Star Wars Andor S1E6: "The Eye" (continued)
The empty gift-exchange ceremony has Gorn translating between Fucknugget and chief pilgrim Beardo. Gorn's translation is distinctly misleading, turning Beardo's extremely backhanded "well-wishing" and "blessings" into anodyne cheer and goodwill. There are also some subtleties in Beardo's expressions that make it seem like he understands what Fucknugget is saying even before Gorn translates it back to him, implying that he's keeping his own fluency in Space English secret.
Also, after the fleeces are exchanged, Beardo takes the one that Fucknugget gave him and tosses it onto a campfire with an expression of barely-suppressed disgust on his face.
Burning the fleece may be part of the ritual, as some kind of sacrificial rite. Or, it may mean exactly what it looks like it means.
I'm also once again wondering if Beardo knows whose side Gorn is on. If he DOES understand Space English, then his interpretation of Gorn's mistranslations will mean very different things to him depending on how much he knows.
The officers return to the base, stepping into this antechamber/security room before proceeding back inside. The team has - at Gorn's nonchalant orders - quietly replaced the soldiers who they exited with, so for a minute the two commanders and Fucknugget's wife and son are in the room alone and unaware with four armed rebels.
The plan is a little bit bolder and more aggressive than I'd been imagining.
Unfortunately, the other unnamed commander is much quicker on the uptake than Fucknugget (no surprises there) and is able to turn the hostage situation into a Mexican standoff.
Commander Buckethat ends up being a bit nobler (in terms of disposition, I mean. I already gathered that he was noble in terms of social class based on how much Fucknugget was trying to kiss up to him) than I'd have expected. His one spoken demand after getting his pistol aimed at Namek is for them to let Fucknugget's son go. Not to spare the rest of them, or to surrender or flee, just to let the innocent child get clear.
That's not to say that Buckethat isn't a fascist, or an active participant in ethnic cleansing, or a supporter of a nightmarish galactic regime. It just means that, when Sinta sneaks in through the other doorway and shoots him in the back of the head to end the standoff before anyone can react, you do feel a tiny amount of regret that the bad guy who at least had a little bit of good in him couldn't have been among the imperial survivors.
Especially since he died *because* of that little bit of good in him. Assuming that sparing the child was really the extent of what he thought he could bargain for.
A bit like how the fall of Preox-Morlana's security agency was caused by Cyril trying to do their job honestly for once. Impurity of his motives aside.
From there, the operation progresses pretty smoothly for a while. They comm-scramblers that Sinta and Val planted along the dam do their job, preventing anyone from getting a warning out as some rebels keep the VIP's at gunpoint while the others go from room to room capturing anyone at a comm or sensor station and adding them to the big stateroom that they've turned into a hostage containment center.
Special mention to the moment when, after threatening to murder Fucknugget's family in front of him if he doesn't order his men to comply, and making it clear that if he won't put his hand to the vault's bioscanner she'll just have to cut it off and take it with her, Val turns to Sinta for a little romantic moment right in front of everyone.
If that isn't some hot girl summer shit, I don't know what is.
Once the comms are confirmed down and the base's core personnel bound and gagged, the team brings the VIP hostages down to the vault/hangar area. Most of the men who would be on duty here are up topside watching the shooting stars thanks to Gorn, and the handful that remain on duty are very engrossed in their maintenance work.
Easily overwhelmed, especially once they see their commander at gunpoint. The rebels put these guys to work loading the money (I think it's supposed to be gold bullion? Maybe some fictional Star Wars precious metal that's a little duller in color? Hard to tell in this lighting) and prepare the ship for takeoff.
Through this entire sequence, the show keeps flashing over to the natives doing their ritual at the little shrine outside the base. As night falls and the spectacular pseudo-meteor shower begins in earnest, the pilgrims begin a melodious, joyful chant around the fire.
