithm abyss, not push her even harder toward it.

...

You know, if Lita really is mostly motivated by rebellion and just thinks that conservatism is the new punk rock, then I wonder if she might suddenly lose her enthusiasm for this if Mon tells her she's found her a husband.

...

Mon pulls Val into another room to quietly tell her about their legal troubles in detail. She hasn't been open about this with anyone onscreen yet, but basically: things are a lot worse than we realized. The Empire is almost certainly going to notice the money trail leading from her to parties involved with "Axis" incidents soon if she doesn't do something to make it all vanish fast. She didn't even realize how incriminating her records look until her banker friend went over it with her. She knows Gul'Dan can save her...and, more importantly, save much of the rest of the nascent rebel alliance.

Just then, the tradwife ritual training session ends, and Lita rushes into the room to eagerly greet her favorite aunt in her unexpected reappearance.

The fact that Lita likes Val so much, despite all of the ideological signalling they both dress themselves in, is kind of telling in terms of the former's motives. To Lita, this really is all just aesthetic. She doesn't understand the consequences of taking this path in life, even if she thinks she does. Especially if the Empire ends up putting more legal power behind regime-friendly local conservatives.

...

Man, wouldn't it be funny if it turns out that Gul'Dan's son is a fanatical internet lefty, and his dad was hoping that marrying him to an aristocrat would get him to calm down a little?

Oh my god I would watch the absolute fuck out of that sitcom spinoff.

Disney, you want my money? You can get my money, Disney. I just told you how you can get it.

...

As Val tries to be as good an influence on Lita as she can in this brief meeting and Mon watches with tears in her eyes, we jump across the planet to Cyril at his own mom's apartment. He gets a phone call, and it's from someone who I wasn't expecting to ever see in this show again.

Huh, alright then. If Linus still has a part left to play, then that's a sign that I should revise my expectations for other seemingly-unimportant characters whose threads were left hanging in the earlier arcs. Most especially, I'm thinking about the abused son and wife of that imperial garrison commander on Aldhani. They didn't really get a chance to do anything at all for the plot, but they got a kind of suspiciously large amount of screentime for mere set-dressing characters.

Also on Aldhani, there was that tribal elder who we zoomed in on a few times, and who showed a fairly courageous personality with his backhanded "blessing" to the imperials.

Yeah, I'm really curious to see who else ends up coming back and being important.

Anyway. Linus Mosk has been demoted considerably once the Priox-Morlana corporation lost most of its security mandate (I imagine that himself being personally at the center of the incident that fucked them over didn't endear him to the executives). He's working in a smelting facility now. Possibly not even as a security guard, just as a worker. To Linus' credit, he doesn't seem to blame Cyril for everything going wrong. What he DOES do is inform Cyril that a friend of his who still works at Pri-Mor's much diminished security department told him that there's about to be a big funeral for Cassian Andor's mother back in the neighbourhood they raided on Ferrix. Cassa might not make an appearance at the event, but he also might. The hyperwave call drops before either of them can say any more.

I'm not really sure what Linus expects Cyril to do with this information. Call the police? Well, to be fair, they have no way of knowing that the ISB is already on it, so I guess he thinks Cyril might make a good citizen's report or something.

As for what Cyril is actually going to do? Well, there's the stupid option, and there's the really stupid option. Let's see which one he chooses.

I suppose there's also an option three in the form of "do nothing and assume that that scary ISB lady who he knows is already hunting Cassa has this on her radar as it is," but that wouldn't exactly be in character for good old Cyril D. Nozzle.

Especially after his mommy comes in and makes fun of him for still trying to cling on to his irrecoverable old career. Cyril's face gets absolutely resolute after she does that.

This fucking guy...

Meanwhile, Cassa has managed to get off of Narkina and back into galactic society. Not sure where those fishermen brought him and Melshi, but they made the most of it once they were there. Speaking of Melshi, that guy had juuuuust enough screentime and characterization after the escape for his absence to now be meaningful. I think that's another character we might be seeing again. But anyway, Cassa has managed to get back to that beachside vacation spot on Niamos where they arrested him. He breaks into his old hotel room, and is relieved to find that the portable safe full of cash is still in the cranny where he hid it.

Also inside of that safe is Namek's manifesto. Looks like Cassa has some light reading, along with being rich again. Maybe he can manage to make it last a little bit longer this time. But...Mom's funeral still hasn't happened. Hmm.

...hold on, we were told that it's supposed to happen tomorrow, though. Cassa doesn't even know that she's dead yet, and any traveling that he does will need to be careful and incognito. I don't know how far Niamos is supposed to be from Ferrix, but even if it's a near-instantaneous hyperjump there's going to be some time taken by the takeoff and landing and such. Everything seems like it's building up toward Cassa attending the funeral, but I really don't know how he's supposed to make it in these circumstances.

Well, maybe the big twist is that he does the smart, non-impulsive thing and actually doesn't go. Or only finds out that it's happening at all after it's already happened.

I suppose we'll see.

Over to Luthen now, as he pays another visit to anarchist militia leader guy. King Namek. I think his name was Saul? Or Saw? Whatever, that guy. The scene starts with this neat isometric view of the base, including a small fleet of fighters being prepped for take-off.

