Star Wars Andor S2E4: "Ever Been to Ghorman" (continued)

Cassa and Bix's spy power couple dynamic is quickly juxtaposed against Cyril and Dierdre's. Things are very similar in some ways, and very different in others.

Most significantly, the latter pair are actually physically separated. Dierdre is still on Coruscant, with Cyril having been relocated to Ghorman alone in order to avoid suspicion. While his direct superiors at the local government complex probably know that his transfer is ISB business, they've kept his connection to that organization secret. Cyril isn't even carrying a secure comm unit for fear that someone might find it in his apartment and get suspicious; in order to report to Dierdre, he has to find excuses to use the ultra-secure ansible station in the special saferoom at his workplace. Sometimes this means sneaky visits during lunch break. Sometimes it means having to lie to the guards about having forgotten something in his office after hours so that he can slip back into the building.

Also, one of the guards was playing a pod racing game on a nearby computer at the building entrance when Cyril approached. Which is pretty kawaii.

Is that an actual podracing game that they're sneaking in some product placement for? I'll bet it is, lol.

It's also soon revealed that the little string contraption Cyril has been tying near his apartment door has been to detect break-ins without alerting the burglar(s). It is because of this that he knows that people have indeed been breaking into his apartment and not stealing anything. Just as he knows that his own office comm unit (the one he talks to his mother on) is being tapped. Looks like the decision to not carry any spy paraphernalia at all was in fact a good one.

This all makes sense for a secret psyop. What surprises me quite a bit more is that Dierdre is receiving her reports from him at home in their apartment, on what I think is supposed to be a normal civilian hyperspace phone.

And hell, even if that is a secure ISB-issue unit that she was allowed to keep at home, look at those windows. We've seen in through those windows before, so they definitely aren't one-way. I guess it's possible she can adjust their one-way opacity, in which case that does help, but if not...um. She's a high-ranking ISB officer. There is a much-greater-than-zero possibility that there's a drone filming through that window at all times and she's not sitting at an angle that would prevent lip-reading. Or hell, there could be a drone with a microphone hidden in the hall right outside her apartment door, disguised as an insect or a custodial unit or something.

I feel like she's getting overconfident. Being a little sloppy. Certainly much less careful than her (completely untrained) deputized civilian boyfriend is being. This may end up being what eventually leads to her undoing.

For now, she's pleased to hear about him being invited to a meeting, even though her enthusiasm is tempered by it apparently being a public meeting. His insistence that he's being wiretapped, apartment-searched, and followed in the streets does help a bit. We get a reminder of what a moron Cyril is despite his recent displays of competence when he goes whiny puppy mode at Dierdre telling him that she's not going to storm the meeting with a SWAT team as soon as he catches enough on tape. Fucking lol. What, does he think the ISB is just hoping to get a couple of people for suspicion of breaking and entering? Or is he expecting the rebels to talk about bigtime terrorism plots at an entry-level meeting in front of unvetted new recruits? This ain't RWBY, bro.

Still, while most of his specific misconceptions are really dumb, the main underlying one is reasonable. Cyril is under the impression that they're doing a sting operation to arrest some rebels. He has NOT been told that they're actually doing a psyop. If he learns what Dierdre is actually using him for, well...I doubt Cyril is going to have a heel-face turn after the last couple of times that he seemed like he might have one and didn't, but it's not impossible. He does, at the end of the day, see himself as a hero, and the world around him being one that supports a heroic narrative. Sting operations are compatible with that narrative. Deliberately fomenting terrorism that wouldn't have otherwise happened in order to justify ethnic cleansing is not (at least, not unless you're in the know about the death star and A-okay with it). So, IF there's ever going to be any kind of remorse or redemption for Cyril, it'll probably be when he finds out. More likely though, he'll just invent some justifications for it after the fact, or bite the bullet and become an (even) worse person. We'll see, I guess.

Dierdre has a big meeting the next morning, in which ISB bossman guy (not Director Yularen, one of the guys directly under him who Dierdre most often reports to) hasn't been thrilled with recent performances. They've got a ton of simultaneous investigations into suspected rebel activity going on, but nobody has much tangible progress to show.

At best, there's one guy who managed to bust an arms-smuggling ring and make a bunch of confiscations and arrests. Some of the weapons taken in are believed to have been stolen from the imperial military via the Axis network. And yet, somehow, the other guy who's been running the Axis investigation since Dierdre's downfall hasn't been involved yet at all. How is this possible? Why is nobody communicating? Why is information coming in so slowly?

There are a bunch of answers to that bunch of questions, of course. Unfortunately, the one with the most explanatory power - that no one who actually believes in anything is able to last long in the ISB's upper ranks, and therefore it's all being run by self-interested psychopaths determined to outshine and undermine each other to advance their own careers - is not one that can be voiced. Still, one of the other, more limited-scope correct answers IS still given, courtesy of Luthen's man-on-the-inside Lonnie.

