‘Andor’ Season 2, Episodes 10-12 Deep Dive
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And welcome to House of R, a Ringerverse podcast on the Ringer Podcast Network. I'm Mallory Rubin. Joining me today, there will be no horizon to the scope of her inquiry, nor will there be any limit to her effort. It's Joanna Robinson. Hi.

you know, a little bit, a little bit of ISB here at the start. Sounds like a good, like a good plan. Hello. What a thrill and an honor and a joy to be here with you to potentially break our record for longest podcast ever. We shall see. It's entirely possible. All right. It's entirely possible. Dare to dream. I have heard that there's fast and

And there's good. So I take that as permission to potentially break our runtime record today. It is going to be a long one. It's going to be a death star sized podcast, no question. So we are just going to zip through some quick programming reminders here at the top. What's coming up? On the Andor front, many people are asking, will you please revisit Rogue One?

Guess what? The answer is yes, we will. We will be doing a Rogue One revisited pod as our second episode next week in our usual Andor slide. And we're going to be doing that like through the lens of Andor. Now that we have finished Andor, how do we experience Rogue One anew? How do we experience it differently? So we're really excited to revisit that film and talk about that together next week and keep the Andor good times rolling for a little longer because we are frankly not ready to stop talking about Andor. It's that simple.

I really had to restrain myself to... I was like, every time I had a Rogue One thought, and I have a few that snuck in, but I was like, save it for the Rogue One pod. But yeah, I heard from a lot of people that they just...

you know, did exactly what Tony Gilroy said to do, which was just plow right into Rogue One after. And I think this is not homework I'm going to assign to you, but I want to watch Rogue One and I also want to watch A New Hope. Oh, yeah. You know, that's... How does it all fit? How does it all feel? The trilogy. And or to Rogue One to A New Hope, you know?

I love it. We will also, of course, continue to cover The Last of Us, a show that we are having a wonderful time diving deep into. We will be diving deep into episode six of The Last of Us on Monday evening here on the House of R. And the whole gang is continuing to cover the season. So the Midnight Boys will be covering The Last of Us on Sunday night, right after the episode. The instant reaction will be up.

The Watch will be checking in. Joe and Rob will have their latest interview and breakdown of the episode on Prestige on Thursday next week. And Button Mash will be checking in, Ben and Daniel with the Gamer's Guide on Thursday as well for the penultimate episode of season two. Oh my God. I know. I'm not ready to say goodbye to both of these shows. We just like rushed way too quickly through both of these incredible shows. I know.

I know. And now we have to wait until 2026 for another, the seven kingdoms. I know I could barely handle that update yesterday. Thank God for the group chat with you and Chris kept me going. All right, Joe, how can everybody follow along? Yeah.

Well, great question. Okay, listen, follow the pod. I think that's a great idea. Watch us on YouTube and on Spotify. I think that's a great idea. Follow us on social. I think that's a wonderful idea. On TikTok, on Instagram, on Twitter, et cetera, et cetera. And email us, hobbitsanddragons at gmail.com. You sent us Lindt.

hundreds of and or finale emails that I read blearily last night. Great stuff from all of you. Thank you so much. If you have further thoughts, if you have Rogue One thoughts, you can send those over to us and we will incorporate them into our pod next week. So fear not. There's a few of your emails that we sort of put aside to get into in our Rogue One chat next week as well. So thank you so much. Back to you in the studio, Mallory Rubin.

Here's the last programming reminder. It's the Friendly Neighborhood spoiler warning. We are, of course, going to be talking in great detail about these final three episodes of Andor. We will be talking about everything that's ever happened in Andor. Rogue One, as already noted.

will come up today. Details from Rogue One will be coming up today. So if you have not seen Rogue One yet and want to watch that and then come back to the pod, we support that completely. And if it's ever happened in Star Wars, it could in theory come up today. All right. Joe, I do not know if you can fight as well as you lie, but I know that you can pod as well as you do anything. So let's get to it. It is time for the opening snapshot. I'll miss the Star Wars music. All right, Joe.

Arc 4, the fourth and final arc of Season 2, the final season of Andor, the series finale episodes of Andor. We are talking today, it is just actually heartbreaking. We're talking today about Episode 10, Make It Stop, Episode 11, Who Else Knows, and Episode 12, Jedha, Kyber, Erso. Say it like Claire.

I got to work up into the frenzied state, which I will do shortly. No question about it. We have so much to get to today. I think there will be tears without question many times throughout the pod today. It's going to be an emotional one. And part of that is because of how good the show is. And part of that is because of how much we love the show. So let's just set the table before we begin our deep dive. Yeah. Joanna Robinson, how did you feel about these three episodes?

How did you feel about season two? And how did you feel about Andor overall? Andor... It'll be really hard to top Andor as my favorite show of this year. I can't foresee anything topping it, but, you know, let's... Something could come out of nowhere and do that. And...

Maybe my favorite show of the decade? Like, I just can't possibly...

describe how joyous it has been to have this nutritious a serving of a story universe that we love so much. So vegetables with our, like, you know, with cheese of the IP that we love on top of it just to make a delicious casserole. The joy of getting to read Ben Lindbergh's breakdowns and so, like, you know, and have Ben text me, like, do you think...

his Cassian sister, like stuff like that. To get texts from Chris Ryan, to listen to Andy get excited about it. You know, so to hear from like our nerdiest of nerdy Star Wars pals and our what the hell is wrong with the state of IP pals and we're all joined together and our love of Andor is like truly joyous. And I also want to celebrate Andor as a TV show. Now, I know we got these like three episode arcs as sort of like little mini movie drops, but

The way in which Andor as a reactive piece of media to like thinking about the stars of this final arc are people like Clea, Lonnie, Hirt. You know, we got some great like Will stuff in this season, etc. All these like...

ways in which we can plant seeds in a season one and watch them blossom and grow as long as we dutifully water them like Cassian does into season two is one of the most joyful things about television. Watching threads grow and build and build and build in our emotional investment and story, build and build and build and build. And so, you know, and the way in which Tony Gilroy as like

excellent showrunner on this, but also just like all the other talented people that we've gotten to talk about in terms of like the various writers for the various arcs, the various directors for the various arcs. Tom Bissell, who's the writer on

This three-episode arc, who also wrote the book The Disaster Artist and has also, like, written great memoirs about, you know, his dad in the Vietnam War has been very sort of, like, government and politics focused. So to bring his perspective into this, to have Alonso Ruiz Palacios as, like, the director, who as...

As Tony in his interview with Chris and Andy talked about sort of like the extra special visuals of this last arc. And I really agree. There are just some like distinctive and we'll shut them out as we go. So just like really distinctive framings and moments that made it feel visually special alongside the

absolutely stellar performances that we always get, the absolutely stellar writing that we always get on this show. And I also want to shout out Sana Wollenberg, who is a figure that Tony credits and Diego credits, but who is a very key exec producer on this show who, like Lonnie or someone else, doesn't get her praises sung as much. So like,

We do a lot of shorthand when we praise Tony Gilroy, and we should because showrunners matter, but it takes a village to make a TV show. And so there's all these incredible people involved, and I love celebrating their great work. To that end, the theme... I did not plan this, but here we go. The theme that I thought was most interesting in these final episodes, this idea of like,

You can't do it alone. Who is alone and who is, you know, an alliance, a rebel alliance. How hard that is, but how vital it is. Yes. To have clashing perspectives inside of an alliance and to challenge each other and grow from each other, but also that you can't do something like this in isolation, I think was one of my favorites. And then also I will just shout out, you know, something we've been tracking recently

Thanks in part to listener email, but also, you know, just the show itself, this idea of the messenger that you brought up last week, obviously a title of the episode in last week's arc, but also the relay race, right? And so thinking about this

the various like blinking signal lights that we get in here. Lonnie's light for clay, a clay is light for will. Like what are these blinking signals that we're putting out into the universe and the desperate hope that someone will be listening. Right. And then the,

The way in which the baton in this stretch that they're passing, the information baton in this stretch that they're passing, is like this poison baton. Like, Partagas later will call it a disease as part of a cover story. But this idea that, like, as soon as Lonnie gets his Death Star information, he dies. As soon as Luthen gets it, he dies. I was really worried about Clea. But, like, Cassian.

Bastion and Melchie will die soon after. And then when we watch... This is my Rogue One thing that I should save, but I'm not going to save. We watch that final data get passed in the relay race at the end of Rogue One, and each person that touches it is cut down by Vader until they pass it to the next one. It's just this idea of...

Not just a relay race now, which is what we've been talking about this whole time, but such a high-stakes, poison-pilled, deathly relay race that everyone has made a choice. And that's another huge theme of this arc, but the choice to touch it and to pass it and to know that in touching it will probably sign their death sentence in many cases. I love this TV show. I love this arc of episodes. I do think that overall in this season...

I think the Gorman arc was the height of the season for me, which is not to say I have any major critiques about these last three. I think the Luth and Clea episode, episode 10, was absolutely top tier. But I do think there's just some... As we pass the baton over to Rogue One, I do think there's some little...

you know, little bumps and hiccups along the way there that make, similar to the end of season one, the end of Andor not as ecstatic as the middle of Andor, which is fine. It's like a slow start, this sort of like middle six, you know, orgasmic television experience, and then the cool down in the final three. And I think...

I will desperately miss this show and I will desperately miss talking to you about this show. So those are my snapshot thoughts. Same. Yeah, I thought this was really extraordinary. I thought this was an incredible conclusion to a really remarkable television show. I didn't know how season two could possibly measure up to season one, especially with the task of marching not just closer to but directly into Rogue One. And so this is just...

The platonic ideal and beyond that of not only how to execute a prequel, but why to do one in the first place. What the proposition even is and what moving across a wide story universe and seeking to extend or expand canon can do.

When it's done right and handled with care and when there's a real vision for what to say and what to explore about a person's life and their relationships together, I'm with you completely. You know, that idea of the message and the relay race entwined with the idea of the need to unite and the alliance and how hard that really is and how many people who even were a part of

Pushing that and fueling it couldn't do it at the end, which makes us appreciate even more when it actually happens. Yeah. I was struck so keenly by the moment between Hirt and Dedra, who

No friends, right? No friends at all. And that there is not a single more meaningful contrast to draw between the sides. To I have friends everywhere. To I have friends everywhere and the ability to make your way home somehow, even if you don't think you can. And the depth of despair and the show that we reached, the darkest points we ever went to, you could think of a number of them because it was quite grim along the way.

