Star Wars Andor S1E11: "Daughter of Ferrix"

It's back to Andor now, for the last two episodes of season one! Where we left off, Cassa had put the Narkina V prison complex behind him. Both for good and for ill, from my perspective. For ill because the politics, thematic strength, and character work of the Narkina V arc were all phenomenal. For good because oh my god was that shit also sloooooooow. Where Cassa and his fellow escapees will end up after fleeing the gulag, we don't yet know.

Meanwhile, on Ferrix, Mom Andor seems to be planning some sort of suicide attack to free Bix (or at least avenge her against the ISB, if she's already been shipped offworld), all while rebel agent Sinta watches from the shadows.

On Coruscant, we have two plots going on, both involving painful moral compromises. Mon Mothma is considering betrothing her daughter to the son of a slimy mafia dude in exchange for the help of said dude's Burning Legion magic in managing the rebellion's finances. Luthen is letting one of his associate organizations march into an imperial trap, reasoning that keeping his sources within the ISB secret is more valuable to the rebellion than the lives of the militia being targeted.

Also, somewhere else on Coruscant, Cyril is being cringe.

I think that's about it for the important stuff. Onward into the season's penultimate episode, "Daughter of Ferrix." Sounds like we're going to get the payoff for whatever Mom's been up to.


To begin with, it seems that we aren't skipping ahead to Cassa finding his way back to civilization. Which I appreciate. Cathartic thought it was, the escape from the prison itself was also pretty SOD-breaking in its realization, and it helps a bit that we're not just brushing past another difficult step in Cassa's road to freedom after that. We open on him and fellow escapee Melshi scaling a cliff, both looking dirty, battered, and exhausted, with no sign of civilization in sight. Hiding in crevices whenever an aircraft flies overhead, for fear of it being a searcher.

It's morning, so they've presumably been fleeing all night. Probably haven't had any food. Maybe no water either, depending. The floating labor facility seems to have been built in quite a remote section of the moon. Eventually, they make it over the cliff and walk onward until - tired and hungry to near the point of collapse - they find a pair of frog people doing...something? I think they might have fishing nets, maybe?...out in the middle of the wilderness. The frog people have a vehicle, so the humans make a desperate attempt to jack it.

However, it turns out that the frog people also have these sticky net-launcher thingies to go with their standard nets. And the escapees aren't in any shape to dodge those at the moment.

Hmm. That doesn't seem like a fishing tool.

Those net-covered frames do look a lot like fish or crab traps, though. Definitely not the sort of structure you'd use to keep a captive humanoid in. So, I don't think these are police or bounty hunters either.

Well, they were out here hunting *something,* and regardless of what their intended quarry was they've now got a couple of humans. Good for you, froggies. Maybe. IDK. I guess we'll either escape them or make friends with them when we next cut back to Narkina. For now, Ferrix!

A group of Mom's friends and neighbors, as well as some volunteers from the Daughters of Ferrix sororal organization of which she was a lifelong member, are cleaning up her apartment. Cuckcube, sounding as distraught as he can in his stuttering monotone, is asking where she is, and being told comforting lies.

Dang it. Did her declining health actually catch up to her before she could do the thing? That's pretty disappointing, if so. :(

Also, watching Cuckcube act like a confused child struggling to understand the death of a parent manages to tug the heartstrings quite a bit. I remember some filmmaker - I think Neil Blomkamp? - saying that it's hard to evoke empathy for a character who doesn't have an expressive face of some kind. This moment isn't that powerful, but it also isn't that long or indepth, and given those facts I think it's strong enough to make me reject his assertion.

We watch, with cuckcube (and also with Sinta, peeking from across the street), as a body is taken away.

Hmm. We notably don't actually get to see the body. Just the wrapping.

Did she fake her death, to clear the way for whatever it is she's been planning? It definitely seems possible. She'd need to have at least a couple of her neighbours in on the plot to make this part work, but that's far from unbelievable. We know Cuckcube can't keep a secret without frying his processors, so it would make sense for her to not tell him, cruel though it is.

Apparently, Mom was a prominent enough citizen that the community is requesting a proper civic funeral event for her, with the nearby main street closed off and everything. I'm a little surprised that she's still that well-liked around here, after all the grief her adoptive son just brought down on the city, but I guess a lifetime of bringing wealth to this neighborhood in the form of looted ship parts (and presumably being generous with the profits, going by the family's apparently modest living conditions) buys a lot of social credit.

