Star Wars Andor S1E12: "Rix Road" (continued more)

The Rix Road Riot escalates, with riot cops and stormtroopers cracking down, rebel agents watching and waiting, and local terrorists slowly moving homemade bombs into position. Meanwhile, Cassa creeps his way through the all-but-abandoned hotel, easily dispatching the one guard left behind while the others deal with the riot outside. Before long, he makes his way to the room being used as Bix's cell.

She's conscious. Unfortunately, she isn't quite coherent. Vogon poetry still worming its way through her neurons. Getting her back out of the building in this state isn't going to be as quick as Cassa would have wished.

He's able to get her to her feet and start guiding her - painfully slowly - out of the building. Hopefully no more imperials come running back in.

Which, heh, about that...

As the rioters clash with the cops and stormtroopers start coming in to tackle people as well, we get a brief look at these two morons standing on the sidelines trying to act like they know what they're even here for:

Which is funny and all. But, more importantly, the guy with the bombs makes his way into position and throws one of his IED's behind the imperials' front lines. Turns out the reason for the complicated welding is that this is a cluster explosive. And its purpose is to set off the many other devices hidden in dumpsters all around that stretch of Rix Road.

There's too much smoke to see how much damage the explosions did. We do see some vehicles getting flipped, though, and there are a lot fewer guys in riot gear visibly participating in the battle from this point onward.

Like I said. This is the absolute worst kind of urban environment to have to fight an insurgency in. Provoking one here was not the best idea that Dierdre ever had, unless she was actually hoping for this outcome. Which I kind of doubt, because being the officer in command ON LOCATION at the time really, really isn't going to make her look good at the ISB.

A few Ferrixians also get caught in the explosions, unfortunately, but them's the breaks. On a brighter note, a bunch of nearby doors and windows - including those of the hotel itself - are blown open, making egress much easier and opening up more route options for Cassa and Bix.

That said, this is also of course the point at which the imperials start shooting to kill.

The stormtroopers, who were mostly standing further away from the explosions and whose armor provided some protection, were told to not use lethal force until now for fear of killing a POI. That goes out the window as Dierdre's underling orders them to go ham, which they do with enthusiasm.

Ferrixian bodies start piling up quickly, now. Soon exceeding the number of dead riot cops. These aren't protagonists, so the stormtroopers are actually allowed to be decent shots. The IED's were a good trick, but once it's been plaid the disparity between people with armor and guns and people with plainclothes and welding tools becomes painfully clear, and the camerawork only accentuates it. That said, the people pressing the attack do so recklessly, seeming to understand that their neighborhood isn't surviving anyway at this point.

If I'm gonna die, I'm gonna die historic on the Rix road, rusty and beige.​

The rioters do manage to inflict a bit more hurt, though. There are still some riot cops who don't have fully-enclosed stormtrooper armor on the field, and those guys are somewhat vulnerable to rocks and wrenches. The real MVP of this battle, though, is the Hammer Imam. He's been persistently banging his anvil throughout the entire sequence, which the imperials (probably correctly) read as a call to further civil disobedience. A stormtrooper climbs the minaret to silence him, and Hammer Imam surprises the dude and manages to push him off the tower.

That image, of a stormtrooper plummeting off the minaret to an impact that I don't think their armor is up to, is probably the one that remains burned into the most minds after the battle.

As Cassa gets Bix safely away from the chaos and disappears with her into the city, and Val, Sinta, and Luthen decide to make their own surreptitious retreats (Sinta having to stab a bitch who was tailing her in the process), we zoom into another little corner of the chaos and begin what I can only assume will be an incredibly bizarre and sort of perversely funny subplot that's bound to go...I have no fucking idea. Places, definitely. Places.

So, Dierdre - seeming to let her shock and outrage overcome her usually decent tactical instincts - makes her way to near the front of the clash and starts shooting her laser pistol into the crowd of rioters. However, as probably the least armored imperial on the field, she quickly gets targeted, and goes down like an absolute punk after getting a rock thrown at her head.