It's a nice song, though I'm sure the words are gibberish. But more importantly, there's this growing sense of anxiety whenever we cut back to them. The tension from the heist scenes carrying over into this bittersweet picture of people doing their best to enjoy their lives and practice their culture despite hardship, and making you feel like there must be something terrible about to happen to the latter.
...hmm. The natives are absolutely never going to be allowed back up onto this mountain in the wake of the incident, that's for damned sure. This will be the last Eye festival for at least a decade, if not forever. Yeah, that definitely justifies at least part of the tension being spilled over onto it. I wonder if that occurred to Val and Luthen. It surely must have occurred to Sinta, at least. I suppose the latter must have decided that it's only a matter of time until that happens anyway, so might as well hasten it a couple of years if it means they get to do some damage in return.
...
Hopefully the natives won't actually be blamed for the incident. That would make things much, much worse than just that.
...
We also, as the heist progresses and the opening of the vault commences, start flashing over to the nearby imperial airbase. The supply base going dark, and then the ultra secure vault-opening sensor doing an unscheduled ping, raises the alarm just as expected. The occasional glimpse of pilots leaping into their TIE fighters and preparing for liftoff raises the tension being shared with the pilgrims even further.
Also, full credit to the CGI team for the work they did on the Eye. It almost-but-not-quite distracts from the threat of the fightercraft as we see it light up the sky in the background.
Actually, here's a clear shot of it over the dam. It deserves the extra attention in my review:
It's made extra unearthly by the way the fireballs appear to be moving upward across the sky rather than descending. Given the explanation for the Eye that's been provided, I'm guessing that's supposed to be caused by the exotic particles sort of "skipping" off of an upper atmosphere layer (in part by the force of their own combustion) and being knocked into a very low-angled descent. Or maybe them being pulled toward the planet's poles, depending on their magnetic properties. It's amazing to look at either way. In a way that feels like a genuine force of nature, even though it's not one that happens on our own planet.
But, it still doesn't detract from the tension!
Things start going wrong when one of the comm-scramblers that Sinta and Val planted has a malfunction. One of the security officers who Gorn sent away notices that one of their comm stations is still sending automatic pings when all the others aren't, which means it's not just the Eye causing everything to blackout. So, he comes in to check it out, and a few minutes later the last bit of treasure-loading is interrupted by a squad of hastily-rallied soldiers.
Commander Fucknugget has just been making cowardly whimpers and blustery threats for most of this time, but here he actually does something halfway clever. When Gorn (who I guess the plan called for extracting, rather than leaving him in place to continue being a deep cover asset. Ah well) tries to make him confirm that this is a top secret operation that the rest of the staff wasn't meant to know about, Fucknugget makes a pained expression and collapses onto the ground. Communicating that something is wrong and putting himself out of the immediate line of fire in one stroke.
Cue a fire fight that they really do not have time for right now.
The first few imperials go down quickly, but there are more behind them, and as soon as the rebels are distracted the men that they'd forced to haul the gold(?) start being a problem themselves. Cassa underestimates the latter when he tries to race to the cockpit to start the takeoff sequence, only for one to follow him in there and get the drop on him.
Good thing that soldier didn't have a chance to rearm himself.
He's able to lose the guy by wrestling him back into the open, where Namek proves that in addition to his skill at relitigating the Bolshevik/Menshevik split he's also a crack shot.
Unfortunately, he's not the only one who can make a tricky shot around these parts. Gorn gets shot immediately once the lasers start flying. Taramin then goes down covering for the others as they make a fighting retreat into the freighter, his body left on the floor of the enemy base as the spacecraft takes to the air. Seconds later, Namek - who didn't have time to get his tray table up and his seat back in the full upright position - gets crushed against the wall by unsecured cargo. He's alive for now, but he can't feel anything below the point where his spine got hit.
Still. All things considered. In an operation like this one, suffering three (one of them potentially nonfatal) casualties while getting away with what looks like at least 70% or so of the loot is a pretty good outcome.
Halfway between the black and grey is no place for the light to waste away.
Well. For now. Things might still get worse after this point.