The ISB goons occupying the town consult their boss back on Coruscant about this. Mom was (is?), after all, a person of interest in their investigation. Dierdre decides to have them grant permission, but only in a small area, and for an uncomfortably brief period of time. Give them an event that might draw other persons of interest in, but also squeeze a little bit to see if they can provoke an incriminating response from said visitors.

Not the worst tactic she could try. I'm not sure that it'll work, given how far away Cassa is from Ferrix and how little Sinta (the only other actual target likely to be in the area) actually cares about him or his family, but given what Dierdre knows it's a decent plan.

We also learn a bit of trivia about Ferrixian funerary customs in this conversation. Specifically, they have the body cremated, the ashes mixed with clay, and then compressed into a brick. The brick is then inserted into the wall of a building in the deceased's city, to be a part of their community's home environment henceforth.

Interesting. I like it. Ferrix has an awful lot of religious rituals based around industrial imagery and practices, doesn't it? We get another clip of the hammer imam doing his thing in this episode, just as a reminder. The legacy of a mystical trade guild, a la the Freemasons? Traditions harkening back to the cult of a craftsman-god? I'm curious to know more.

Well, back to the episode!

Returning to Narkina V, it seems that Cassa and Melshi are in a rough spot. Their captors aren't imperial agents, but they're not friendly either. Despite being simple fishermen (I guess they were just planning to go after some scary-ass fish with those superpowered web launchers they're packing. The escapees are lucky one of those didn't happen to be swimming by when they were swimming ashore...), they're not unaccustomed to violence, and the prison uniforms their captives are wearing mark them as potentially worth a cash reward if turned in. If they resist, well, maybe they'll be worth a little bit even dead.

It's never too late or too unexpected of a moment to start one's bounty hunting career, I suppose.

Fortunately, it only takes a little bit of talking to change their minds. Especially once Cassa is able to get one of them to explain why they're so hard-up for cash. Pollution from the industrial plant that the prisoners were enslaved at has been damaging the marine ecosystem, so nearby fishermen are having to work harder and harder to make ends meet. Catching a pair of escaped convicts might be a bit of an unexpected silver lining, for them. From there, the prisoners are pretty quickly able to leverage the fishermen's resentment of the empire to turn them around.

The Galactic Empire is really a masterclass at making friends, isn't it? I guess it's like Cassa said to Luthen back on Ferrix, and what...whatsisname, that one heist crew member...said during the Aldhani arc. When you're that high on your own supply, you don't even pay attention to how many toes you're stepping on.

Also, now that we see them closer up, these fishermen are clearly members of two different species.

This isn't just some wayside indigenous species getting trampled on, then. A multispecies society implies a bit more interconnectedness and sophistication. I'm not sure if we're ever going to see these people again, but - as with so many other details in this show - you can feel the work that went into making this feel like a glimpse at a whole other story. Another entire tragedy caused by the regime, added onto the pile.

Anyway, Froggy and Chonker release the humans and give them a ride to a town they can hopefully disappear in.

Like I said, I hope we learn more about these guys. Even if we don't, I like that the show made them seem like a complex people with a complex history even in this brief appearance.

On to Coruscant! While Luthen is off doing whatever shenanigans he's currently doing, Val shows up at the antique shop. Leia, who had been holding down the fort here as per usual during Luthen's errands, is irritated by how blunt and unsecretive Val is. And, honestly, the way Val acts in this scene is legitimately weird for her. Demanding to see Luthen, barely even bothering to use coded language, etc. Leia finally talks straight with her, but she makes it clear how dangerous it is for them to be doing this, and generally seems as shocked and indignant as I'd expect given the risks and recklessness we're talking about here.

The way that they bounce off each other is also just...weirdly catty. Even with the way Val is acting, it feels like there's some kind of personality clash between her and Leia that it's bringing to the surface, and neither of them cover themselves in glory here (though it's ultimately Val who's being reckless and breaking protocol). A memorable exchange is when Leia tells Val that Luthen would tear her a new one for being this brazen if he were here, and Val responds with "I gave him Aldhani. What have you done lately?"

Which, um. Val, what the actual fuck is that?

Leia explains to her that she has her hands full pretty much 24/7 managing communications and arranging meetings without which field operations like Val's could never be launched. That unlike Val, she doesn't get to do revolution for a few months and then take some time off until she's needed again; she's always needed.

...okay, rewatching this conversation, the cattiness is much more on Val's side than Leia's. Leia is really only guilty of letting Val get under her skin, and she doesn't start scratching back until Val's been antagonizing her for a while.