I wonder what the deal with the X-wing is, actually. In the original trilogy, the ARR used them heavily (though not exclusively). Saw's pre-alliance cell doesn't seem to have very many of them, though, which implies that while some of the ARR fleet might have come from here other organizations also must have had X-wings to contribute. So, how did the X-wing become the go-to starfighter for terrorists and insurgents the galaxy over? I feel like there might be an interesting story there.

Anyway, Luthen is brought to Saw, and the best dialogue scene of the series happens. I've been informed that a lot of people went ga-ga over the "what do I sacrifice" speech, but in my opinion this scene provides much greater insight into Luthen's character.

Saw invited Luthen back here to tell him that he's reconsidered things, and decided that he's willing to give those ex-CIS partisans a chance after all. He's not thrilled about working with them, but he's come to understand that this ideological compromise might really be the only way forward. He and his men are willing to begin that joint operation Luthen was trying to pitch.

Which forces Luthen to give Saw some bad news.

You know that rebel group that Dierdre has been luring into an ambush, and that Luthen decided he needed to allow to fall into the trap in order to protect his man on the inside? Well, it's those guys. The mission Luthen was trying to get Saw's group to participate in is the one Dierdre has turned into a booby trap.

The last time we saw Saw, he seemed like the CIS remnants marching off to their deaths would just make him chuckle. That's not his reaction now, though.

Luthen just coldly, wilfully letting people who trusted him - even if they're not people who Saw is fond of - throw themselves off a cliff is something Saw can hardly believe. Luthen explains his calculus to him. If the ISB busts a militia group, and then everyone else in the rebel network goes quiet for a while, they can be tricked into thinking that they've taken out their "Axis." Complacency, overconfidence, perfect ingredients for longterm opportunity. On the other hand, if the ex-Separatists abort their operation, then - even if they invent a plausible-seeming excuse for it to be cancelled - the ISB will suspect. They'll wonder. They'll keep investigating, keep escalating, and - more importantly - keep their eyes peeled for any sign of a leak, just in case that too-convenient coincidence really wasn't one after all.

Saving the other group will weaken the rebellion's position galaxy-wide. Sacrificing the other group will likely strengthen it. Luthen insists that, in light of that, there's not really a choice to be made here.

Saw asks Luthen if he'd have sacrificed his own group just as readily. The answer is no, of course not; Saw knows far too much about Luthen to ever risk letting him get captured. The leader of the CIS remnants doesn't know nearly as much. Totally different situations!

Is Luthen telling the truth here? I have no idea. Neither does Saw.

Then, Luthen tells Saw that if he really can't allow this to happen, he can warn the ex-CIS group himself. He might not be on speaking terms with them, but he knows enough about them to get a message across if he tries. Luthen is in no position to stop him, if he chooses to do that.

In response to that, Saw just...stalls.

He starts making wild accusations. Asking nonsensical hypotheticals about "what if" this and "how do you actually know" that. Trying to deflect from the choice that Luthen just gave him, until the latter's patience runs out.

...

Luthen may or may not have been lying when he told Saw that he wouldn't sacrifice his group like he's sacrificing the CIS guys.

He was definitely lying when he told Saw that he was sure that this was the only way and that there was no choice to be made at all.

If Luthen was actually sure about what he was doing here, he'd have never told Saw what he did. He'd have said something like "I actually just told them to cancel the op because I think the ISB might be on to it, I only hope they listen." Or even just "sorry, we actually just had a falling out, and those guys aren't talking to me anymore." He's framing this interaction as himself giving Saw a chance to countermand him, but that's not what he's actually doing.

Luthen is asking for Saw's permission. For his approval. That's what he really came all this way to do. Saw is an idealistic revolutionary, with a positive vision for the galaxy and a clear sense of right and wrong. Luthen is afraid he doesn't have a conscience anymore, so he came here to borrow Saw's.

Luthen is aware that he's put himself in the position of being too valuable to sacrifice while he goes about freely sacrificing others. He knows, on some level, how bullshit his own "what do I sacrifice" speech was. He knows that he can't be trusted to make these decisions unilaterally.

And that, at the end of the day, is what I think will prevent Luthen from ever truly becoming the thing that he hates in his quest to defeat it. He's humble. When he's afraid of crossing too many lines, he lets someone who he considers a better person than himself shut him down. Moral laziness is a bad habit that Luthen's developed, but he's aware of that, and he works hard to check it.

Thinking back to Cassa's own speech in episode 3, about the all-tainting arrogance and self-righteousness of the imperials, the difference between Luthen and them is as clear as day.

...

In the end, Saw can't do it either. As much as his own men need the supplies that this raid could potentially yield. As much as he's managed to sell himself on the idea of breaking bread with ex-Separatists. No warning is sent.

Luthen tells Saw that he can call it a sacrifice for the greater good, if it helps. Saw, looking absolutely miserable, says that they should just call it "war."

That's how war always is. Saw, hardened guerilla though he is, had been clinging to some kernel of denial about that up until now.


Three parter.