A Road was the Destination

Last night's finale of Andor, "Rix Road", concluded not just the best Disney+ original series, but the best show I've seen this year. I guess it's a close competition between Andor and House of the Dragon but the writing on Andor was, for my money, certainly more consistent in quality. And I realised I wasn't looking for anything this good in Star Wars anymore. It was a very pleasant surprise, and it continued to surprise, week after week, right down to last night's finale.

I'm glad I was wrong about Maarva's death, that she really did die, because, as a point of dramatic weight, her death is so much more interesting. Fiona Shaw really sold that hologram speech, too, another great performance in a series filled with great performances.

Some critics are calling the finale boring, and I noticed it's the episodes actually written by Tony Gilroy that seem to get this criticism most, to the point where it feels like people have an ax to grind with him. I'd have to really scour "Rix Road" to find a speck of boredom.

I'd say the episode's two highest points were two rescues--Cassian rescuing Bix and Karn rescuing Meero. When Cassian promised Bix and the others that he would find them, it felt like Daniel Day Lewis in Last of the Mohicans. I got chills. But maybe I liked the Karn and Meero bit even better.

I love how, in an instant, viewer sympathy is twisted around. Here are the good people of Ferrix, rebelling at the instigation of Maarva's stirring speech, and here's Meero, the ruthless woman who tortured Bix. But then, suddenly, Meero is the frantic woman caught in a rabid crowd of madmen, and Karn, whom she had no reason to expect to even be on the planet, is there. And he requires no thanks. They're so wrong and so sweet. I'm getting Lannister vibes.

I lovded Luthen cracking a genuine smile for once at the end of the episode. I loved Mon Mothma's manoeuvre with her husband about his supposed gambling problem. I love all the evocative detail on the world of Ferrix. I love this show. I can't believe I have to wait till 2024 to see the rest. I hope it'll spend next year accruing a big fan base of people binging it. I hope Bob Iger puts Tony Gilroy in charge of Lucasfilm.

Andor is available on Disney+.

Negotiating Death and Secrets

Last night's Andor was the penultimate episode of the season, the first part of a two part story written by Tony Gilroy. It had heartbreaking moments, effectively suspenseful moments, and intellectually fascinating moments. More than anything, it whetted my appetite for next week.

We find out at the beginning that Maarva has apparently died. I think most viewers suspect this is a ruse, that she'll turn up alive somehow next week, fighting for the Rebellion. My theory is that Meero has planted some kind of listening device on the droid, so that's why everyone had to act sincerely as though Maarva is dead in front of the droid. That poor droid, B2EMO. He be too emo. No, not really, I feel bad for the cracked little mop bucket.

If I'm right, it doesn't bother me that I successfully predicted something. In any case, it adds to a pretty heavy list of motivations for Cassian. If Gilroy's mission with this season, as he did say it was, was to establish why Cassian became a Rebel, he's certainly done that. After the experience in the prison, plus Maarva's death, real or feigned, it's clear he'll be a committed Rebel after this.

But my favourite scene last night was between Luthen and Saw.

Both Forest Whitaker and Stellan Skarsgard were captivating as each character tried to measure out how much information, trust, and sacrifice were wise from one moment to the next. Saw, in particular, is a slightly scary character to watch, knowing how conflicted he is between the meaning of the cause and winning at any cost. And it was all capped off by a wonderfully tense and effective space battle.

Nice to see one of those in Star Wars again.

Andor is available on Disney+.

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+.

The Hazards of Various Prisons

If I had to pick a worst episode of Andor, I guess it would have to be last night's. Yet it was some of the most excellent television I've seen in years. For a show I normally consider flawless, last night's had a couple of things I wish they'd done differently. But it also had some things I thought were outright magnificent.

Both of the problems I had with the episode relate to Mon Mothma's story. We get a reminder that she and her husband have profoundly different worldviews, and he makes disparaging remarks about the tedium of politics. At this point, I'm feeling like, "Okay, okay, we get it." It is interesting that Mon's secret war is being carried out right in her own home but at this point I think it would be more interesting to show what connects her to her husband. Does she have genuinely happy memories with him? Are there any points on which they still agree? These things would make the division between the two more painful and therefore more dramatically interesting.

The other thing I didn't like was Vel turning out to be Mon Mothma's cousin. It makes the universe feel just a little smaller. I liked the idea of the fledgling Rebellion having all these moving parts that didn't necessarily know a lot about each other. I can understand why Vel was made to be Mon's cousin--with so many characters the writers want to keep on from week to week, new reasons have to be invented to keep them onscreen. But I wish they'd done something else.