A bunch of rioters fall upon her, and it looks like she's about to get ripped apart. But then one of them puts a gun to her head and escorts her away from the others (who promptly find new targets to fight or die to). After getting her away from the battle, the gunman turns out to be...Cyril.

I know, right?

The look of utter disgust and horror on Dierdre's face as she recognizes him are just amazing. To be fair to her, though, the conclusion that she probably came to isn't a totally unreasonable one. It would have even been kinda darkly funny if said conclusion was correct, and Cyril really did somehow manage to stalk her all the way to Ferrix and then wait for the perfect moment to drag her into his mommy's apartment and rebuild her into his sweetheart from the ground up. But, fortunately for her, that's not what this is. Cyril happened to recognize her in the chaos, saw her about to die, and did something uncharacteristically clever to get her away from the rioters while pretending to be one of them (being in plainclothes, Cyril was able to pull this off easily enough).

He took a pretty huge personal risk by doing this. Not only because Dierdre threatened to have him enslaved if she ever saw him again, but also because there was a very decent chance that some stormtrooper would see an armed civilian dragging the commander away and terminate him with extreme prejudice.

No joke, this is legitimately the smartest, bravest, and most competent thing that Cyril has done all series. Downright surprising, coming from him.

...

It really is too bad he decided to blame everything that went wrong with his life on Cassian Andor, instead of the corrupt system that threw him under the bus and told him to thank it for the privilege.

I'm not going to say that he has the makings of a Hero of the Rebellion per se, but in his finer moments Cyril does have some skills and savvy that would lend themselves well to the movement. I don't know that he's totally unreachable, ideologically.

Just...too much ingrained bias. Too much pride and investment. No one in his social circle to suggest alternatives. I guess this is meant to be another small tragedy to go with the many larger ones of the series.

Don't take this as me whitewashing Cyril. He's a bad guy who spends much of the show doing bad things for bad reasons. It's just that, unlike someone like Dierdre, you can see how Cyril could have changed course relatively recently in life if he'd encountered different circumstances.

...

Anyway, the capstone of Dierdre Miro's terrible very bad no good day is having to acknowledge that this little weasel who she sneered at before has just saved her from an incredibly humiliating and ignoble death. And realizing she has no choice but to thank him for it, and compliment him on his (legitimately pretty impressive in this case) bravery and quick thinking.

So, yeah. He's going to end up being deputized in some capacity, I guess. She'll resent it, but she'll do it. And he's going to have the biggest crush on her, and she's going to hate every second of that but keep using it to motivate him.

This is going to be the kind of trainwreck that you just absolutely cannot look away from oh my god.

Now, while this is going on, you might be wondering what happened to Linus. We saw him standing right next to Cyril before the bombs went off. He appeared to be getting up again after either ducking for cover or being knocked down by the shockwave. What happened to him since then, while Cyril was doing his untimely heroics? Well, you see:

You know what? I think I kinda love this character.

Cassa brings Bix to the junkyard owned by pigmaster friend guy, where - either by coincidence, or by virtue of Cassa having been told something by one of the people he met slipping around in the tunnels - he arrives in time to catch the departing terrorists. The guy who threw the bombs is there, along with a few key funeral marchers who presumably used Mom's knowledge of the undertunnels to help place the secondary explosives.

...

Oooookay, I see now. Mom wasn't trying to get in touch with some rebel cell earlier, nor was she delusionally trying to help one that didn't exist. She was actually - quietly, offscreen - building an effective terror cell on her damned own. We just never saw her talking onscreen to most of the people who were actually in on it. Holy shit.

So, that's what her final speech was about. Not just a sad wish that she'd started fighting back sooner, but also a satisfied confession that she did start fighting back pretty darned effectively prior to her death. That's her brick in the wall, so to speak. This incident and its probable aftermath, a component in the building of her world's revolution and - hopefully - eventual liberation.

