1x07 Announcement

Without lots of action, without much of the popular Star Wars lore like the Force, Jedi, Lightsabers, this show delivers with every new episode.

It was very interesting to see that Mon Mothma was reluctant to delve fully into engaging the Empire in open Rebellion. We've never seen that side. I also like that they adressed that people are and will be dying like Luthen told her. It's not much of romantisizing. It's war. And the Empire responds the only way it knows how. By asserting even more power. By being predictable, thus playing into the Rebels hands.

"The more you tighten your grip, Tarkin, the more star systems will slip through your fingers."

Which at least some inside the Empire seem to understand while others still think of their position.

We also see the glimmer of hope from the people that things are about to change for the better when they hear off the attack on Aldhani. And althought Star Wars is not known for portraying contemporary problems within the story telling, I wonder if the similarities are just random.

I really interested how characters like Syril and Dedra will develop moving forward. Could they actually (well maybe one of them) end up with the Rebels ?

Oh, and the world building in this show is also great: Bureau of Standards. It's the Empire put in a single building and again something that reminds me of our present.

[7.5/10] This episode feels more like a mini-epilogue to the first six, and a brief kickoff to the back half of the episode, than its own part of the story. But as with the other flotsam and jetsam-filled installments of the series to date, all the individual scenes and sequences are good enough that I don’t mind.

My favorite scene in here is Mon Mothma confiding in her childhood friend turned banking expert at the dinner party. Her savvy and discretion at seeking help with her clandestine activities, is masterful. And I like the idea that she masquerades as a humanitarian irritant, so that nobody suspects the actual, more blockbuster work that she’s involved in. She plays the moment with her friend perfectly, and explains her ethos of blending in with the Coruscant elite so that she can undermine them from the inside.

At the same time I like the fact that this recognizes revolution is a dirty business. The events of A New Hope are pretty noble. Farmboy and Princess defeat the evil empire. Star Wars was not built to be much more complex than that at the time. But addressing the Rebellion in the modern age, I appreciate how Luthen shocks Mothma a bit by revealing they weren’t just building a network together -- they were starting a revolution. I appreciate his acknowledgement and her being aghast at the fact that this means the Empire will be cracking down, something Luthen sees as a necessary evil to make more people wake up and realize they’re being oppressed. I like his assistant talking with Vel and seeming entirely unsentimental about what was lost on Aldhani, giving Vel the mission to kill Cassisan and little else but a chiding for sending or receiving messages.

This is not the noble Rebellion, or the cuddly Rebellion (no offense, Ewoks). It’s the “by any means necessary” Rebellion. That’s a little bit concerning and a little bit scary, and it should be.

But I also like the ISB response we see. Meero makes her play to try to address the budding Rebel alliance. She goes outside her jurisdiction, using the Empire’s further emergency powers crackdown in the wake of Aldhani to access the intel she wants. But when called out by her rival in front of the boss, she lays out her evidence, questions the self-serving-ness of Blevin’s theatrics, and is even willing to question Major Partagaz’s sector system, noting that “systems either change or die.” the fact that she gets an attaboy, not an admonition, for her initiative is a great win for her, and I appreciate that there’s a formidable opponent working for the Empire. It heps make the challenges of Cassian and Mothma and Luthen more meaningful when there’s a real threat, and not just dunces, on the other side.

(As an aside, it’s a nice easter egg for The Clone Wars fans to see Admiral Yularen in the flesh, even if his characterization is a little different and more commanding here than in the animated shows.)

Speaking of dunces, there’s something rightly pathetic about seeing Karn reduced to working in the Star Wars equivalent of a government cubicle farm. In a weird way, he’s a good guy, or at least a knight templar-type. He believes in justice, or his conception of it anyway, and thinks it’s been miscarried in the case of Andor running free and him being blamed for it. Again, I don’t like the guy, but I sympathize with him, which is a sign of good characterization. If you can feel for someone, even if you’re rooting against their crusade, given how far they’ve fallen and how human they feel in their broken grace and over-parented stature, your story’s doing something right.

I’ll admit, I’m less interested in Andor’s return to Ferrix for whatever reason. It’s not bad or anything, and I’d go so far as to call it a necessary coda after how important it was to him launching into this line of work. But it didn’t move me in the same way, necessarily.

That said, I like the hints we have of his family life. I like him returning for Maarva. I like him still being haunted by his adoptive father’s death for being in the wrong place at the wrong time under the auspices of the Empire’s brutality. Granted, I don’t fully understand why Maarva can’t go with him. I get it theoretically. She still wants to fight the Empire and thinks they’ve bloodied its nose, whereas Andor just wants to run away. But it’s not clear to me what fighting she’s doing from some backwater mid-rim planet under Imperial control.

All that said, therein lies the magic of acting. If I stop and process it from a pure logic standpoint, I’m not sure I entirely follow. But by god, Fiona Shaw does her monologue with such conviction, such emotion, that you cannot help but buy it in the moment. Having talented performers goes a long way, and Andor is one of the best-cast shows I’ve seen in a long time. Almost every performer in every role, no matter how big or small, is delivering exactly what’s needed with a sense of layer and characterization. It’s a thing of beauty.

I’m not as enamored with Cssian’s scenes with Bix, ,but they’re fine. They serve their purpose. Despite his connection to this place, Cassian is persona non grata given the toes he’s stepped on and the trouble he’s caused. He clearly still cares for Bix and cares for Maarva, but has to leave both behind, with only the money he owes to make it up to everyone. There’s merit in that.

The glimpse we get of him in Space Miami isn’t bad either. Again, it’s mostly setup for what’s to come, but him living the life of a libertine and still getting caught up given the strictness and harshness of the Empire in the wake of Aldhani shows he can only run so far after the problems he himself had a hand in causing. Plus hey, it’s his first encounter with an Imperial security droid that we’ve seen, so that’s portentous given what we know from Rogue One.

Overall, this episode succeeds nicely as a digestif after the fireworks of the Adlhani heist, cleaning up the loose ends and setting up new ones.

This was a really interesting albeit slow episode with many intriguing threads. I really liked that Andor went back to Ferrix. I had almost expected that with these three-episode-arcs he wouldn't and we wouldn't see those characters and the established city anymore.
At times what is presented just doesn't feel like star wars very much. It just seems too earthly or too much like other fictional worlds which are a lot more Sci-Fi and a lot less fantastic. It was a step up that they finally included a few more aliens but still too few to make the world seem really alien.
I liked the depiction of everything happening inside the ISB although the leader is a bit too friendly and understanding for my taste (and understanding of how to acquire a high position within the empire).
I have one big question though: Was that female informant or spy supposed to be Leia? She looked a lot like Carrie Fisher back in the day to me but would be way too old since Leia should be around 15 at that time. And while we are at the topic of (possible) cameos: Yularen's character was a bit off when compared to his appearances in Clone Wars and Rebels.
I am however really excited were all this leads especially whats going to happen to Andor himself.