I loved everything else about the episode. There were some moments I really admired. I really liked Mon's meeting with the banker, Tay Kolma. Ben Miles gives such a great performance as he goes over the details of all the banking manoeuvring that needs to be done. He really seems to be thinking about the importance of certain institutional ties and channels in this made-up world. And the idea of Mon now having to deal with a gangster--a gangster a lot of other people apparently deal with--has a lot of promise. You really sense her vulnerability now.

Meero was also pretty terrific in the episode. I loved the overt nod to Princess Leia's torture scene in A New Hope--once again, I felt that Andor is exploring thematic territory that's been untapped since the original trilogy. But even better was the meeting between Meero and Karn on that bridge.

The energy in their dialogue is really strange and fascinating. Is this turning into some kind of perverted love story? Oh, please, let it be so. I love how the writers create conflicts between the villains. Without anyone having a moral high ground, we find ourselves invested entirely on the strengths of how they're playing the game. I heard someone say Andor is kind of Star Wars' own Game of Thrones and, as far as the Empire is concerned, I think that's true. It actually reminds me of playing the PC game TIE Fighter back in the '90s, a great Star Wars flight simulator that put the player on the Empire's side. Perhaps one day we could have a series entirely focused on Imperial officers. If it's like Andor, I'd definitely be up for it.

The prison scenes were terrific all down the line. I guess you could say it's a flaw that the bathroom panel Cassian removes looks clearly to be painted plywood. I didn't mind it, though. It kind of made me feel like I was watching classic Doctor Who, as does the fact that many exteriors were shot in old quarries in England.

Andy Serkis' character, Kino Loy, was another bright spot in the episode. His transition from a man doggedly towing the line to being horrified into disillusionment was captivating. The story of the old man played by Christopher Fairbank was horrifying and heartbreaking. Rarely has the Empire seemed so monstrous.

I love how the window reflections are used here, layered over the view of other suspended corridors containing similar groups of guys in prison garb, creating a dehumanising kaleidoscope.

The dramatic build-up around what happened to the prisoners on level 2 was perfectly executed, no pun intended. The tension around not knowing exactly what happened, the faulty communications between the prisoners with information trickling among them only very slowly, the sense of decisions needing to be made in almost complete absence of information--it was all a terrific nightmare. I'm so happy this show is in my life.

Andor is available on Disney+.

Andor Can't Go Home Again

It's so nice to spend all day anticipating a show and then to have that show meet and exceed those expectations. Last night's Andor continued to satisfyingly add more complexity to the Star Wars universe. I'm so happy this show exists.

It's great to finally get a fleshed out character in Mon Mothma. She's the leader of the Rebellion, she ought to be as developed at least as Palpatine, but ever since she was briefly introduced in Return of the Jedi, hardly any attention had been given to her. Most people didn't even realise who she was when they first watched Return of the Jedi. I suspect most writers felt she would be a simplistic paragon, but even if she is, Andor shows the complicated path she has to navigate is a fascinating one.

We get a good impression of how intimately the battle is tied to her life. Her husband belongs to the opposing faction and the normal issues around a mother dealing with a teenage daughter are subtly complicated by these deadly, pervasive politics. Meanwhile, Mon Mothma is making a tentative alliance with a banker, a desperate move of trust with the ultimate aim of gaining unfettered access to her own money. So often in other Star Wars stories, money is a thing that fluctuates on plot convenience, but in Andor it actively drives part of the story, as it should.

Cassian has an idea he's going to take his cut from the heist and quietly retire with his mother and his droid. We get some scenes that demonstrate how lucky the show is to have Fiona Shaw playing Maarva. She shows the complicated, difficult levels of meditation and decision she has to go through to ultimately get to the point where she and Cassian must part. It's genuinely painful when he leaves at the end, promising to come back, and it's clear both characters believe they'll never see each other again. It's doubly painful because Maarva is inspired by the heist Cassian was a part of and he's not yet come to grips with his feelings about the Empire. He's a practical man, but in this, Maarva has the clearer vision. The detail about her husband being executed by the Empire was brilliant and adds another dimension to Cassian choosing to call himself Clem for the heist.

The Empire tightens its grip, levying heavy taxes and deploying Star Destroyers. But this is part of Rael's plan, for as the Empire tightens its grip, to borrow a line from Princess Leia, the more star systems may slip through its fingers.

Andor is available on Disney+. Please, please watch it.

Twitter Sonnet #1633

The crowed spaces fell above the wyrm.
A brittle bible flew upon the breeze.
A ribbon current swirls within the urn.
The foot questions spread among the bees.
The dancing skull was free to find a home.
A house exchanged a chicken coop for meat.
Beyond a couple years, we chucked the dome.
Sufficient life was found in royal feet.
A pepper faded placed below the chalk.
The dust became a spray of tiny stars.
The black was green when writing boards could talk.
You'll find the strangest sleeves behind the bars.
The money routed round the thorns was spent.
Another heist emerged to pay the rent.