They're arresting too many people. Wringing out more information than they can efficiently process. While their ability to detect, interdict, and arrest has grown massively in recent years due to the post-Aldhani legislation, they've developed a major bottleneck on what they can do afterward.

He of course can't mention the part where relying on torture as the primary means of extracting information from arrestees creates a million false positives that cause agency resources to be wasted on wild goose chase after wild goose chase. Saying that would be a great way to be taught vogon poetry until you start generating false positives yourself. So, Lonnie wisely says just enough about what they're doing wrong on this front without saying too much.

Anyway, bossman agrees with Lonnie. And says that he was already aware of this issue, and has already requisitioned more manpower and information technology to process and correlate the interrogation data. He just wanted to see who among the investigations department would give him anything like an honest answer. So, Lonnie has won some browny points. Good for him, and (indirectly) good for the rebellion.

After the meeting, there's a little scene of Dierdre's replacement on the Axis case being grateful to Lonnie for helping take the heat off of him back there. And then Dierdre showing up and being catty at both of them on account of wanting her old job back.

Of course, in the ISB, "catty" means "like a bloodthirsty saber-toothed tiger." You can tell she's plotting this guy's murder and vice versa. It's just how things are at the office.

Lonnie is doing a good job of getting in with the guy in charge of hunting Luthen (where he can covertly sabotage him in small ways). I'm guessing that was why he raised his hand in class back when the teacher was grilling said other guy. Well played.

Following this scene is a little montage of Luthen and Mon Mothma trying to figure out what's going on with the planet Ghorman. Or, more specifically, why the imperial government has decided to shit on it so relentlessly for the last year or so. Neither Mon's political contacts nor Luthen's dissident ones are able to make heads or tails of it. There's tax hikes, regulatory chaos that force local industries to close everything down and restructure over and over again, land appropriation for military construction that makes zero strategic sense, you name it. The weirdest part is that for all anyone can tell, Ol' Sheevy just picked Ghorman out of a hat. And, to Mon Mothma's ever-growing frustration, she can't seem to muster any senate support in Ghorman's defense.

Or, well, she at least acts like it's making her frustrated. In the wake of recent character development, it's just as likely that she's completely written off legislation as a way of getting things done and is just play-acting her old self. If so though, she's doing a good job. But anyway, the rabid anti-Ghor sentiment is weirdly pervasive for how suddenly it started, and few senators are willing to stick their necks out against the state department when that subject comes up.

Mon also points out that crime on Ghorman has been on the rise, but only since these bizarre targeted policies began. Ditto several other formerly peaceful worlds that have had the dubious honor of imperial "security" bestowed upon them, but Ghorman is especially notable due to how recently and how sharply the change came about.

On one hand, the Empire's ability to create enemies for itself to persecute is depressingly vast. On the other, that plays right into Luthen's own strategy of turning up the temperature too fast for the frog to ignore. The senate might be useless, but the target of his strategy was never the galaxy's political class.

Luthen's next underhive meeting with Lonnie is...off-kilter. In a way that's hard not to find a little disturbing.

Luthen randomly stops the elevator at a random floor ABOVE the one that Lonnie is expecting to meet him at. Startling the latter to the point of pulling a gun on him, to which Luthen reacts with seemingly honest shock and bafflement. There are no niceties from Luthen. No patience. None of the control and poker-faced coolness that we saw in previous scenes like this. Luthen seems scattered. Desperate. Almost unhinged.

I don't know if something is supposed to have happened to him in the last year, or if it's just the constant stress and pressure finally starting to crack him. Either way, it's a pretty alarming change.

Granted, Luthen may be acting like this on purpose to make Lonnie think he's losing it as some kind of complicated ploy. That would definitely be in character for him. But somehow, I don't think so this time.

Anyway, Lonnie nervously fills him in on recent developments. The guy the ISB has hunting "Axis" doesn't seem like too much of a threat, and Lonnie is taking steps to keep him that way. Also worth noting is that his more competent predecessor, Dierdre Miero, isn't actually being put out to pasture with busywork after her Ferrix fiasco like most people think. Lonnie is pretty sure less than three other people in the entire ISB know about this, but he's almost completely sure that she's doing something secret on Ghorman.

That gives Luthen pause. Even if Dierdre's new assignment is indeed a demotion/penalty, why would the ISB be doing anything that secretive on Ghorman at all? And, why would they have a terrorist-hunter - disgraced or otherwise - be the one doing it?

He decides that this warrants further investigation.

Meanwhile, back on Ghorman itself, Cyril goes to that "secret gathering" he was invited to, and that he was hoping Dierdre would be ready to bust with a bunch of armed commandoes. And...it's literally just a town hall meeting. Politicians with name tags behind podiums. Media presence. Nothing illicit, or even covert. Literally a fucking town hall meeting.

Cyril...

...

.......

...words fail me.


Anyway, this town hall meeting and its aftermath ends up being kind of a loredump that contextualizes Ghorman and its status within the Galactic Empire. Lots to talk about. So, though this post is a bit on the short side, I think I'll split it here.