And...the way they're (mostly Val, but Leia is also somewhat guilty of this) talking about their value to Luthen really rubs me the wrong way. Feels very much like a personality cult starting to grow like a cancer within this ideological organization. Either that, or Val just has a crush on Luthen and is jealous (given her maybe-breakup with Sinta, I could definitely see a rebound infatuation happening). Or both, those are far from mutually exclusive. Either way, personalities overshadowing the cause is the bane of activism of any kind, violent or otherwise, so this could become a real problem if something isn't done about it.

Anyway, the reason Val is here is because she got word from Sinta that Mom died and a funeral is going to be held soon. If anything is likely to bring Cassa back home after he went to ground, it would be this. So, since she doesn't have another mission to go on anyway, Val wants to go back to Ferrix and reinforce Sinta again.

Given Val's resistance to the idea of killing Cassa in the first place, I think it's safe to assume that what she actually wants to do is *prevent* Sinta from doing the deed if Cassa does show up. And probably make another attempt at bringing him aboard on a more permanent basis.

Alright, that explains why Val is being like this. It doesn't excuse it, but it explains it, and the explanation makes her look better than the alternatives I can readily think of. Luthen and Leia weren't there when Cassa killed the traitor pro bono, passed up an opportunity to steal all the money himself when there was literally nothing preventing him from doing so, and stayed around for as long as the doctor was trying to save Namek. They heard about it, but hearing about it isn't the same thing as seeing it yourself. Importantly, Sinta wasn't there for that part either. So, it makes sense that Val would be having a crisis of conscience about this in a way that's making her a little bit erratic, especially coming at the same time as her relationship troubles.

And, to give Val more credit...I maintain that she was in the right about what to do with Cassa in the first place.

The tone of the conversation still feels sort of dangerously personality-culty, but I get where the raging emotions are coming from at least. Leia tells Val she'll pass this onto Luthen ASAP, and Val heads off to say goodbye to her family on Coruscant before going back to Ferrix.

Leia is really not happy about this behavior of hers, though.

In context, I can't blame her. I just hope that resentment doesn't lead her to do anything stupid, though.

...

Of course, what none of them know is that Dierdre is hoping to use this funeral as a trap for Cassa and/or other associates of "Axis." Cassa is in no position to make it over even if he would want to (he's going to be devastated when he learns his mom died without him. Assuming she actually is dead, of course), but if Val happens to get facial ID'd there as a close relative of a left-wing senator who may already be under financial investigation, well. Yeah.

We'll see how this plays out, I suppose.

...

We return to Ferrix in advance of Val, and get another heartbreaking scene with Cuckcube. He refuses to leave Mom's house, even with everything shut down, even with the place no longer inhabited by humans. She told one of her friends that she wanted him to have her droid after she dies, mostly because she doesn't want said droid to be lonely, but the man has a bitch of a time getting Cuckcube to go through with a relocation even for Mom's own sake.

The way he's parked in his little charging-frame and refusing to leave it is so much like a dog refusing to leave its shed. ​

In the end, Cuckcube manages to beg and wheedle the guy into spending one night here in Mom's old house, with him. After that, the droid says, it will move into his place. Cuckcube just can't bring itself to fully internalize the fact of her death just yet, please.

HMMMM. Okay, I'm starting to get suspicious. If Mom isn't actually dead, she might have someone else being in her house tonight (or at least, Cuckcube himself being there until tomorrow) as part of a plan. Cuckcube is terrible at lying, but she might have managed to get him to manage it, just this once, for her.

We'll see, I guess.

Across town, in the hotel that the ISB appropriated as their local headquarters, Bix gets brought out of her cell for another interrogation section. She's glassy-eyed. Staggering. The vogon poetry is still burning in her ears and brain. It's not clear if she's even capable of speech again yet, but they tell her to just nod yes or no if she can't talk. Refusal to comply will mean another pair of headphones blasting vogon poetry, and with her system already weakened it'll probably kill her this time.

However, the mugshot they're desperate for her to identify as "Axis" looks absolutely nothing like Luthen Rael.

In fact, it's the militia leader who Dierdre is about to ambush. They're trying to determine if this guy is actually their man, or if he's just another of Axis' many spokes.

Of course, Bix doesn't know that. She might be afraid that they're trying to test her, with a "yes" answer for a face that they know well isn't Axis' getting her more punishment.

So, she hesitates. Looking terrified. A "yes" answer would indeed be the best possible one to give, since they're about to kill this guy anyway and if they think he's Axis then they're likely to ease up the investigation afterward. But, Bix has no way of knowing this. Should she say no and possibly protect herself from more torture, possibly to death? Should she say yes and possibly protect the people she's been working with? No guarantees either way. That makes it harder, not easier.

We cut away before she gives her answer.


Splitting it here.