Getting the Money and Flying

What an incredible episode of Andor last night, and a very good pay-off to some wonderful buildup.

The closest I have to complaints are two little things. I wish the Aldhani had been aliens and I wish Rael had waited to hear if the attack had been successful before he started laughing. But I can understand if budget considerations prevented there being alien Aldhani and maybe Rael's celebratory reaction was meant to indicate that the very fact that an attack occurred, whether successful or not, was an achievement. At any rate, it was a fascinating moment, after a heist of such complicated feelings and loss of life.

But, wow, the last twenty minutes of this episode were captivating. The Eye was the amazing light show we'd been promised all that time--I loved the Imperial soldier whining, "But we'll miss the Eye!" when he's ordered down into the base. But it's twice as amazing because it becomes wrapped up in the tension of this heist. There was never a moment when you didn't feel these Rebels were in terrible danger.

The Commandant was a brilliant piece of writing. We unexpectedly meet his family which morally complicates the situation in a way the show doesn't overplay. And when he's trying to put on his belt it's hard not to think of Cassian's early line about how the Imperials are "so fat and satisfied". It distracts you from even thinking of the possibility that he'll have a heart attack at a crucial moment--not that you'd ever expect to see something like that in Star Wars. But it worked, and was just another reminder from this show that rendering a complicated galaxy can be about more than locations and costumes.

And as great as the TIE Fighter chase through the atmosphere was, the big moment was the snap moral decision Cassian had to make. You could argue quite a bit about whether he did the right thing or not, but prolonging the debate in his head could very well have been the thing that got him killed and killed the Rebellion on the spot. It also definitely showed Cassian's heart is in this more than he's quite ready to own up to.

Andor is available on Disney+.

Twitter Sonnet #1631

The double pallid face could see the glass.
Another inch of rust defined the drain.
A mark denotes exams the eyes'll pass.
A curving wing collects the landed sane.
A tipsy gnome discussed a cane with birds.
Decisions rest behind the bark of trees.
We ate a basket poor with wicker words.
The angel pod was full of devil peas.
A nickel cross rewards the flying man.
Beneath a fragile glass the fish await.
A pretty sky diverts the useful tan.
A bigger fish perceived a plastic bait.
The green of tying ghosts pursued the whale.
A heavy thing disrupts the drifting sail.

Everyone's Rebellion

If only last night's Andor wasn't so short! I get it, though, they're doing this three episode arc structure. I wish Disney had just decided to release three episodes at a time in perpetuity. But make no mistake, I thought last night's episode was brilliant. I'm going to talk about it by listing some of the best moments.

Karn's Horrible Mother

You can't help feeling for the guy as she pitilessly cuts him down with a constant, passive aggressive barrage. And you can tell from his sullen attitude that he's been dealing with it all his life.

The Imperial Who Would be Prelate

This is a very small moment but I love the Imperial officer getting offered a hotel as his HQ and then he immediately asks for a title that comes with no additional pay. It's a detail that felt so real world, like occupying Nazi forces or any number of other military glutting on their power over newly conquered territory.

Cassian Knowing Hands

In practicing their soldier march, Cassian remarks on how soldiers should be placed with regards to whether or not their right or left handed. Vel interrupts and quizzes Cassian to find he knows the dominant hand of every member of the Rebel group. Once again, we see Cassian's keen eye at work. This time it earns him some more respect from his new comrades. It also shows Vel is a capable leader because she's able to operate from a perspective of the bigger picture--she sees what's important about what Cassian just said beyond its immediate relation to the task at hand. I saw one critic remark about episode three that it's redundant to show that Cassian is perceptive and clever again and again but I would argue that perceptive and clever people don't stop being perceptive and clever just because you know they are. This is Cassian's superpower and what's the fun of a superpower that doesn't get regular exercise?

Mon Mothma's Whole Family Hates Her

Poor Mon Mothma. Her husband has evidently turned their daughter against her. The teenage girl's arguments about her mother being hateful and selfish aren't really logical but they're the kind of thing a rebellious teen might say who's been steered subtly to a certain faction.

Some people might say all the focus on family drama is not like Star Wars. But I'd say this show is more Star Wars than Star Wars has been in a long time. Take yourself back to the first time you saw A New Hope, If you managed to avoid spoilers on Luke's parentage, he was just a teenager on Tatooine who hated the Empire but didn't see how he could get involved. His surrogate parents were overly protective and he chaffed against it. Then one day he came home and found their charred corpses on the ground, courtesy of the Empire. It's a powerful moment that substantially fuels his motivation going forward. And yet, in all the Star Wars media that came afterward, we rarely got anything like it. Now we have someone like Karis whose backstory involves a brother whose lands were taken by the Empire, who killed himself. As Vel says, everyone has their own Rebellion. It's all personal for these people.