But something like nobody's listening on Narkina as a contrast to knowing when you send that call, someone will be there. Like, it's just incredible. And I... Or hoping that they'll be there and trying. Exactly. Trying was the other big theme to me of this entire experience. Like, Nemec's manifesto was such a thrill to not only hear his voice, but obviously, like...

That manifesto has always been on our minds. I'm already crying. I didn't think it would start quite this early, though. I can't say I'm shocked. I think it'll be waterworks today. This is going to be a very emotional experience talking about the story that we love. The end of that manifesto, that particular chunk of the manifesto, Try, remember Try. I remember that we talked about in season one how...

and notable it felt that that is a very different idea from a kind of sacred Star Wars pillar. Do or do not. Yeah. Do or do not. There is no try. And that with Nemec's message and words and the actions really of everybody of consequence, and of course, so much of the mission of the story is to explain to us and show us how many people of consequence there really are who will never see the sunrise or who will never feel the gratitude, right? Lonnie!

Oh, my God. But who did something as crucial as Luke firing that final decisive shot. And none of it happens if they don't try. Like, so much of this is about trying and just giving a shit and attempting to make the world a little better. And, like, I mean, what an incredibly powerful...

And the writing, the craft of the filmmaking, the performances, the way the world is rendered. I mean, so many things in these three episodes just hit me like incredibly hard. I can't wait to talk about my beloved, beautiful bee returning. I really can't. But one of the things unsurprisingly, probably that really like walloped me was that little moment in that little conversation with,

between Cleo and Cassian about just the idea of an ending and like the nothing's ending and that that's really part of the magic of a great story, right? It's like...

Not just that you could always go back into that story and that world and know that you can share it with other people who loved it too, but also like one of the incredible things about Andor is like what a miracle it is on its own. And then also how it enriches for us this other wider, bigger thing that we already cared so deeply about. And that is just really rare and really precious. And so like,

You already said it, right? You don't just want to go rewatch Rogue One. You want to go rewatch New Hope. And after you finish that, you're going to want to do something else. And it's like, that's the best feeling in the world. And so there were a lot of great, really fun things. Everyone should watch Tony Gilroy's wonderful interview with Chris and Andy on The Watch. There were a lot of incredible insights and wonderful things about that. And it's always really fun to watch the three of them talk. But

You know, when Gilroy was just talking about the industry and making something like this and making something at all and said, you know, people clearly need stories. It's an essential need. They need them bad. They need them bad is what he said. Like, you feel that with, I think, the response to Andor in a way that feels so keen and so meaningful. And, like...

I just feel really fortunate that we got to share it together and got to share it now. And I look forward to revisiting it for the rest of my life as a Star Wars fan. That's just the best feeling when you finish something and you know, like it's going to be a part of your experience of loving a thing forever. It's just the best. So I can't believe it's over, but I, I mean, it's not, we have a few hours ahead of us still, but what an incredible thing. On the nature of prequels. I think it's so interesting to think about. Thank you, uh,

for sharing that. I love you so much. And, um, I can't wait to cry with you for four hours. Are you hydrated? Are you ready? Um, I have a decent amount of water and some, some tissues, but you know, who knows? Um, I was struck thinking about, um,

every time they were like, Tivic's calling. Yeah. And Tivic, if you haven't seen Rogue One ever or haven't seen it in a while, is a person that Cassian goes to meet right at the beginning of Rogue One, right? So like, Tivic is calling means Rogue One is calling. Yeah, exactly. Which means like, that movie, uh,

He's knocking on the door of this show for the last arc. And you hear Galen Erso, you hear A.D., you just keep hearing that movie knocking. It reminded me of End of Time, the last Doctor Who arc, right? Where it's like, he'll knock three times, you keep hearing this knocking sound, which is the destined end of that doctor. And so it's just sort of like, Tivik's knocking, Scarif's knocking. And it's just like, and that's the way in which a prequel...

in the best version of a prequel can work because a lot of prequels... Sorry, this is where I'm going to shit talk your favorite solo Star Wars story, but like... Hashtag make solo do happen. It's not too late. A lot of...

of prequel movies feel like they're trying to knock on the door of this thing you already love. And they're like, let us in too. You love Harrison Ford as Han Solo, so let us in. But that's not... What you should feel is the destiny looming and the events that are coming knocking on the door of the story that you're witnessing. And that's what I felt like with Andor, sort of all along certainly, but in this final three episode arc of

of course certainly and i just this idea of story baton as well like passing the story baton over to rug one to a new hope to yada yada yada down the line um is just so yeah i need these stories i need them bad um i know it's it's tough times and uh we need we need these we need these stories yeah

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Oh, boy. Okay. Can I ask you? Yeah. Okay. We're right at the start. This is the BBY's question, right? We're right on the verge of Rogue One. Yep. Did I count correctly that we kind of...

slightly cheated the three day in that we extended the night of day two takes up a lot of this arc it is nighttime and day two for a lot of this arc and then we just get morning is broken the the break of dawn and day three is the end of this arc would you agree bail the guy you don't like is here coming in to uh uh disrupt a uh

Very, very, very painful dream and fitful night of sleep from Cassian. Yeah. I, yeah, I think that's, that's, that's right. Yeah. It was amazing to see that that overall though, that the, these are the days, you know, these are, these are the days, the days of the year that get us to where we need to be. Like it just an incredible structural concept and way to do this really like it's unbelievable. Yeah.

And speaking of structure, we're going to do this like slightly differently today, maybe actually in a more conventional way. We have, we always usually on House of Our Deep Dives go just

through the episodes in order. But for Andor, because it's three episodes a week and it's been so much, we've been kind of clustering by character set or plot line. These three episodes, though, mostly do need to be considered in order. And so we are actually going to go through the episodes in order with a little bit of rearranging and clustering inside of each episode. So we are going to talk about episode 10 first, then episode 11, then episode 12, which means that we will not be talking about Cassian Andor.

For a hot second here. Because he is not in episode 10. The only episode of Andor that does not have Cassian Andor. You have to be so confident that you have something fucking great to do that. And guess what? They do. They had something fucking great because episode 10 was amazing. The first couple scenes of this episode are just extraordinary. Absolute God-dear stuff. Let's start with our beloved Lani, who is here to share the endgame.

This is what Luthan wanted. What's the end game? I need the end game. Here it is. That alarm in the gallery blares. Clea emerges in her pajamas. I always love these reminders that they're living there, just bunking in the fondor in the back or up in the loft. An emergency call.

Right. We spend so much time on just the beeping and the blinking of the light, that signal that we're tracking. There's no more time for subtlety, right? For leaving a little symbol on the rail and walking through the path. And is somebody reaching out? And when, when is their time to meet? It's like,

All hands on deck now. We're ringing the big bell. We rung the big bell, and it's okay if everybody knows. Clea gets the blaster set. Luth and Reddy's his disguise. I love just the ritual one more time of putting on the wig and putting on the rings. We are going to shatter the wig watch record today, by the way. We have multiple distinct hair segments for you coming today.

Mirror watch, right? Luthan looks at himself in the mirror one last time. But yeah, there's the like shoving on of the rings, this sort of like, because later we'll see Cassian arm up, strap the blaster on, et cetera, at the end of the last episode. But yeah, here's Luthan's armor, his like his rings and his wig and his fancy cloak.

And now an incredible then later when we actually see him in military garb and the actual armor and the plates on his legs. And the worst wig you've ever seen in your entire life. Just, you know, laying a little trail for you. You had watched these before me and you told me...

I mean, a couple of things, you know, that they were incredible. Yeah. And then there was like the most astonishing wig that we had yet confronted. I don't know. I didn't guess a character I should have, but I don't, I don't know if I would have guessed. What did you think when you saw it? Were you like, well, there it is. Immediately. You told me, you're like, you will know the second you see it, there will be no question. And you were, you were correct. This is a masterpiece. What a masterpiece of a show. This is a minor quibble. We'll get there. I can't wait. I can't wait. Clea says to Luthan, tell me you're ready.

They're going to meet at the old steps. Oh, no, is there construction there? Okay, it doesn't matter. There's no time for alternatives. We have, again, this idea of the rush and the ticking of the clock. And this connects to what you were saying a few minutes ago about how Rogue One is knocking and you can feel it. Like, I was thinking a lot watching these episodes about how unbelievably impressive it is that the show has achieved what should be impossible, which is it feels like the characters have the same insights that we do, but they don't.

We actually know. The time is running out. We actually know that Rogue One is coming in mere days and we know what is happening there and we know what it all means and we know that the window is finite and tiny and shrinking and closing and not everyone is going to make it through. They don't know that and yet they can feel it just as

keenly as we can. And I just thought that was incredible and really like not only amplified the tension and heightened it, but the sense of a shared experience, which was the other thing that was so incredible. I mean, I'm going to just lose it when we talk later about Cassian and Vel toasting the dead, but that was another example in a very different tonal way of like, we are just in that scene with the people who are experiencing this thing. I just can't

believe it. I just teared up thinking about him saying Sinta and her saying Marv, like your mother. It's too much. It's almost too much to bear. I just like can't handle it. Oh my God. Clea hands Luthan the blaster that he's going to use on Lonnie and says, promise me if it doesn't look perfect, you won't engage. And I'm going to ask you to do something right now. I want you to make a prediction. How many times on this podcast will I, your co-host, say this is the best line in Star Wars history?

There's this line from Rogue One where Casey says, there's a problem on the horizon. There is no horizon. And that's how I feel. We can just see the rock of Jedha City coursing towards us. We've used up all the perfect. Luthen's saying, I think we used up all the perfect is one of the best things that I've ever heard on television. Yep.

This was just unbelievable, not only because it is gorgeous writing and just like pantheon stuff from a storycrafting perspective, but because of the shared history, which we have not yet seen in full. That is still coming in this episode that it hints at and that it captures everything that they've done together, everything that they've tried, all of the sadness, but also the love and the pride because that smile and the tenderness and Luthan's expression as he looks at her.

