Star Wars Andor S2E2: "Sagrona Teema"

Now that's a mouthful of an episode title.


The fight that just broke out in the jungle gets ugly fast, with at least two rebels dead within half a minute of frantic laser fire. What did they even come to blows over again? Probably who took the last cookie or something, idk. The aftermath has the survivors split into two groups, one sheltered in Cassa's stolen gunship, and the other in the rebels' own broken-down shuttle. Cassa was unfortunately not able to get away from the cookie warriors in the chaos, and even more unfortunately has now been dragged off to the shuttle group. Which means he's being guarded and restrained across the impromptu killzone from his own ship.

A great tone-setting moment is when, while the brainlets who have captured him are hunkered down whispering darkly about the dirty trick that they think the other brainlets are about to pull next, a restrained Cassa just tiredly tilts his head up to catch a mouthful of rainwater.

It's like watching a bunch of unruly kids ganging up to shove the one adult into time out, and the adult just gritting his teeth and waiting for it to be over.

He tries to tell his captors that maybe they ought to be getting some containers out to capture rainwater themselves, since they've been going on and on about how they've run out of food and water supplies. The captors proceed to do this while stubbornly not acknowledging that it was their "imperial captive's" idea.

Meanwhile, both groups send people to crawl around the vegetation in the killzone between their impromptu camps to try and recover the bodies of their dead. The scouts discover that this conflict has, just in the last few minutes since the shooting stopped, acquired a new side. Corpse-eating jungle monsters.

Very fast, very stealthy corpse-eating jungle monsters.

Eh, probably nothing to worry about.

Hop skip and a jump to Coruscant, where Diedre has just returned after the meeting with Director Orson "why is no one taking my little metal balls seriously" Krennick and the others. And, she's not thrilled about this whole Gorman thing. Probably not for moral reasons, but more because she thinks it's a waste of her time. She has no idea what "energy independence" is a euphemism for, and she has no curiosity to find out. Most likely, she just thinks they're trying to line the pockets of whichever shitty megacorp happened to buy Palpatine a new speedboat most recently.

So, she asks her boss if she can please keep hunting actual criminals instead of doing this fashionista-bullying bullshit on Gorman.

Unfortunately for Dierdre, that fuckup on Ferrix isn't something she can get away from. With no evidence of an Axis contact ever having surfaced on Ferrix, and her heavy-handed policing having spurred a riot that killed many ISB personnel and nearly Dierdre herself, Dierdre's rising star status within the bureau has basically died. The bossman makes it clear to her that bullshit corpo psyops are what awaits bad little girls who embarass the bureau, and that frankly she should be grateful to be given any assignments at all.

On one hand, it's painfully clear to both the audience and to Dierdre that all the institutional sexism she thought she had finally conquered is now back with a vengeance. Which really means that she had never conquered it at all, and her status as a diversity hire isn't going away no matter how well she proves herself.

On the other hand, she needed to be rescued by fucking Cyril Karn. There are some things you just don't recover from, and this is one of those things. In light of that, well, it's kind of hard to blame her ISB colleagues.

You know, where is Cyril, anyway? We didn't see him at all last episode come to think of it. Hmm.

From a frustrated Dierdre, we move on to Luthen and KCKCKCKCKlaya at the Chandrila wedding retreat. Luthen is making himself useful helping Mon's household staff arrange the party preparations, and also juggling the ominous silence reported by Klaya. Despite the risks, she tapped into their pirate radio network this morning. Still nothing about Cassa, the contact he was supposed to meet, or the status of that TIE prototype.

Interestingly, while Klaya wants to go back to Coruscant so she can use the big hyperwave receiver with its million proxies to get through to their contacts, Luthen is the one who's reluctant to let her go. He thinks that their mission here at the wedding party really calls for both of their physical presences. But, after some back-and-forth, she manages to convince him to let her go back to Coruscant, provided she leaves the space Bondmobile with him.

What the heck are they doing on Chandrila that requires both of them to be onsite conspiring with Gul'Dan for multiple consecutive days? I'm starting to think that the TIE gunship isn't a birthday present for Luthen at all, but rather a wedding present for Gul'Dan Junior! I'm sure he'll like it. It's got to be a lot more fun than his wife at least.

This also segues into a brief conversation between Mon Mothma and her husband Man Mothma. The latter is in a poor mood. On top of being disgusted by some recent performative nouveau riche antics of Gul'Dan's, he also suspects his wife of sleeping with her banker friend. Or at least, he's pretending to suspect her of it to get back at her for wrongly accusing him of gambling again. One or the other. He doesn't seem to be terribly bothered about it in either case, just sort of annoyed, which I suppose is what I'd expect given the state of their marriage.

