Andor Recap: The West X-Wing

The Galactic Senate has a fair amount of screen time in Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith, which recently completed a successful weeklong theatrical rerelease celebrating its upcoming 20th anniversary. It’s where, as Padme Amidala laments, “liberty dies … with thunderous applause.” It later gets half-trashed in a fight between Yoda and the newly self-appointed Emperor Palpatine (the vast dome structure with its endless field of hovering pods is too big for even two formidable Force users to really destroy it), and following its rebirth as the Imperial Senate, it hasn’t been seen too much in the past 20 years of post-Sith Star Wars stuff. There are glimpses in the shows, including Andor, but it’s not a primary focus for the time periods covered by the sequel trilogy or the various series. But it’s the focus of this terrific episode of Andor, which takes place largely in and around the building, right from the evocative first shot of the episode, where a shimmering puddle image of the structure at night is warped and rendered unrecognizable by a downpour of rain. Okay, maybe it’s not subtle, but it gets the message across.

The cut to the Senate atrium follows Bail Organa as he meets up with Mon Mothma, witnessing the senator from Ghorman getting hauled away by Empire goons. The Bail/Mon conversation lays out the episode’s central dilemma: Mon Mothma needs to speak out against the Ghorman Massacre, while Bail Organa can’t join her in full-throated support of the Rebels, because “Yavin isn’t ready” — and once they come out against the Empire for good, they’ll need to flee to the rebel base, leaving the Imperial Senate for good. Listening devices are everywhere; even planning to make a speech, at this point, is tantamount to showing up and waving a blaster on the Senate floor. On top of which, Luthen insists that Bail Organa’s team, the one who will escort Mon to Yavin after her speech makes continuing in the Senate impossible, is “corrupted.” So most of the episode focuses on whether Mon Mothma can go through with her planned speech, and how she’ll exit the Senate afterward. In the contained, not-quite-bottled parameters of the episode and its focus on the symbolic power of rhetoric, it’s a little bit like a life-or-death, galactic version of The West Wing, only these co-workers don’t like each other enough to do banter.

To that end, Luthen has enlisted Cassian to disguise himself as a journalist (Ronnie Gujah, of the “Mid Rim Network”) and escort Mon from her speech all the way to Yavin. Kleya preps him, while also assuming Luthen’s job of viciously berating anyone who even thinks of curtailing their dedication to the rebellion. These aren’t the most dramatically satisfying scenes, in part because they recall exchanges from other episodes, and in part because Cassian doesn’t seem particularly convinced that he really wants or needs to leave the Rebellion — not fully, anyway. He repeatedly professes a desire to “make his own decisions,” and what that would look like (severing ties with Luthen, or with all of the rebels?) is never really articulated to anyone who demands more of him.

After much hand-wringing over which team will take custody of Mon Mothma, at just about the halfway point of the episode she delivers her speech, and I think by this point we all understood that it would resonate beyond the fictional world of the Galactic Empire in BBY 2. Yet it’s stirring all the same to hear it said directly, eloquently, and forcefully, a worthy sequel to the death of liberty on the Senate floor, this time addressed with the full force of everyone within microphone’s reach: “The distance between what is said and what is known to be true has become an abyss.” Beyond taking aim at Trump-era lies — which, after all, extend back to 2016 or earlier at this point — there’s something pointed, within the show and outside of it, in Mon using her voice to decry the “unprovoked genocide” on Ghorman, at a time when authoring a student op-ed can be cited as cause for revocation of a visa out here in the real world.

It follows, then, that Mon’s speech is eventually shut down by the Empire. But she says what needs saying, and Cassian intercepts her before the corrupted Organa team. A tense, winding pursuit through the halls of the Senate building ensues, the antiseptic emptiness of some of the hallways emphasizing how the venue has become more for show than a part of living, breathing governance. After some quick shooting from Cassian, shocking Mon Mothma — who still comes from a world of decorum, even as she has decided to defy it — they make it into a speeder and head to the old safehouse. Wilmon is there, too, wounded from the Ghorman Massacre, and in need of a “real doctor” (does that just mean a non-amateur, or specifically a human, non-droid one?), returns to Yavin with Cass.

Mon Mothma will join them later, after broadcasting another speech as far as possible in order to, as Kleya says, “rewrite the story,” presumably aligning Mon with the Yavin-based rebellion rather than Luthen’s shadowy band of proto-rebels, who are probably easier for state media to brand as terrorists. It’s a canny riff on origin-story expectations to essentially keep Mon Mothma’s official, public joining of the Rebel Alliance offscreen — mentioned and felt, but not actually seen. We’ve seen a different Mon consorting with Luthen, despite how she might chafe at his leadership, which gives Andor a sense of intimacy and makes the lack of that quality in her “future” (past) appearances seem all the more productive and intentional, even as the show has clearly back-solved for them.

Back on Yavin, Cassian tells Bix he doesn’t consider this triumph, or any of his others, the result of skills, so much as luck, and he wants to quit before that luck runs out, finding a new place to settle down with Bix. (Is it an interesting character note or just a weird convenience that he uses plainer reasoning on Bix than he tries out on Luthen or Kleya?) The next morning, though, he discovers that Bix has decided to keep him in the fight: She has left without him, because she believes he will help the rebels win, and that he cannot be encumbered by a concern for her safety.

There are some lovely style choices in the staging of Bix’s farewell to Cassian, from the sound design emphasizing the unnervingly gentle chirps of nature as he awakes, to Bix’s narration beginning before Cassian discovers her message, to the initial and repeated shot of Bix positioned to look as if she’s addressing the camera — which of course she is, as she makes a video message for Cass. The cut from Bix’s message-closing pause after “I’ll find you to” to a dead-center shot of Cassian’s face would be the closer to a near-perfect episode. In fact, let’s pretend it is. After a lot of fuss over a big-picture speech, it’s a speech to an audience of one that finally seals Cassian’s fate. Great as this episode is, no thunderous applause is heard, or necessary.

Rebel Yells

• Of course, Bix’s message is not the actual episode-closer. The need to move things along — this is already the last episode in the BBY 2 arc! — means that a beautiful and tense episode is appended with a four-minute postscript that plays a little too much like K-2SO: Origins. It’s fine, fun even, but doesn’t precisely match the rest of the episode’s tone or themes. Nor is it really especially necessary to hear a little more of the nuts and bolts of why K-2SO’s reprogramming isn’t really reprogramming, or see a little more of the droid’s monstrous strength after the previous episode’s terrifying demo. Are there any Andor fans who need this scene in order to feel on the hook to watch the last three installments ever next week?!

• Back to the beginning, and how great this episode is: The other thing about that evocative opening puddle shot is that it briefly makes the Senate building look a bit like something from the underwater Gungan city on Naboo. I’m sorry, I’m just reporting facts here.

• Reporting facts, just like someone might try to do on the … Mid Rim Network. I’m sorry, I just wish someone was trying a little harder to show us something interesting with regards to galactic journalists, even fake ones.

• They should have known earlier that the Organa staffers weren’t all on the level. Why, that guy claiming to be Bail Organa looks completely different from his old pictures!

Related

• Andor Dared to Say ‘Genocide’