This really reminded me of what you were observing beautifully last week.

about the different phases of a rebellion, right? Seasons for different things, moments for different things with different people and different styles. And that Clea and Luthan have been a part of all of that together. And this is the moment to say, I think we've used up all the perfect. And how Clea has always believed, like, you know, if Luthan's like, our time has come, and Clea's like, yeah, our time is over. And then the fight that it takes to

For Andor to be like, Clea, you've got more chapters. You know, like, this is not your final chapter. It might be Luthen's, but it's not yours. And how hard it is for her to accept that there is, like, a road without Luthen on it because they've been walking together side by side since the beginning. I love that. And I also love, you know, Tony...

to chris and andy on the watch and in a number of other interviews has talked about how luthan is like his comp in the show his closest comp and this idea of like we used up all the perfect like we worked so hard on this show for so long we grew fields of rye for this show like and we are like

Knowing his limited advance, knowing I can't do this for five seasons, but I've used up all the perfect. I've done it for two seasons, and here we are. It's just so good. There were a number of lines like that that felt deeply meta that I really, really loved. Melchie had time for Melchie to step up. That was great. I have some questions for you about Melchie's Revnog intake when we get a little deeper into the pod. Some worrying stuff there. I think his Revnog intake helped...

helped in that moment when he's in the spotlights of all the guns and they're like, don't move. And he's like, I'm going to move. I'm just going to go back in. I'm just going to move. I can chat, but I'm just going to pop right back in. Great stuff. Speaking of moving. Yeah. That's the next thing we hear. This meaningful look between them and Luthan saying, smiling and saying gently, move. And we will learn via the flashbacks that are to come in this episode what

What that calls upon, what that one word means to him. And I was thinking about how across the series, especially in season one, but across the series, we heard a lot about vows. The characters taking vows and making vows. And like... Swear and swear. They make you swear and swear, Jo. That this word for Luthan and Clea is their vow to each other. That they will...

push each other and argue and always say what they really think, which we very much enjoyed watching over two seasons of television. Yeah. That when the moment comes and you utter that word, the person on the other side knows what it means. And you were on a shared plane of understanding with each other that other people do not inhabit with you. Like to be able to convey all of that in one word is just remarkable. Yeah.

And to your point, it's only on rewatch that we get the full depth. I mean, this is why I'm already like every year, every year.

Every year. We did get a lot of feedback from people who were like, obviously it's a May the 4th thing. Like, come on guys, it's not hard to figure out the time. It's like, yeah, okay. We're tired. Sorry. But we haven't been sleeping a lot. But you drafted Chris Ryan into this Rewash project. Amazing. With ease. Yeah. Actually quite quickly. He was ready. He was ready. We get a little bit of vintage Clea stuff here when she smiles and responds and says what.

tuck in your shirt I just love that one more moment like question who are they to each other how did they get to this point to each other before we actually got those answers I thought it was great Joanna we see our guy Lonnie

striding into the park. Luthan arrives. He's hovering by the bench. Now, we talked last week. I was bumping a little bit in episodes that I thought were astonishing and absolutely adored in the three of my favorite episodes of television ever. On like, okay, what does it mean if Luthan is just standing there talking to Mon Mothma and Clea and Cassie? They're all out there together.

Here, I did not feel that because here I understood what this meant to, to Luthan and what it was, what it was supposed to mean to us, which is like, there's no more reason to hide. The clock is about to stop ticking. The big bell has rung, but we did get some emails about this. Um, okay. First and foremost, I want to say that, uh, according to star wars.com, this bench, um, is under the bridge between, uh, the Palau de las Artes, Reina Sofia, uh,

In Spain that we already mentioned was used for the Senate building that we saw Mon escape from. So if you want to go in Valencia, right? If you want to go to that building and go under the bridge and leave some flowers for Lonnie at that bench. I think it would be so beautiful if Lonnie's bench became a place for Star Wars fans to leave something. Like Will and Lyra's bench? Yeah. Okay. Okay.

Aaron wrote this, and I just want to shout out the bad babies, who wrote us deeply thoughtful emails, and then some of them wrote us very hilarious emails, and this is a really good one. Aaron wrote, I would just tell Alan

I like to ask why in a galaxy comprised of a wide variety of life forms with a wide variety of appearances, are we, and by we, I mean, super spies, Luthan, Clea, Cassian, et cetera, just walking around doing super spy missions with our whole faces out. Can we not commission someone to make us some Wookiee suits or Rodian masks or something? Could Luthan not slap on a set of head tails and some green makeup before chilling on a bench for all to see what's

with a goddamn ISB agent. A Saw Gerrera-style breather mask at the very least. So, Erin, thank you so much for pitching Mission Impossible Coruscant. I look forward to your pilot pitch to Lucasfilm. Yeah, why aren't we wearing masks in Star Wars? I support it. Some fake facial hair, at least.

you know that's so like but very in sky could have had a great go well here's okay follow question

Is it like racially insensitive to paint yourself green in a Star Wars? I think it's not green. That's why I'm going with facial hair. Green faces out. Okay, got it. That's why I'm going with facial hair. Got it. But the point is noted that some ramping up of the disguise, maybe a little Bobby Valentine mustache and fake nose and glasses, a little baseball dugout. I've been ejected, but I'm still hanging around kind of a thing. Yeah, definitely know that reference. The reference that I did get...

Having to meet on this bench here is such a good classic. Like two competing agents from different organizations feed the ducks in a park, like from a spy movie moment. I loved it so much. And Lonnie's in his like, like spy movie trench coat. Like it's just, it's so good. I was waiting for Jackson lamb to show up and remark that you just learned that you can wash a coat. Yeah.

Lonnie's kind of surprised Luth in game. He's like, I didn't know if you would. Every little moment is carrying so much here. Luth is like, let's hear it, man. I'm here. The gesturing and the whole gesture to let Dedra in later. Here's what we learned from Lonnie. Speaking of Dedra, contacted a friend of Lonnie's in Tactical. I have friends everywhere. She's assembling a team and

And is working on a course on top. And her reputation as a rule bender led this friend to reach out to Lani to be like, yeah, I think this is safe. Tough stuff for Bedri just across these episodes. I mean, bad news for everyone in Tactical who was involved in the Luthen grab. Like, do you think they all went to Narkina? What do you think? That's a great question.

I don't know. I feel like just a lot of this fell on Deirdre. But I don't know. The whole thing is kind of crumbling, actually, by the end. So, yeah, when Krennic says death, you know, ISB death march, I think implies that basically everybody's fucked. Deirdre most of all, but really all of them. Lonnie's deduction here, she's coming for you. It's time. She's coming for you. But he can't confirm because he can't reach back out because he's been burned. And Luthan's response to that is not, are you okay? Oh, my God.

You need a shoulder to cry on. It's what have you done? Which I loved because this is the guy who has told Lonnie, you can't leave. Lonnie has tried to get out of this before and Luthen said, I need all the heroes I can get. Right. So of course this would be his response. Not only the threat to himself, but like, what does it mean to lose your great resource, your ISB plant, your man on the inside? In season one, Luthen's like, Lonnie, you're worth more than 30 men.

and krieger combined yeah and guess what this season lonnie has proved him absolutely correct correct correct yeah eat shit every arc lonnie's like guess what i know it's incredible i have something very important to share with you this is really it's three days you know tony was talking to christianity about this he's like will people bump on how much happens over the course of these three days every couple years and i'm not bumping on it at all but like i really feel like

It's the three most important days of Lonnie's year. Every year is what we're experiencing, in addition to everything else. Cassian goes on a number of missions, but Lonnie's like, guess what I got? Intel galore. Let's go. Certainly the most important days for here. You know, got to try some great cocktails at a fancy party, then got used to human shield and shot six times at the chest. The way it was swinging. Yeah.

A lot of poetic ends in these episodes, but here it's was high on the list. Oh, our friend of the podcast.

Right at the pod, Matt Midovich wrote in. He was like, you know, Matt was basically like, as a short king myself, like, do you think that they, Matt's more like a medium king, but he was like, he was like, do you think they intentionally surrounded here by like the tallest tactical team they could find walking down that hallway? And then they're like, you can tuck in, sir. Tuck in. Tuck in.

Tuck in with Tuck. Hide like a baby, sir. We've got it from here. We love a short king. We do not love here. And I don't know if you've heard this before, but we don't love fascism. Took us longer today than usual to say that. That's because Cyril's not around anymore. That's really how you know. It's true. That's the true sign that Cyril's gone. It took till the 40-minute mark to mention that we don't love fascism. I really missed him. I really missed him. I know. Me too. We still will find ways to bring him up today. No question.

Lonnie says that he has figured out what they've been chasing, but before he tells Luthan what it is, he's got to bargain. And Luthan's kind of like, are you fucking kidding me, man? And I was like, yeah, Lonnie, do it. Of course you have to bargain. And it turns out it didn't matter that he bargained, but I appreciate that he tried. You have to try. Like Namik says, you got to try. His wife and daughter. He's got them tucked away and he wants to know how we're going to get them off of Coruscant. And this was just

Very sad because, of course, it takes us back to the iconic Luthan-Lani scene in episode 10 and, like, the way that Luthan brought up fatherhood and the daughter as a way to basically say to Lani, I always know what's happening in your life, whether you have told me or not. And that heart-wrenching moment, especially now that we've spent more time with Lani, like, to go back, when we hear him say, like, I had no idea how it would feel, I think it's just going to fucking shred us and destroy us every time we watch it from here on. Yeah.

And I'm wondering, like, are they okay? Don't worry. They're on Mina Rao. Everyone's fine on Mina Rao. Everything is fine on Mina Rao. Do you think they were like, we grew all this rye, we just have to use this set once more?

I think they did such a good job establishing Talia as like the nicest, warmest, most comforting person ever. And that they're just like, let's send everyone to meet around. Don't worry about it. If she's good enough for me, it's good enough for everyone else. Okay. I like it. I like it. What did Lonnie steal, Jo? Dedra's code cert. This is frankly brutal for Dedra. Had it for a year. Oh my God.

A.K.A. since last week on Andor. He has had Dedra's code cert. And he kept that from Luthen, right? He's like, I knew if I told you, you'd push me to use it. And I think that's so interesting because, like, as you note in our doc here, like,

This idea of like, we've used up all the perfect, like Lonnie knows that the clock is ticking and that Luthan is pushing for faster and faster, more and more reckless behavior. And Lonnie's like, Lonnie only made this move.

Because he knew Luthen was about to get got, and he probably couldn't stop it. And if Luthen got got, then that was his death sentence anyway. So, you know, there we go. Yeah, it was interesting to think about, to your weak ear point from a second ago, how, like, it's two weeks since we've seen the, you used to tell me to wait, those days are gone exchange between them. But it's been two years, you know, since the second arc of Lani, like,

Like, feeling that ratcheting up of the pressure and making every decision through that lens of, like, anticipating what the response will be to whatever he shares. And just all of the things that he was carrying every day. Like, I'm really glad Lonnie made it this far. I'm amazed. Right?