Namek was apparently their navigator as well as a good shot, and he's losing consciousness while the interceptors close in. Val is forced to inject him with a hazardous dose of stimulants to keep him conscious long enough to give Cassa the escape vector while the Eye renders the ship's own navigational systems useless.
The interceptors get close enough to take potshots, but the lack of visibility means they have to get close, and following the freighter through the fireball-infested upper atmosphere layer proves too hazardous for their flimsy hulls. But that the dinky freighter can handle just fine lol.
I'll take the road with all the staaa-aaaaa-aaaakes.
I forgot just how shit TIE fighters were. Seriously, why do they even use them? No shields, no armor, and no indirect fire weapons in a setting full of fightercraft that boast all three. Literal garbage.
Back on the surface, the Dhani pilgrims and imperial soldiers alike still watch the lightshow. Only a handful of soldiers who happened to be near the door were rallied to the fight, and the rest are still blissfully unaware. Some of them spot the freighter taking off, but they're mostly just passingly curious about it. In the midst of that, we see that Sinta didn't board the ship with the others, nor did she get KIA'd like Theramin and Gorn.
She quietly exits the building and approaches the crowd of pilgrims. Presumably planning to ditch the uniform, put on some local clothing, and lose herself in the throng before consequences come a-calling. Best of luck to you, Sinta. Barely got to know you, but you were pretty badass. Hope you get to see Val again before too long.
The freighter escapes the system. Unfortunately, the stimulants that allowed Namek to give Cassa the needed directions came with a steep cost, and Namek has now lost consciousness and become unstable. They're forced to land the freighter and get him to a doctor who's known for not asking questions before moving on to the rendezvous.
That doc has some serious MIB vibes, heh.
Unfortunately, it's too late. The internal damage and the drug overdose together were too much, and it took too long for them to get him here. That's three confirmed fatalities for this mission.
And, we're still not done.
As Val and the doctor struggle in vain to save Namek, Cassa and Skeen wait outside by the ship. They get to talking. Skeen murmuring about how much money is in that freighter, and how fruitless Val's agenda is (someone who will take time out of a vital mission to try and save some dumb kid recruit, in Skeen's estimation, is not someone who can win a conflict. Let alone a revolution against a galactic regime). So, he asks "Clem" if he wants to split the haul.
And yeah, when pressed on his motivations, he admits that the story about his suicidal brother was totally made up. He has a secret deal with Val and/or Luthen just like Cassa does. They're both mercenaries, and they both suspected each other of such. So, now that there are no consequences for doing so, why don't the two of them both drop the act and do something properly mercenary together?
...
I'm not sure why Skeen made such a big deal out of that crystal, if this was a boat that he wouldn't want rocked himself.
My best guess is that the kyber crystal was worth a lot more than Skeen himself is being paid for this job, and he was being passive aggressive about it to try and squeeze more money out of Val.
...
Moment of truth for Cassian Andor. He started out this three-episode arc by trying to decide between revolution and self-interest. Much of the conflict of the first two episodes revolved around the other characters trying to figure out which of the two was really driving him. Is he Cassa the rebel, or is he Clem the hired gun? We sort of took a leave of absence from that question during the action of this final third, but now it's back and in need of resolution.
Now, the question of Cassa's character aside? Skeen is a moron.
Cassa knows how to fly a ship. Skeen doesn't. Were it otherwise, Skeen would have just shot him in the back and flown it away himself without having to split the treasure. If they were going to do that, then it would quickly become obvious to Cassa that Skeen needs him a hell of a lot more than he needs Skeen.
And that's assuming that Cassa was interested in helping him steal it. If he wasn't interested, then Skeen sharing these intentions with him would be a death sentence, because there's no way in hell he and Val could let Skeen go on living with the knowledge he possesses once he's made his true colors known like this.
Skeen might have been lying about his brother, but I guess he was telling the truth about his deathwish. Either that, or he was just truly, immensely, spectacularly stupid.
Four fatalities out of a crew of seven. Still...passable.