Andor is available on Disney+.

The Eyes of the Empire are Everywhere

Last night's new episode of Andor made me want to watch A New Hope afterwards. It breathed such life into the Star Wars universe, the world it depicts seemed vivid in ways it hasn't in a long time. Dan Gilroy, brother of Tony, wrote this fourth episode and I'd say he certainly proved the two are cut from the same cloth.

I love the sense of secrecy and paranoia the episode establishes in the galaxy, both among Imperials and Rebels. Rael delivers Cassian to Aldhani, a world with a tiny rebel cell. And the leader is forced to lie to her people about where Cassian came from. Cassian is forced to adopt a new name--he chooses Clem, the name of his adopted father--and is told he can't even reference the existence of Rael.

We see Rael going back to his life on Coruscant and I love the moment where Stellan Skarsgaard first puts on the clothes and wig and then puts on the smile and attitude.

And we see Coruscant! I do believe this is the first extended look at it we've had since the prequels (unless I'm forgetting something). I've dreamed of seeing Imperial Coruscant since I started reading the old Extended Universe books in the '90s. Here it is in all its cold, dangerous glory.

It seems to have become a colder place since the prequels. We catch up with Mon Mothma, at this point a senator, and we get a good sense of her position, first as someone constantly dealing with spies, then as a senator whose husband seems to be of the opposite political faction.

The scenes in the Imperial Security Bureau were captivating. Anton Lesser's Major Partagaz comes off as credibly competent and ruthless. Denise Gough as Dedra Meero is another weirdly sympathetic viper in the nest, a bit like Karn and Krennic before her. People who genuinely subscribe to the ideals of the Empire but find themselves at odds with the machine.

I want to see the next episode immediately.

Andor is available on Disney+.

The Candor of Andor

I'd just about given up on getting a Star Wars show like Andor from Disney. What a lovely surprise. The younger viewers may have been bored to tears but I was delighted by writer Tony Gilroy's thoughtful world-building and characters who weren't screaming their motives every two seconds.

Gilroy and other people working on the show have said Andor was quite intentionally political. But unlike Rings of Power and other badly written shows of recent years, Andor is not, so far, a crude ideological allegory. You could watch Andor as a liberal or conservative, as a Twitter Socialist or one of the people who stormed the White House in January. The show takes no sides with our Earthly politics. It uses the inherent advantage of Fantasy and Science Fiction by placing issues in an isolated environment where you can contemplate them directly. It's not unlike what George Lucas claimed to have done with the prequels. I remember when Revenge of the Sith came out and people said there were obvious references to the Bush administration. But while Lucas was obviously no fan of Bush and even contributed to that impression of Episode III with appearances on The Colbert Report, I think he was telling the truth that the politics of the prequels were based more generally on reading the histories of collapsing governments.

Andor is the first live action Star Wars output to really give a sense of the working class. I think Solo made some attempt at this, being set on Corellia and giving Han Solo a father who'd lost his manufacturing job. The town we're introduced to in Andor takes time mustering a group of characters whose lives are wrapped up in metalworks, whose standard of living grows narrower to make room for a pervasive, corrupt and paranoid bureaucracy.

I love how Gilroy and actor Kyle Soller managed to make Inspector Karn into someone we sympathise with while at the same time making him slightly scary and a threat to the protagonists. In doing so, this show really gives an impression of how the Empire achieved life not by Clone Troopers massacring people but by an evolving professional culture.

Meanwhile, we have Cassian's lovely relationship with his surrogate mother, played by Fiona Shaw, and maybe the sweetest, most hard luck droid we've ever seen on Star Wars.

He was giving me some Wall-E vibes.

I'm so happy this show exists. Gilroy has described the series as a novel and that's just what it feels like. In a very good way.

Andor is available on Disney+.

Twitter Sonnet #1624

Impressive skulls remind the mind to stop.
To make a point, the sharpest pen can write.
Without the bubble, naught can ever pop.
So put the cap above the child's height.
Requested ghosts were busy haunting pine.
The timing storm was set to happen late.
A zombie answer broke the living line.
With frizzy yarn we stuffed the zealot's bait.
The mirror box awaits in mining towns.
With clarity the problem split to six.
A pretty day was pushed for pocket gowns.
The metal sounds announce a gathered fix.
The gift of rust relieved the silent steel.
At least the rodent served a decent meal.