As you know, I was very worried about him every step of the way. Like, this is just, I mean, I can't wait to brag about our shared favorite, Clea, who did one of the most incredible things that we've ever seen. But as you already noted, like, what Lonnie has achieved here is just, is titanic, is historic. Once again, that bench is under the bridge. Should we go? What should, what would we leave? A pilgrimage to Palau, yeah, yeah, yeah. What would we leave for Lonnie? That's the question.

Oh, great question. Ginger to honor his ginger icon status. Could do that. Maybe like a little mini elevator, a little lift. A little mustache. A little mustache on the little lift that he used to ride to meet Luthan. That sounds nice. Luthan says, yeah, this is to your point about time.

dadra miro has been hunting luthan for five years five years yep you and i've been podcasting together for like what three years three and a half three and a half yeah yeah imagine if you were looking for one person this whole time and then add more time to that and that's how much dadra fucked up her moment her time to shine i know it's it's a tough one it's a tough end for for dadra who uh is rotting away in arkena where uh

where she belongs, to be honest. We don't like fascists, so... Where she belongs. That was it. It hasn't come up. This is where we get that there's fast and there's good moment from Luthan, which was just great stuff and very rich. And again, another meta line, certainly. Yeah. And Lani dives in and shares this thing that he has discovered. Luthan says, I think it's here, maybe. Hopefully my notes were accurate. But he also says, you're not the only one who'll be running. We're in this together. What we're up against. Like,

Luthan is offering him fake fellowship here, right? Lying to him with fake fellowship. But that offer of real fellowship, which will come via Vel for Clea, all the people who are reaching out for Clea. Melchie is reaching out for Clea. Everyone's reaching out for Clea to try to wrap her in. And that's just the difference between them ultimately, even though they are cut from the same cloth. How it twisted him along the way, right? As we hear Cass say later, like,

And really love the way that these episodes made so much room for the totality of who Lucid is. It's just obviously the mission of the show is to be able to do that. And they did it beautifully at the end.

So Lonnie shares what we, of course, as viewers have known, which is Stardust, right? The energy program is a lie. Palpatine's a liar. Turns out Palpatine's a liar. Great stuff later on Yavin when they're like, oh, we know all about that energy program. And then the mom's like, yeah, but like, none of the details. We've been funding it without details or oversight. Tough one there for all of the senators.

Gorman, a front for minerals, Jedha, kyber crystal hunt, not a partisan hunt, the public order, the labor camps, Scarif, Orson Krennic's been building a secret weapon for over a decade. We're hitting all of our keywords to lead to Rogue One, A New Hope, the destruction of the first Death Star. Do you think by labor camps-

Is that Narkeena? Yeah, I think so. Yeah, the camps where they're constructing these parts of the pieces of the Death Star and the larger machine. You know, we know what they're going to learn in these episodes because they have to, right? We know, like you said, what we're moving toward. And so for it to still work is just incredible. Well, what's interesting to me is on the one hand, they have to, but on the other hand...

In Rogue One, they get that information from Tivic, right? So, like, there was real suspense for me of, like, yes, they're going to get... They are going to get this information. Yeah. And having it is what puts Cassian and, you know, the folks at Yavin in a place to, like, take this even more seriously and all this other stuff like that. But I was like...

Am I watching the kind of show where Clay is going to die before she can tell anyone? You know what I mean? For sure. I wasn't sure. I did wonder that too. Like, oh my God, is Luthan going to learn, but will they not be able to share it? And will we have these parallel discoveries that don't actually overlap, which would have been very interesting to watch as well. But I really ended up enjoying this aspect of, you know, we had this elsewhere at the doc, but I think, you know, certainly I think some people could bump on

Okay, well, because a lot of the information about Bodhi and then the hollow and everything Galen shares does come in Rogue One, does it feel like Luthen should have died for...

Right. Related information to something that is established in another story. But I've really loved this because, like you mentioned, you know, it, to me, like, enriches then the response that we see from all characters in Rogue One. Not only, like, somebody like Cassian who is sprung into action and there with Tivic and when he hears Erso, he's like, Galen! Galen! And you're like, oh, shit. Now we know, like, how he knows that name. It's like, I've heard Clea say that 20 different times at least. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

Full recap, rundowns of all of the keywords being told on to. Like, you know, Panlo and Jebel and these people who are so staunchly like defiant in the face of this threat. When you then see in these episodes, like, oh, this is who they are.

You know, it clarifies something that I always thought was kind of like a baffling in Rogue One. How resistant. Yeah. Like, wouldn't this be the most serious thing that you would ever heard? Wouldn't you feel a compulsion to act? And, you know, this, I think the other thing is connected to your opening note about this core theme. Like, the idea that, especially in episodes where Luthens...

lack of a tether to the people who are running Yavin is so central. And then people like Will and Cass and Clea have to be the ones to say out loud, like, none of this exists without him. I just loved that he was a part of this thing and that it, like, all of them were a part of it together and that that's what an alliance is and that's what a rebellion is. I thought that was...

And just to, like, never watch anything that has to do with a Death Star again without being able to think about Luthen and Kleia is, like, amazing to me. And Lani! And sweet Lani! I already forgot!

But you will not forget Lonnie, and I love that. And dude, like, you know, on the Lonnie front, like you said, when we think about, like, all the stuff that he has been offering up, man, he's the one who was like, so there's this riser, Dej Romero, right? Axis, Gorman, Dej's running Gorman. Bail Organa's, like, rescue team? I have a note.

The fucking Death Star. My favorite thing about Bail Organa's team, I have a note, is actually, I put her there. I put her there. Yeah. Letting you know. Bones agent. I had to put someone on Bail Organa's team. One of my favorite...

Bail moments in these episodes is when Cassian's like, last time I was in Luthen was when I rescued Mon Mothra from the Senate. And Bail's like, duly fucking noted, Cassian. I liked when he was, like, confirming with Draven, like, okay, so there's a ship returning, this is Andor, and he did this, and then Draven's like, you know, yeah, you can say that. And Bail's just like, incredible. Yeah.

And he did it all wearing Bale's truly hideous cloak that he had in Rogue One. They really saddled... I did some fashion notes. They saddled Benjamin Bratt with that dumb cloak that, like, can't really maneuver his shoulders in. But on the flip side, we have, you know, we're swimming in some of Cassie Andor's best vests and jackets. So that is a gift. I can't wait to talk about Will. Okay. That is a gift. But, like, yeah, Lonnie just...

We can't think about the history of Star Wars and the history of the galaxy without thinking about Lonnie. And isn't that amazing? I'll be thinking about Lonnie. Forever. You will be. Well, I remember. We'll see. But, like, the work that the show has done to genuinely radically alter how we think about the people who have had an impact on the state of play is just really remarkable and amazing. I love it. And we talked about this a bit in previous weeks, but I just think that, like, especially in contrast to the way in which it feels like...

elsewhere in the Lucasfilm story world, they want to connect a lot of things back to the Skywalkers, back to Palpatine. They feel sort of just sort of like jammed up in this idea of special family lineage and stuff like that. And then it's just sort of like, it was a ginger named Lonnie who worked at the ISB who was like, hey, this fascism thing seems not very good. And we recruited him and he went from there. And that's,

That's, you know, very Broom Boy of them, and I love it. We love Broom Boy. This is a very pro-Broom Boy podcast. Always has been, always will be. Should we also rewatch Last Jedi? Sure. Should we just do it all? Any day.

Lani asks, Luthen asks, what kind of weapon? You got any details on the weapon? And Lani pushes again to know where he's going to take them. And Luthen, eyes wide, this is some of the widest eyed stuff we've seen from Luthen. Yavin. What is that? Which I loved. Like, what do people know and what don't they know, even when they are this crucial, right? And Lani repeats it like sort of rapturously. Yavin. Yavin.

The promise of Yavin and the lore of it and then the way that it is actively rejected by someone like Clea later. What a bitter ending. What a bitter end. Holy shit. Yavin, that's to be my sanctuary. Oh my lord. She's just a city girl. What are you going to do in the joke? The mean streets of Coruscant. Wait until she meets some of the Maya Pay Brigade dipshits who have been...

How devastated that we did not get a Mya Pei Brigade checkup in the final closing montage. Here's the thing. It can just all be headcanon for us. Okay. Nothing is off the table. I think they went to Scarif, personally. I support you. I believe that they were to turn the car over and take all the stuff out. And I believe that the Mya Pei Brigade made it to Scarif. And I want these things to be true for you.

I saw a power ranking of Andor season two characters on the subreddit, and it was really, really funny. And all the categories were just kind of broad, sort of like, delighted they had more screen time, blah, blah, blah. And the last one was like, reason why they discontinued that model of space taxi, and it was just take home. And I was like, what this chart presupposes is that take home had died because Sinta flipped it upside down.

I was like, it's catching fire. The signal, the message is out there. Again, your impact is real. And it is felt and seen and measurable, I think, right now. Thank you. Oh, God. Thought. I was so thrilled every time somebody spoke up to tout Luthan and celebrate what he had done. And we will be doing that a lot today. I also thought that Luthan using this sacred place of

A symbol to Star Wars. Lonnie might not know what it is, but we do. A symbol to Star Wars fans of like the possibility of rebellion. Mm-hmm.

As a false carrot to manipulate him into sharing what he needs before Luthen will then shoot him in the chest. To be everything that I have loved about watching Luthen Royale as a character and so fucking grim and dark. And this is what we've been talking about since the first pod we did on Andor. Like a character, and we have many of them, but Luthen is obviously number one on the call sheet here.

Who shows us that you will do anything that is necessary, right? Condemn your decency. Burn your decency. Here it is. I mean, my God. Lonnie had to sacrifice everything at the end, Joe.