More importantly though, he tells her that while she was consoling Lita last night, bankerbro got so drunk he had to be taken home. Which reminds Mon that he never got to tell her the important bad news that he'd been trying to get a chance to relate in private.

That's ominous.

Also ominous is the way Man Mothma was sort of hanging back and staring at Luthen and Klaya from across the hall before this conversation with Mon started. Like he finds them suspicious.

There was no mention of Mon being married, in the original trilogy. It was pretty clear from her introduction in "Andor" that she and him would separate soon. Now though, I'm starting to think that Mon Mothma circa ANH might be a widow rather than a divorcee. Yeah. Yeah, I don't think Man is outliving this series. I just wonder who does the deed, and what the catalyst ends up being.

Well, on to Bix and the other Ferrix refugees on Mina-Rau. The presence of Space ICE is making everyone antsy. The farm overseer they work under is assuring them that the imperials won't pry too deeply. After all, they need the grain to keep shipping, and they know that if they arrest all the undocumented workers the farms will shut down. Surely they understand that they'll just be sabotaging their own economy if they push too hard. They couldn't be completely insane.

So yeah, surely, they just need to sit tight and wait for the imperials to finish making themselves look like they're doing something important before they move on. These are reasonable government people after all. They can be counted on to behave reasonably.

Well. That's pretty much all they have to tell themselves for now. Trying to run is just going to attract attention at this point, so sitting tight and hoping for the best is their one option.

Additionally, they don't want to go anywhere until Cassian knows what they're doing, and they're still waiting for him to come back. So Cassa is still in touch. Possibly even living on the farm with them when Luthen doesn't have any jobs for him to do. Alright, good to know.

...

As an aside here, I kind of wish the show would explain what the situation with the work visas is here, rather than just expecting the audience to project their familiarity with the American agricultural sector onto the story. There are reasons why the US farming industry is the way it is, after all, and I'm not really sure how similar conditions are supposed to have arisen on this Outer Rim planet.

Like, why is there a labor shortage that can only be met with migrant workers? Is it wage disparity like with the real life USA and Latin America, or something different? For that matter, why is the Galactic Empire - rather than some planetary authority - in charge of dealing with this? It seems like it would be all the same to them if workers from one planet are depressing wages and inflating the labor pool on another. Undocumented immigrants seem like something the local Mina-Rau government would care about while Coruscant rolls its eyes and snorts under its breath. Unless it's a security concern, but in that case what is there on Mina-Rau that they're afraid of criminals getting close to?

These questions could have perfectly good answers. I can get the argument that the explanations aren't really important to the story, and what really matters is simply that this IS the state of things with immigration on Mina-Rau. But I still would rather have at least a little bit to go on, because otherwise my mind just can't help but fixate on all the reasons why it seems like this situation SHOULDN'T be like the US-Mexican border.

...

Things escalate later that day when a team of imperial labor inspectors come by the work camp, and one of them seems to take an interest in Bix.

He doesn't seem to suspect her of anything, as best I can tell. His interest appears to be purely flirtatious. But that definitely puts Bix in a hard situation. On one hand, reciprocating this guy's interest might be a way of getting on his good side. On the other, it's also going to bring down more of his attention, and possibly that of his colleagues as well if they get curious about the local girl he's taking out on dates. I don't think he's laying a trap, but he doesn't necessarily need to be doing it on purpose for that to be the effect.

And, it quickly gets worse from there. Bix tries to play it safe and claims to be married. And the Space ICE agent responds by getting pushy. And creepy. Really creepy. In a way that suggests he's the sort of guy who saying "yes" to a date with might be exactly as dangerous as saying "no." The kind of guy who specifically tries to pick up women who he has unaccountable institutional power over, as opposed to the kind who just hits on girls that are around. Most memorable line is when - after asking for details about her husband and trying to spot inconsistencies - he says that her husband is awfully irresponsible for leaving his wife alone when Space ICE is here blacking out communications as they do.

Bix doesn't let her breath out until he's gone. And she doesn't breathe all that comfortably even afterward. The fact that she's still waking up in a cold sweat screaming "oh freddled gruntbuggly" every night isn't making her any less uncomfortable around creepy men in uniform than she'd otherwise be, either.

From the sound of things, the imperials are going to be around for a while yet. They're being awfully thorough.


Splitting it here.