Across a Little Sea

Performances were king in last night's new Andor. Particularly when it came to Andy Serkis, Geneveive O'Reilly, and Stellan Skarsgard.

Serkis really sells Kino when the camera lingers on his face as he tries to spur himself into action. He's already made his decision intellectually but his heart can't quite catch up. Cassian has to goad him when he's on the PA. That last moment when he says he can't swim was truly haunting as the rush of the crowd forces Cassian to leave him. It kind of reminded me of Nine Inch Nails' "We're in This Together Now" video.

In terms of writing, I actually wish the prison break had been much more difficult. I feel like more prisoners would have been gunned down and, once they were outside the prison, I would have thought some aircraft would have scrambled and picked off some of the prisoners swimming for shore. But maybe that would all have been too grim for a Star Wars show, even Andor.

Mon Mothma's meeting with the gangster, Davos, was a quieter kind of horror show. She isn't quite at the point of sacrifice that Luthen is. I love how the dialogue takes her to revelation by degrees. She understands what it means when Davos says he doesn't want money but she can't anticipate the favour he'll ultimately ask. Genevieve O'Reilly does a great job as we watch her face. You can see her torn between trying to maintain poise and actually making the calculations on what it would mean to have Davos' fourteen year old son meet her daughter. I suspect she'll eventually consent to it and, consider her daughter's personality so far, it wouldn't surprise me if she'd be quite happy to marry into a gangster family. And then Mon will torture herself about it for the rest of her life.

And this is a good way to lead up to Luthen's big Oscar-clip speech at the end (I guess it would be an Emmy-clip speech). It's an opportunity for Skarsgard to showboat a little bit but he's certainly someone who could make that kind of "sacrifice everything" speech brilliant. He's clearly had to do far worse things than introduce his daughter to a boy.

Andor is available on Disney+.