That was the choice Luthen made for him. The way we don't see him do it, we just see Luthen walk away. And then the slumped form on the bench. The canted angle of Luthen walking down the stairs is, again, one of those visual twists that we don't often get in an Andor episode. And then we get this, the score is swelling, we get the reveal of Lonnie's body, and

Sweet little pics. Discovering Alani. Great to get a little Tuca moment. Wonderful. A Tuca cat. Is it a cat? A Tuca? Yeah. Close enough. And we get the hurrying down the stairs, but then we get a direct walk towards camera. And it's the first of many that we'll get in this episode. And I've been talking from the beginning about

The idea of the long walk in Andor. And we get a couple, like, you know, I would say Clea through the levels of the hospital. But, of course, the big long walk is Cassian on the way to the ship. And, like, all the things he passes on his way, the forest healer, Melshi, like, blah, blah, blah. And hearing Tony...

tell Chris and Andy that that final sequence, the walk to the ship was always meant to be the final sequence. That's the thing they knew that they were going to end with this long walk. And so you get to then like play it back through the season. And if you go back to the first episode, um,

after Cassian shoots those guys is we get a walk of like a grim hero walk towards camera. And not all of these long walks have been walked towards camera. Often actually they're back of the head walks, but yeah,

We get this Luthen hero walk towards camera. We'll get a Cleo walk towards camera. We'll get another Cassian walk. There's just like a lot of like hero stride toward camera moments in these last. And I just like, again, thinking of it as like a- B rolling toward us. Of course, obviously Perrin rolling in his cab. Just kidding. Should we halt our plans and just do the whole plot on Perrin? Perrin's midlife crisis earrings. Genuine no-no stuff.

Like Davos' wife, the decanter, all of that. But for me, it was the added touch of like he pierced his ears. The new hairdo and the earring was just astonishing. But yeah, this idea of like we've been on this path the whole time. Every step was a step towards this moment of Cassian getting on that ship, flying off to meet Tivic, but then dinner, so. And everything that comes out of it.

Tivic, we won't forget you. But then Jinurso and everything. And speaking of Tivic... Gathering as we go, right? Gathering as we go, as the Force Sealer said. How can we not be thinking about Cassian and Tivic when we realize what Luthan has done to Lani here, right? Lani didn't even get to say that he couldn't climb out of there. My own. Just completely deceived. It was heartbreaking. Like...

In that wonderful episode 10 scene, you know, when Lonnie said, like, my sacrifice means nothing to you. And I believe every single word that Luthan said in response, which is, I said I think about you constantly and I do.

Your investment in the rebellion is epic. A double life, every day a performance. The stress of that. We need heroes, Lonnie. And here you are. He believed that. He knew it was true. He knew how important it was. And then he still made this decision because the moment had come and he was always the person who said to, whether it was Claire or Cass or anyone, Monn,

there's always something else you can do. And he believed that until the moment that he put that bleeder into his gut. And even then, that was his version of, there's always something you can do. I can prevent them from taking me. Now, I would have gone for the jugular. Personally, I have some notes coming on that. But people failed

Also, I feel like there are slicier things in that gallery. Maybe he picked something that was not quite as slicey, so it wasn't as obvious what he was about to do with it. Yeah, if he had just picked up a blaster and been like, this is one of the suspicious items, you know? But this really cool, crystalline, kind of knobby blade, you know? She wasn't like, I'd like you to not be holding the weapon. So, in that sense, it worked. It's dull, because it'll hurt more. I bet it hurt a lot. Okay. Oh, man. Dedra.

It is time for one of the most anticipated meetings in recent television history. This is just incredible. Not since Cyril and Cassian. Oh, wait. Oh, no. Yeah. This is the cat and mouse moment we deserve, though. So reminiscent of that, right down to Deirdre's obsession, blinding her to the right way to do this. Of course, we get the exact opposite of, who are you? It's like, and I've known you all along, so...

Some variance inside of our parallelism. What a show. We cut before we get to the Dedra-Luthen meeting to Clea, who is hurriedly recounting and repeating all of the things that Luthen has told her. The fuel from Gorman, the base in Scarif, Guyber from Jedochrenic, Engineer Galen or so super-webbing, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. And...

she wants to be the one to go do the burn and Luthan insists that it be him. Tells her not to argue. Just be waiting for me. Just be there. By the way, two things. Number one, she's like, I would be faster. Yeah. Right? And I think she would have. I think she would have been faster and I think she would have answered, she would not have answered the door and she would have slipped out the back and it would have been different. Probably slipping out the back probably doesn't help. I feel like they're posted there. I feel like

There has to be another way out. I don't know. Probably. Anyway. Make your way out before you go in. You're right. They probably have a tunnel. I just really believe that Kalaya would know how to get the fuck out. She would go in the vents. Like, you know. Um...

My question is, did she go to the safe? You know, he's like, be waiting for me there. Did she go there and then like it was enough time that she came back to look at the ambulance taking him away or did she disobey that order and go back to the showroom? To help. That's when she saw the ambulance. Before we get there, though. Yeah.

I loved the visual. They linger here and then they went back to it, but the visual of like, it looks like mercury, um, like oozing into Klaia's switchboard. Yeah. Um, the way in which Klaia's switchboard, which has been such a pleasure of a like piece of production design to watch, um, for all of Andor, the fact that it becomes this like key plot point here, um,

But also, I was just thinking about the metaphor of this burning ooze. It could go either way, and that usually means that I'm overreaching. But is this the corrosive spread of the empire into things like burning and sizzling and rotting? Or is it the you-can't-hold-back-the-tide spread of the rebellion? Break the siege. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

The way in which it was like these little plugs and cogs made me think of Cyril Karn's cubicle, made me think of very empiric sort of law and order and regiment. And it's just this like, here we come. It's the rebellion. We're going to fuck shit up. I don't know. Either way, beautiful image. Yeah.

I love it. I love the visuals here, and I love the sound, the way that the – I mean, like you noted, the score is just fantastic throughout so many of these scenes. And the way that the soundscape here shifted from the surging score into the doorbell ringing, I was just like, oh, shit. Yeah.

Oh, my God. And the way that you see Luthan see who it is and smile before we even, it's not even like she doesn't turn around. We don't even see what's on the other side of that door. Right. But he's put on his smile. Here he goes. The mask. Oh, my God. When she turned around, it was like genuine chills. Just great, great, great, really rewarding stuff as a viewer and fan of the show. He waves her in.

She's not like, sorry, we're closed. She gives her this like a feet hand and she like grabs it and shakes it. And they've just got these smiles on and this fake smile that we've seen from Luthien, obviously that mask, but like to see it on Dedra, who we've already talked about, the actress has talked about her downturny mouth and stuff like that. So to watch her smiling as they play this little game is really fun. I thought this was riveting. Absolutely riveting. Yeah.

the dance, when are they going to let the mask slip, who is going to say the thing out loud first, all of the moments and lines that are not only just so charged, but so soaked with double meanings as we go. The false pleasantries of just like, oh, I've always passed by here and it's so peaceful. But then what is she really saying? You were here, right? You were here all along. And

We think back to Cassian imploring Luthan to leave and saying, you can't stay here, they're going to find you. And Cassian was right, they did. But also it's a moment to reflect on the genius of Luthan hiding in plain sight like this, not only the shop on Coruscant being so close to the ISB, these people who were hunting for him, but one of the great thrills of getting the backstory with Clea and Luthan and seeing this...

journey into using antiquities is the way that they ended up getting access to these halls of power. It's just like all of it came together here. It was just so wonderful. And Dedra asks, you know, is everything here real? I love this part. It's so funny. The little chuckle from Luthan as he said, at the moment, only two pieces of questionable providence in the gallery. Any guesses? No.

He shows her the blade. So the genius of like using this as a front to get the weapon that he will stab himself with into his hand. But obviously the fact that he is talking about both of them. The two of them. Yeah. Delightful. Thrilling. She's got something to show him. Okay.

I'm obsessed with this moment. So she brings out, she has her little case with her, right? Her little like nineties case with her. She brought her school box. Yeah. She pulls out the star path unit from Ferrix and she slams it down. But what is so brilliant about this moment is the sound design. I was thinking a lot about, um, there's this moment. I know, you know it well, cause you watch it every year and fellowship of the ring when, um,

Gandalf takes the envelope that has the ring in it and he sort of like dumps it out. Uh,

Or is it... No, it's when Bilbo drops the ring. It's when Bilbo drops the ring in Bag End and it hits the floor with this loud clunk that is unworldly. Like, this item would not make this sound. And, you know, they talked in, you know, the making of Fellowship that they, like, magnetized it so that it would just sort of, like, hit the ground heavier. And then they did this thing on the sound design to reverb it just to make you feel how heavy this thing is. So when she slams it down...

Like, she slams it down with force, but the sound it makes is not a natural sound. It is a reverberation, and the similar-ish thing happens when Krennic puts his finger on the top of her head. It is like a sound design funk of, like, here it is. Like, it's come for you. And the connections that this arc draws between Dedra and Luthen, and this idea that, like,

Thunk, here comes the Star Path unit for you, Luthen. And thunk, here comes Krennic's pointer, gloved pointer finger for you, Dedramiro, is one of my favorite details inside of this arc. I just thought it was brilliant. I love that. Oh, man. And...

It makes me think then because you use the word reverberation of how we've talked about the banging of the anvil on Ferex. And then that connects to one of your opening points about these contrasts inside of similarities. Like for the rebellion...

Even in its nascent budding state, when Marva talks about that sound, what does it mean when you hear it? That's a reckoning and it's a sound of hope and it's a sound of fellowship and unity. Your neighbors are going to be there to come and help and stand by your side.

And that the reverberating sounds for the Empire means that something is ending. Yeah. That something is ceasing, stopping. Ugh. Like, the differences in those declarations of intent, that's incredible. Ugh. You're the best. You're the best. You're the best. I just love thinking about Ferex, too. Like, having the star path, like, this thing that began it all. Yes. The thing that...

okay, Bix, you're a buyer. You know, I've got this thing. It brought all this convergence. Like, obviously, so did what happened on, you know, Morlano 1, but it ports us back in time in a way that I was really grateful for and loved. And, I mean, the presence of Ferox throughout. Oh, you know what we haven't talked about yet? I saw on social that the hand thing, that it is Ferox. Oh, it is? Yeah. Oh,

Stone and sky, baby. Stone and sky. Oh, my God.

Deirdre's like, it's time for my villain speech. And I will not be denied. I've been practicing it. I've been dreaming about it more times than I can count. I've got it all prepared. I absolutely loved this. Hiding in the shelter of imperial peace, she says to him. Kind of the opposite of like the you're in my net moment with Bix where she was really like, I have you. I have you in my control. I see you. I know you're here. And...

The Luthan response, and I've known you all along, hardly seems fair. I loved the way that neither of them shrunk from each other even for a second. I mean, Luthan has the... There's the stillness and the quiet when he sees the star path, but then he is ready, and he is ready to tell her what he thinks of her and what he thinks of the Empire, and she is ready, of course, to do the same in turn. And I loved...