Not wanting to give anyone else a chance to surprise him tonight, Cassa decides to take his own leave of the rebels here. He's done his job, and Val is a good enough pilot to take the ship off from an open field and put it back on auto. He brings his gun to go demand his money from her, just to prevent any more bullshit. And, while she's reluctant to believe his story about what happened with Skeen, she's forced to believe him when he demands nothing more than the sum Luthen promised and hands her the kyber amulet to return to him. Cassa might not be willing to pledge his life to the revolution just yet, but he's a man of honor at the very least.
In addition to a small quantity of bullion equal in value to what Luthen promised him, Val hands him Namek's manifesto.
Cassa insists he doesn't want it. From his voice and expression, it's clear that this is because he's afraid of it. Afraid that if he reads it, it'll finish the job that Luthen started of convincing him to do something stupid. Val insists, though. Namek wanted Cassa to read it. It was the last thing he asked of him before dying. They owe it to him.
So, Cassa takes the theory along with the shinies. Vanishing into the local population while Val, alone, completes her delivery to the ARR.
Concluding the arc are a pair of short scenes on Coruscant. Well, three scenes technically, but one of them is just a few seconds of Dierdre and her coworkers panicking when they get the news lol. The other two explore a different - albeit closely related - dichotomy that's been toyed with more subtly throughout the arc.
We see Mon Mothma in the flying saucer senate room, trying to make a case for protecting the latest planet to be crushed under the corporate-imperial complex from the worst of the abuses. The majority of the galactic senators don't appear to have even shown up for the deliberations. Several others walk out, either in disinterest or in fear, in the middle of her speech.
Mon Mothma's position in the government is an asset to the rebellion. It gives her eyes and ears in important places, and provides critical networking opportunities. However, what she WANTS is to be an asset to the rebellion by virtue of her political power. And it's getting her nothing but failure, depression, and increasing alienation from her comfortable husband and daughter.
Meanwhile, a few neighborhoods away, Luthen hears about the theft that Mon Mothma had long been dragging her feet about helping him with on the news. He reacts by separating himself from his moronic high-society customers with a few veiled jests at their expense, excusing himself to the back room, and doing this:
He actually is a good guy version of Palpatine holy shit lol.
More to the point though...he and his colleague had to pack GTFO bags and prepare to flee in the night if anything went wrong. Mon Mothma didn't. They were willing to risk it all to do something genuinely disruptive, no questions asked. Mon Mothma had to have her arm twisted into it and argued every step of the way. Look at their respective results. Mon Mothma might not be quite as rich as Skeen and/or Cassa would have become if they'd stolen the haul, but she's a lot richer than Luthen, and look at which of those two is in a happier position right now? Not just the thrill of this one victory. I mean look at Luthen with his meaningful, supportive relationship with his partner, and look at Mon Mothma's relationship with those closest to her.
She's under growing scrutiny just for her vocal dissent. And we know that in a decade's time, the senate will be abolished altogether, as was inevitable.
Last flight, I'd gladly trade my life, for one night as a justice acolyte.
I said that the first arc of "Andor" felt like it could have been a movie. The second arc, meanwhile, felt like it could have been two or three movies. So many characters with so much going on that we're only shown hints of. And I doubt we'll be seeing many of them again after this, even after accounting for the ones who died.
The main character arc for Cassa was a bit thin on the ground at times, in a way that I think it wouldn't have had to be in a shorter, more compact telling. But that's compensated for, many times over, by the sheer amount of other stuff that fills out the space. If anything, the title of the show is a misnomer with regards to this arc. This wasn't Cassian Andor's story. It was the whole crew's. If I had to pick one character to be the main POV for the Aldhani mission, I don't think it would be Cassa.
The story's message, meanwhile, is even more haunting than the CGI work they did for the Eye. Join the revolution now, or it'll come and join you later, and by that time the situation will likely be a lot more grim. Be willing to give it all up now to make a difference, or it'll just be taken by the enemy against your will later. In Minecraft.