Now, granted, this whole city is probably going to be flattened from orbit in a couple of days. But that just illustrates the need to get rid of this city-flattening regime no matter what the cost. The perverse, but inescapable, logic of rebellion.

...

The conspirators are escaping in the same old junker that Cassa borrowed for his misadventure in the pilot, and he arrives in time to hand Bix over to them.

They're planning to fly somewhere else, ditch the junker, and go to ground. Too much orbital police action going on around Ferrix right now, no way to make it off planet, so this will have to do for now. They may or may not already have plans to continue their dissident activities elsewhere on the planet.

They invite Cassa to join them, but he refuses. He says he has a better idea of what to do with himself. A heartfelt goodbye to Cuckcube (who I imagine is soon going to be refitted with plasma cannons, armor-piercing flechette cannons, and a more intimidating voice filter) completes Cassa's best attempt at bidding farewell to his mother.

Cuckcube asks him if he's ever going to come back. He can't promise anything.

Bix, however, crumpled against the bulkhead in the back of the ship, is confident that they'll see him again. After what he just pulled, for her, she's sure that he is - in fact - the thing that Mom was sure he could become. An unstoppable force, with unwavering motivation.

They take off. Cassa walks off to...somewhere. Very purposefully.

We know that he caught a glimpse of Luthen earlier, when he was sneaking around trying to figure out the best moment to infiltrate the hotel. He's got to realize why Luthen is here, having seen him. So, there are two possible things Cassa might be planning. Given all the listening he's done to Namek's manifesto, and the desire he surely has to honor his mother's postmortem wishes, I think one possibility is much more likely than the other.

...

Meanwhile, in a completely momentum-breaking aside that should have been either at the beginning of this episode or the end of the previous one, the Mothma family has a highly ceremonial meeting with the House of Gul'Dan.

Lita's mood is hard to read in this scene. She did want this. However, she also didn't want her mom to want this. And, even without that issue, reality and imaginings aren't always aligned.

Standing opposite them, dressed similarly to the nines, are Gul'Dan himself, his wife Beehive, and hiaahahahahahahahaha okay, okay, I know that boys hit the pubescent growth spurt a year or two later than girls do, but still, just looking at her and then looking at him just...

God I can't wait to find out what this kid is actually like. I SO hope my prediction is correct, and we get the two of them freaking out at each other as she wants to make him watch Space Ballerina Farms and he tries to force her to watch Space Hassan Piker while all four parents huddle in different corners of the living room, faces covered, privately dying of embarrassment.

Please, season two, come on, I know you've got it in you.

...

Finally, we cut to Luthen.

After watching the devastation with presumably very mixed emotions, he silently retreats to the city's edge and gets on his hoverbike to shoot back to his tricked-out supership. Which, um. He apparently hasn't had to ditch, despite blowing its cover earlier? Maybe he had it repainted and put a new license plate on it or something, idk. Anyway, he's using the same hidden landing site that he did last time he was on Ferrix (that seems like a really, really bad idea, to me...). Which is important, because...I mean, come on. We have a slow, quiet shot of him bustling around his empty ship preparing for takeoff, with the camerawork emphasizing his aloneness amid the many crooks and crannies, it's obvious what's going to happen.

Not sure how Cassa beat that souped-up AI he has built into his ship, but, eh, master thief, I can roll with that detail.

Andor tells him that he knows why he's here, and Luthen's reply is amusing in how open and yet how sardonic it is. "You didn't make it easy." Heh. Well, Cassa says he's about to make it much easier now. He is putting his life in Luthen's hands. He stands in place, hands showing, in front of an armed Luthen, and tells him to either kill him, or take him on for keeps.

A much, much better outcome than Luthen ever could have hoped for this field trip.

End episode. End season.


Wrapup post will be coming early next week. It'll mainly be about this season finale, but also about the dozen episodes leading up to it and how they fit together.

I will be making some criticisms, but giving a lot more praise.