Not only that this gives us this kind of contrast to the Cyril Cassian, who are you? But like, what I really loved about, and I've known you all along, hardly seems fair, is that like, okay, this is in theory the moment where Dedra wins. She has found him after the five-year hunt. She is about to take him into custody. It's over. And he is saying to her,

You didn't beat me. I beat you every single day. I was ahead of you every step. And I just fucking loved that. He's ahead of her right in that moment because here she is. She's caught monologuing. She needed her speed. Happens to the best of us, Deirdre. It really does. But, like, she needed her speed. Like, if she had just sent the tactical team in, she probably could have, like, stopped. I mean, they, you know, that incredible...

imperial agent who we'll talk about later on the switchboard figured out how to use its intel anyway but need a spin-off uh absolutely but um but you know she didn't notice the the sizzling on the switchboard until a while so he bought time for that mercury to seep into the switchboard with his theater but her theater that she needed to do this like you know big grand moment um it like

If she just sent the tactical team in, like, she would have just snapped him up. I'm not rooting for her, to be clear. No, of course, yeah. But, like, how poetic that it's her need for, you know, having told, you and I both wrote in our notes, this idea that, you know, she talked to here, and she's like, it doesn't have to be me. I don't need the glory. I don't need the glory. I don't need the glory. She definitely did. And she waited for him. That might have been the single best detail of this entire fucking thing, is he's like, when you talk about here, it's like you waited for him.

But to go back to what she says, to go back to what she says about hiding in the shelter of Imperial peace. I had my notes and I, I, maybe my brain just filled it in, but I had my notes, the shelter of Imperial peace and quiet and quiet. Yep. And I was thinking about that. And so I was like, think about that line. And so I flipped to the end to when we see her in, is it Narkeena? I don't know. Narkeena-esque, you know, same cells, same jumper. Yeah. I mean, it looks like, I'm just like, I'm just like, is it that,

on a different location. I don't know, but let's say it's Narkina for simplicity. Um,

It's quiet. It's peaceful in there. And that's where she is. How is she liking it? How are you enjoying that imperial peace and quiet? Totally. Oh, my God. I really loved that the episode made the inevitability of people watching at home being like, Deirdre! Not that they're rooting for her, like you said, but like, why are you speechifying? Just do it. Active text in the Krennic scene later. Just like, that was...

harrowing to watch. But it was important that somebody say to her, like, why did you go in there alone? The hell is wrong with you? I thought that was great that we actually got that in the episode. With your little prop that you've been hanging on to for five years. Speaking of props, speaking of props, it is the thrill of my life to note that Deirdre Miro

has gone to wig watch corner with you. Joanna, the floor is yours. On the one hand, it's a thrill of our lives. On the other hand, are you not in the depths of despair thinking about the fact that Dejah Miro never got to see the wig that they put on Luth and Ryle in the flashbacks? She doesn't deserve to. It's just for us. That he wants chaos, not freedom to ruin the galaxy and run back and quote his ridiculous wig.

genuinely welcome to wigwash corner. We even welcome all comers, even fish. Yeah. Um, we want you to go to prison, but while you're in prison, you can think about all the time if you want to. So yeah, that's very generous of you. Um, we're thinking about Nemec because yeah. How can freedom is a pure idea, which we will hear later when part of guests is fucking, holy shit, listening to Nemec's manifesto, which is spread across the galaxy. Uh,

Luthen is like the thing that, because she says that he disgusts her. He says the thing that scares her is freedom, right? Yeah.

She tries to turn it around. You want chaos, not freedom. But I love that, again, this dance, he just goes right back to how confident you are. How confident and terrified. This idea of the Empire being scared. The fragility of that hold on power. The brittleness of it as we hear from Nemec. And it made me think back to episode three of season one. This recruitment with Luthen and Cassian.

The empire, they're so fat and satisfied they can't imagine it. That someone like me would ever get inside their house, walk their floor, spit in their food, take their gear. And Luthan responded to Cassian saying that by saying, their arrogance is remarkable, isn't it? Like this has always been on Luthan's mind. The arrogance of the empire as not only a thing fueling the empire's greed and pride,

thirst for power, but ultimately the thing that would be there undoing, which is what we watch across these episodes and across Rogue One. Dadra's swanning in, but like,

and terrified I loved because you mentioned earlier, I think you described Clea as frantic. That wasn't really my read on her. She seems so focused. She has such clarity of purpose, especially like, you know, she's devastated when Luthien gets taken, but we watch her go through that hospital with such clarity of purpose and she's just go, go, go, go. I would only say frantic in the, I've been waiting for a while for someone to respond to my message. Is anyone coming? Yes. Cool, calm, focused. Cool, calm, focused. Yeah.

I was thinking of the Narkeena arc line from Cassian, power doesn't panic. And I was just thinking about that throughout these episodes. There's just like all these moments where we watch the Empire and the Imperial forces panicking or, you know, some members of the council in Yavin panicking, but like when, when,

And Clea's message comes in to Yavin, like, Will and Cassian and Melchian, like, Kay is anxious because of the rules, but, like, they're focused and they're purposeful and they're going forward. And it's the baddies who are panicking inside of all of this. The look on Partagas' face when they can't get the feedback. Yeah. Yeah.

I mean, but even like part of us talking, even in the call, in the cooler, calmer, collected part of us talking to Krennic scene, you know, they're, they're being smooth and Krennic, Krennic is being like, you're fucked. I can't protect you, Leo, right? You're fucked. Part of guys, part of guys like,

I think you're fucked. He's like, save your sermon for the emperor. You know, good luck to us both. You're fucked. You know, and so there's just this, like, this information got out and oh shit, we're panicking. Here's the panic. Here's response to what's happening is just like this. Make sure they know it was Deirdre's fault. Yeah. Everybody's ass covering. Everybody's trying to make it another day. Mommy's best friend here, you know, ever heard of him? Frankly, incredible stuff. I really loved how petty she was.

In that absolute higher circumstance, there's still time to dunk on here. Great stuff. Great stuff. Email from RG. How do we think Cyril's absence impacted Dedra's increased fanatical need to scavenge for Luthen? Yeah. What do you think about this? I'm not saying, you know, like... I'm just saying...

Debra was not making fondue for Edie. You know what I mean? All she was doing was perseverating over paperwork. And, you know, she puts together all of these clues. This is what we hear her talk to Krennic about. And it's just sort of like, I'm not saying like she wouldn't have figured this out.

but without even the slightest splinter of a home life that she used to have. Now she's just like, yeah, you know, yeah. Dead to rights on this. I think that's really interesting because like, obviously even when she got the Gorman assignment, she was like, actually, I just really want to keep working on access. And then when here got the access desk and she was like so enraged that he didn't consult her and she's, she never stopped thinking about it or perseverating over for a moment. But as soon as Gorman ended and she,

Our last image of her there is the clawing at the neck and the shaky hands. Without that mission and with the thing that she carried after the mission, and then without Cyril, and we're going to talk about this more as we go here, but without the fulfillment of the false promise of this hero's welcome...

All there was was the obsession and the scavenging to try to find the thing that would allow her to win. And Lutha tells her it's too late. It's too late. The rebellion isn't here anymore. It's flown away. It's everywhere now. There's a whole galaxy out there waiting to disgust you. This was incredible. Another one of the best lines here. Here's another candidate. This was just fantastic. And like,

you know, we're the spark that lights the fire, like fire spread, right? They grow. That's what they do. And the idea of the rebellion, this is so central in Nemec's speech, like that it's already everywhere. People don't even know what they're a part of. And to hear Luthan talking in this way too, like it makes us simultaneously feel the progress of the rebellion and the point that we are at in the timeline of the canon, but also kind of like the eternal truth of this thing, right? I thought this was just great. And it really made me think as well of,

of again, Marva as a way that she talked about the, the sound of the, of the people of Farrick's ringing those bells and like the dawning of the reckoning and the announcement of this intention. I was thinking of Firefly and Serenity and this idea of like, you can't stop the signal, Mal, not you Mallory Rubin, but you can't stop the signal, Mal. Like it's too late. It's already out there. Right. And yeah,

Yeah, this idea of, like, disruption and, like, a fire that catches and spreads or a mercury ooze that sizzles. Like, this idea, this false notion that a fascistic government or a fascistic regime brings peace and order. Right. And...

And the idea of like, don't you want it calm? Don't you want it quiet? Don't you not want to make, you know, throw in with these rabble rousers, these terrorists, these whatever the case may be. We're offering peace and calm to you. All you have to do is submit to the boot on your neck. And I, you know, it's, it's the false narrative that, that fascism tries to sell you. And I just, and it comes for, comes calling for Ted Romero. Yeah.

In Poitas's arc. Boy, does it. So does that sizzle from the back room. She realizes what's happening. Luthan turns, stabs himself in the gut.

Would have gone for the neck, as stated. I'll say it once more. I really feel like this was a miss, but so it goes. I did love the way that Luthan, who, again, won't go to Yavin, doesn't think it's for him, is as at odds with other leaders in the Rebellion as Saw was in prior seasons. You know, Luthan being the guy who said to Saw, like...

We'd be stronger together. And then finds himself so on the outside. The pride that he took in telling her that the rebellion was everywhere, that it was out of her reach, was just such a cool final little victory for him to get to enjoy and relish. I really loved that he got that moment before the med kit was placed over the gaping wound in his stomach and he was sent on a gurney to the hospital. A great floaty gurney. It was a great floaty gurney. I...

I do want to echo something that Ben wrote in his recap, and I had it in my notes as well, which is like, I've read enough spy stories to wonder why Lutha doesn't have cyanide capsule in his tooth that he could just bite down on. But then we wouldn't get Clea breaking into the hospital. So I'll take it. Maybe he's like a tooth grinder. Maybe that's how he works through his anxiety. Could that be it?

Sure. He needs a mouth guard and he needs a cyanide capsule. Clea, watching him go with tears in her eyes.

And her little spy hoodie up. She at least puts the hoodie up, you know? She's always ready. Always ready with a murder cloak or a spy hoodie, yeah. This queen among mortals. Or medical scrubs that she stole. Just fucking legend, always. You and Ben are right, you know, I love Luthen, but like, he has literally since the beginning been talking about how his death was inevitable as part of this. So, you know, stuff. And the tooth, look into it. Yeah.

This episode is brought to you by Diet Coke. You know that moment when you just need to hit pause and refresh? An ice-cold Diet Coke isn't just a break. It's your chance to catch your breath and savor a moment that's all about you. Always refreshing, still the same great taste. Diet Coke. Make time for you time.

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Here it arrives. The meeting's already been canceled because of everything that's happening with Deirdre and Luthan. And Partagas is like, yee, she's had a problem with boundaries. We know it. She knows it. You know it. She did get access. He's very badly wounded. And here it's like, I'm here because Lani's dead? I have news. Wait for my news. I love the quiet atmosphere.

What? He also gasps. He like, gasps. Part of gas is across these episodes confronting the fact that the thing he has poured his entire life to is crumbling in front of him in real time. Incredible performance as usual. As always. Oh, I'll miss our part of gasms. Great character. Anton Lesser, what are you doing next? We will watch it. That was a cool moment on the watch when Gilroy was like, I just had to give him a moment to have the stage to himself. Yeah. It's like, yeah. That's when you know you're fucking cooking. Yeah.

Back at the gallery, the ISB CSI, setting up shop. Do you know what CSI is called in England?

No, but I would love to. It's, well, it's Socko, scene of Crime Officer, I think is what it is. But one time I was in London and we had a break-in in the flat and they're like, oh, well, Socko will be here soon. I was like, Socko? What did you just say? It sounds like a sock puppet. Yeah. Like a hacky sack thing. Socko will be here soon. Great. I love it. I love that I know this now.

At the hospital, Dedra is observing Luthen. And, you know, we get a lot of just quiet, casual savagery and menace from Dedra, including when the doc is like, hey, you can't close down the hallway. All of my patients are here. And Dedra says that I'm sure he'll do a better job of moving them than we will. Just incredible way to remind us that the quality of life in the galaxy is not what Dedra Miro is focused on. Not at all. Not at all. Here it arrives. Love this scene.

This was great. I love it. Okay, so Tony Gilroy in several interviews on StarWars.com, they talked about it. The set design of this hospital, which I believe is based on Lloyd's of London, but it's this U-shape so you can see across and they just sort of like

faked it. It's one floor that they designed and they just sort of, like, faked it for all the floors. But the fact that Dedra can see Hirt arrive in the elevator from across the way before he gets there, so we see her sort of, like, prepare herself for that, is so good. And the fact that, like, this is so believable that Hirt's, like...

Let's get to the bottom of this and let me rush to blame everything on you. And then it also draws them both away from the room so that Clea can ultimately, like, get in. But it's, like, a really believable draw away from the room. So, yeah. I thought the thing that that horseshoe shape and the ability to see across reminded me of was Narkeena. And the way that when, you know, the groups are lining up, like, this idea of just...

How information travels and how a thing that you glimpse, whether it's somebody actively trying to sign and communicate with you or just your upstart former aide who's now trying to take you down and have you arrested. And when you're like, I'm going to call PartyGast, he's like, who do you think sent me? Let's go. You're under arrest. It's coming for you. This idea of...

insight at a distance and just that moment to prep is really like a cool, a cool part of the framing, especially in comparison to what you've noted about like the walk toward the cameras for like these individual focuses. Like when are, when are we the eye and when is somebody else the eye of like what is coming? I just like really is so many fascinating little bits of staging across these episodes. It also makes what we're about to watch Clea do like all the more impressive given that she's doing it in this sort of like

panopticon yeah yeah building where everything it's just clear glass everywhere it's wild clay goes to the safe house and it's a wet crumbling mess not in good shape hasn't been occupied for a hot second that floor at least level below looked lovely still and that's so wild to me that couple is just living in a totally normal apartment right underneath an absolute wreck i guess something's dripping through yeah

Good installation. On the set design, production design front, I love that they had to, like, design a beautiful, pristine version of the, like, ruinous apartment that they've been working with all season. I thought that was really funny. I loved that. Great stuff. We're going to learn last how Clea and Luthan came into each other's lives, because suddenly, as Clea is standing in the present time frame here, we hear blasters firing and we are ported into the past. Joanna, take me to wig watch again. This is incredible. Okay, so, like...

Also, I mean, like, you know, Kalaya we've already talked about is, like, you know, an absolute icon. But just, like, she's given so much plot-wise, but also performance-wise. Like, this shot in the safe house is just, like, her standing there in frame in an incredible coat. But just, like, and then her face, like, she's shaking. She's not panicking, but she is, like, absorbing this information. Of course.

We hear the flashback before we see it, right? We're with her and we hear the sound of war. This whole thing is shot differently. Like we're immediately, not all the flashbacks are, but this first flashback is shot with like different lenses, different lighting. So we know that we're in this like other space. We're hearing all of this like very traumatic thing. And then in comes Luth and Ral. And this is an email we got from our listener, Chase. Oh.

Okay.

That wig was the stuff of nightmares between the digital de-aging and yet another uniquely upsetting Luthan wig. I immediately was the Leo pointing meme saying this is going to bother Joanna deeply. And I absolutely agree with her. We've run out of perfect indeed. So funny that they put that line in the script after the hair department shrugged and said it verbatim when they threw in the towel on that horrid semi crew cut. Incredibly well from Chase. Thank you so much. Really funny.

I do want to say, with love and respect to the wig department, who've done an incredible job across...

uh and or i was watching uh you know they did these like little day in the life on set videos that like genevieve o'reilly posted one uh diego posted one etc um and genevieve o'reilly as mon mothma like watching them apply the mon wig um not to mention we'll obviously get to but the previous mon wig like that's an incredible wig like there's incredible wig work on this show this is just a moment that

Was not their finest hour. I would have gone for a longer swoopier cut myself and not, I guess they're going for military. Yeah, military. Maybe put a helmet on him. Maybe that's the goal. Okay, that's a good thought. Put a helmet on is a good thought. But then would he, would the passage of time have not been felt as keenly? One of the things I liked was the way the hair very like slightly changed across these four. Oh my God, it was so, when we got to the one where it turned into a swoop, I was so relieved. I was like, yeah.

You just made a swoop. You just made a swoop. So we're going to take these memories all together, the flashbacks all together. They are intercut in a feat of editing brilliance with Clea's expedition to reach Luthen in the hospital. Climb. Yes. Fuck yes. Yes.

We're going to take them all here. So this first one we're seeing like through her position in the grate, his legs, we're hearing the snippets. Like you said, it's very clear that this is another planet, another people that are being destroyed, right? Taken. If you see anything move, kill it. Horrifying. And we see it. Yeah. We see Luth and we learn that his name is Lear, Sergeant Lear. And before we talk about the struggle that we witnessed, we have to talk about the name Joanna.

Okay. What's up, babies? You sent us not only many wig emails, but also many Shakespeare emails. And I just see you and I really, really like you. So Jamie sent this one in.

Little something for Shakespeare Corner. We got the reveal of Luthan's surname being Lear. Obviously, Lear is an anagram for Rel, but also it got me thinking about Clea as Cordelia. In the play, Lear has three daughters who all claim to love him, but in many ways see him as a means to an end, and only Cordelia loves him purely. I was specifically thinking back to the moment Clea had with Vel in season one, where Vel asked,

what she had done for him lately. And Clea said, I don't need lately. I have always. Side note, that's when she's like, plates spinning, blah, blah, blah. Incredible, iconic Clea moment. Season one. Okay, back to the email. If we look at Vel and Mon, perhaps as Goneril and Regan, they look up to Luthen, up to a point, but they lost faith. They grew dissatisfied with how he did things. And in the end,

Only Clea was loyal to Luthan, not just the rebellion, the way only Cordelia was loyal to Lear in the end.

Love it. The bard is always welcome. Always. The professor is always welcome and the bard is always welcome. The idea of Mon and Belle is gone. Ronald Reagan really cracked me up. Very, very good. This is really, really good. And I got this email independent of, you know, then Chris posed this great question to Tony about like the children of Luthan. Yes. And this idea. And he also sort of like scooped in Cassian and Will and like all this other stuff like that. Like these...

These rebels that Luthan sort of fostered and raised. I thought that was a really brilliant observation from Christopher Ryan. Is it J. Ryan? C.R. C.R. Just another goat. So many goats. Wilma and C.R., two of the greats. That's how I feel about it.

I can't believe how much I care about Wilmon at the end of this. Will is your Lonnie, and that's great. I just fucking love Wilmon. When Cassian told Will, like, I have bad news, Will. Luthen's dead. And then just again put his comforting hand in, like, the back of his head and embrace him. I was like...

I'm just so sobbing watching these two. Ferrix with the stone in the sky. Oh, my God. Did you see the meme that was like Cassian saying, I have friends everywhere, and then next to it it's Will with his ladies, and it says, I have girlfriends everywhere. Dude, Will is a swordsman, a lightsaberman, and I respect it. I do, but he's still a drainer. Loyal to drainer. I did. I think that the fact that the...

is under the bed, though, that he goes back home and his girlfriend's like, what is this that I found under the bed? And it's a beeping radio because he's a loyal guy. Friends everywhere, we are listening. But definitely, like, certainly made me think of, like, hiding porn under the bed or something. And I was like, yeah, this is just one more way. It's not Playboy. It's a radio. But it is one more way to remind us that Will is just always getting his dick wet. So good for him. Do you think that's what...

Cyril Karn had in his secret box. Was it a radio? Yeah, it was a radio. Yeah. A radio. That's what I thought. Oh, Cyril. I miss him. Bad baby. Wow. There we go. It's been a minute. It's been a minute. It has been. Luthan is sitting here, Joanna, and he is saying to himself, kind of repeating and then crying and then screaming, make it stop. Make it stop. Roshnelutz in his, we can presume, native tongue. Mm-hmm.

And then he hears this sound. He is so horrified by what is unfolding out there, this army that he is a part of. He has clearly already come to a moment and a point where he is unable to participate in this any longer. He is hiding. Fellow soldiers come in. The captain comes in. What are you doing? Oh, I'm not. I had to reload. I had to. What do you want me to do about this? Right. But then he hears this sound and he opens the grate and he sees Clea, the girl who will become Clea.

The first moment of the shush to make sure she stays safe and then the building toward the grasping of the hand. Holy fucking hell. This was like amazing to just finally get the moment that they chose each other. I really, really, really have loved hearing Tony Gilroy talk about this in interviews and I,

The way that he described it in his interview with Dalton Ross at EW was, she is his transformation. And that's a pretty unusual story to be able to tell. I loved that. She is his transformation. And he was already on the brink of something, of rejecting something and moving towards something.

But what finally led to it, Joanna? A person. And I was thinking of you and I was thinking of our guy, David Lindelof, and Lost. And one of the things that we love to talk about, and you always, whenever you mention this on any of the pods, it's always such a beautiful thing. What's the most satisfying and rewarding answer to a mystery or question? Another person. And we've wondered for so long, how did Luthan become this guy? How did he choose to start doing these things? And how did he get to this place?

And he's been doing it for so long, and we know that because of something like the equation I wrote. It's clear that it has been his life for a while, but how did it start? And the answer is Clea.

Thank you so much for invoking the greatest answer to a mystery as a person. But also like in, in that moment, right before he does that, one of the, the, the, one of his men who comes in to talk to him says, I can't believe there are any of them left out there, but you don't want to be out here alone.

And then he reaches a hand out to her and she hasn't been alone since until we find her in this episode. Right. But you don't want to be out here alone. Like it's a violent, scary world and you, and you want to be together and he finds her, she finds him there together every, presumably almost every day since missions, you know, aside. And, and,

what is what is a clay alone in the world we talked about this a lot on the last of us what's an le alone in the world what's a clay alone in the world and um the answer is a badass uh is is the answer but also just like unmoored yes you know right you need your anchor um there's a ton of theorizing that uh clay is cassian's sister and i just want to i just want to say and ben and ben texted me about this and he was like where are you in this and i was like

vaguely possible, but not probable was sort of where I landed. And then given all the interviews that various people have given, it's like, it's a no. It's a no. This isn't Cassian's sister, but...

A spiritual sister of a kind. There's definitely a parallel to... No question. Marva discovering Cassian, Luthen discovering Clea. Yes. Saw reaching out for Jyn Erso. Like, there are these moments of discovery for these kids. She does have the long curly hair that is similar to the young actress who played his sister. And I will say, if they didn't want to draw this connection...

It was perhaps, I found out on StarWars.com, like sort of trivia for this week, that they shot the market where we first see, the first market where we see Yunklea and Luthan peddling their wares was shot in Black Park, which is the same exact place they shot the Canary Village. And I was like, guys...

You invited this a little bit to your door. But the answer is no, but yes, in sort of like a spiritual way, I guess. Yeah. And I think that's ultimately more interesting and more satisfying for it to be that kind of, that parallel of experience and that parallel of theme. And not just that they were like scooped up by these people and brought into this world, which they were, and what a thing to share. But like that they came from these broken worlds, that these forces had destroyed.

And so then I like thinking about the, you know, those two characters growing up, having a conversation like the one they had last week slash last year, last week for us, last year for them. Yeah. When Cassian's like, I'm done. And Clea says, you know, so it's a private thing, something I wouldn't understand. And now one of the things that has been so rewarding about watching Andor is just like everything that comes before is enriched for us now with every further step we take.

And so you go back to a conversation like that, like, and her saying to Cassian, you were a witness to the Gorman massacre. One would think there'd be no stopping you. This is her Gorman. What happened here? What happened to her family? What happened to her home? And like, we got a really incredible email that we'll get to later about Vell. And I didn't put this section of it in there. Yeah.

But this idea that, like, you know, Cinta gives Vel shit for being, like, a rich girl basically cosplaying Rebellion to a certain degree. But this idea that Vel is a rebel, unlike so many of these other people, did not lose her entire... Like, Shindrila is still thriving. And so did not have to, like, lose her entire home or lose all of this in order to be inspired into the Rebellion. And we'll talk about sort of her inspiration later. But yeah, this idea that, like,

what did Cassian have to lose? What did Will have to lose? What did like all these people have to lose in order to find themselves here? And it's a very strong uniting cause and it's not true for everyone, but it's true. It's true for Cinta. You know, it's, it's, it's really interesting. Yeah. Some of us just decided to, just decided to do something about it as Cassian will say to Jen. Let's go into our second memory. We have a new lone wolf and cub in Star Wars, Joe.

Take me through it. Take me through it. I loved this. We've got Luthan and Clea. Love a space cockney. We get a few of them in this stretch of the show. But I loved this woman with her thick eyeliner and her, like, smile. You know, I'll give you this much of your smile. And Clea's like, no smile. Fuck you. That was incredible. I loved that. I love this, like, origin for, you know, their whole cover. That, like, from the start, we see how they started in this way. And we got this really interesting email from Jess...

about like she sent it before this arc just sort of thinking about Clea and Luthen and the antiquities trade you already mentioned this the way in which that can like

like bring them inside of people's homes. But Jess wrote, as a museum professional currently working in an art gallery, I prefer the term gallery in it personally. It's so wonderful to watch Clay represent my field in Andor. Jess wrote, I can't stop thinking about how well primed we are to engage with subterfuge and resistance. After all, we are a bunch of fluid liars who are able to both schmooze with wealthy clients and bond with artists at all stages of their careers. Our institutions are, as we're seeing in America today, frequently targets of fascist

regimes because we promote empathy, historical contextual awareness, critical thinking, looking, and creativity. Perhaps because of this, the museum field has a long history of active resistance. We are the people who protect the art, even when we can't protect the artists. A notable example is when the art collections of the Louvre were vacated in their entirety and hidden in chateaus outside of Paris in order to keep them from Nazi occupation. And just goes on to talk about sort of like her current,

But I just thought that had never really occurred to me. And I think that's a really beautiful idea. Well, I think we probably did talk about this a little bit in season one when we were really focusing in on this idea of cultural specificity. Yep. There's a way, of course, we would look askance at certain museum institutions for stealing antiquities from various cultures. That is certainly the case. I don't think that's what Jess is talking about here. But the way in which...

In Luthan's case, this is about treasuring, even when he shows the dagger. He's probably ceremonial. This is his providence. All this sort of stuff like that. It's about celebrating unique cultures in contrast to the way in which the Empire looks to flatten and homogenize. And that's also a really interesting element in the brew. Brew? Brew. I did that for you. A brew? A brew?

Thank you, my darling. Thank you. You're welcome, my dearest. A little Baltimore slipping through the brew. I am not a daughter of Ferrix, but I am a daughter of Baltimore, and daughters come up here. Is she a daughter? Yeah. An old-timer transition. Get out. I'm trying. They haggle, we reach the press. Hopped on that Segway and just, like, wrote it into the next section. I love that. That's my long walk into the next bullet point. Yeah.

So when they leave, having secured their prize, Clea asks about this. Am I your daughter now? When it's useful, Luthan says. And Clea, a fucking badass from the word go, replies, I have to think about that.

I know. Amazing. I just absolutely loved this. This exchange was great. We'll be whoever we have to. It won't always be up to us. I'm Luthan now. You're Clea. Everything else is up for grabs.

This entwinement and like tangling in a way that is both naughty and complicated, but also like the specific brew of their relationship and their story and their history and their life of like affection.

That actual forming of a relationship like that with purpose, need, what suits us when, understanding how that was a part of the way that they talked about their bond with each other from the start, and then you build towards just the way that they are looking at each other at the end. When it's all on the line and it's like there's kind of no doubt what they are to each other at the end. But they espouse this idea of like...

You know, because in a second we'll see Luthan just abandon her in the middle of this chaos in the marketplace. They espouse this idea of, similar to the Jedi, this idea that attachment is dangerous and stuff like that, and they would certainly counsel Luthan.

Fel and Cinta that way or Bix and Kathy that way. You know what I mean? Like, that's not what we're here for. But at the end of the day, they can say whatever they want to say about the nature of their relationship. Like, they are a bonded pair. They feel the way they feel about each other. Yeah. I love seeing that, that, like, Luthan would fear that forming for other people, but then, of course, be experiencing it himself because how could you be alive otherwise? Humans. People. We fail. That's our case.

That's our curse. I was really interested in what Gilroy said about like, just flat out, like I wanted to explain this so nobody else did. I thought this was...

Thought this was great. This was also in the EW interview. He said, I think our curiosity about that relationship is about what that relationship is about is huge. I wanted to make sure that everybody wasn't writing a story about that, that I didn't want them to write. That's always present. I didn't want anyone to think there was anything sexual or anything romantic or anything weird or anything confusing. I really wanted to define it before anybody else tried to define it. If you don't define it, somebody else will. And I like thinking about this in a couple ways. Like there's just what

what people consuming the story might take from it once it's theirs. And if you don't tell them a specific thing, they'll maybe think something else. But also like, if I don't answer this in my Star Wars story, someone else will in their Star Wars story one day. Yeah. We got so many emails about this, about like, do we want a spinoff for, for Val, for Clea, for this, for that, for the other thing, for Bix and her kiddo, like most of all. And I think most of them, most of the emails were like,

I kind of don't want anyone else to touch. I don't want to see a Vel story where Vel isn't written as well as she's written here, you know, sort of thing. And I kind of feel similarly to a certain degree. This is Tony's. This is Tony's world. That's how I feel. And if Tony wants to get a couple years rest and then come back and give us a Clea spymaster story, spymaster of the rebellion story. Dude, Clea and Vel, we ship it, obviously. Clearly.

who then sometimes visit B and Bix. Yes. It was so clear to me that Vel, like... Was in touch? Yeah. She's like, that's what I hear. I'm like, you mean that's what you hear when you go to Mina Rao and you go see her? Yeah. Yeah.

Great stuff. Joe, take me more, take me into more of your thoughts about this third memory when they witness while trying to move the Deveronian victory necklace bearing the mark. And then the Empire brings down the citizens for public execution, including a child. Yep.

clay does not move, stares the truth of the vampire in the face and loses bounces. So interesting to me because I actually don't know what the right answer is. And I guess in a rebellion, you need both, but like, here's clay activated by empathy.

And she refuses to look away. Even as like, not just Luth and Lise, but there's that like alien creature behind her who's like sitting cross-legged with the hat. And he sort of like turns his hat down so he's not looking at it anymore. And Clea doesn't flinch and she looks. And there's something heroic about that. And there's something galvanizing about that. And like, so that's compassion. And then before we get to Naboo, I will say, side point,

these public executions, these like performative cruelties that the, the, the, like the, it's like pageantry of evil that the empire keeps insisting on. Uh, and it, you know, it gets back to Clem being strung up or Will's dad, you know, it's just sort of like this, these public performances of oppression and evil is in many cases. And, and what happens in, in Gorman is many, in many cases, what gets them at the end, um,

You know, and so Clea's activated here by what she sees. And she goes to talk to Luthan about it, you know, and he talks about, like, we'll start, you know, we fight to win. That means we lose and lose and lose until we're ready. All you know now is how much you hate. Think that. You hide that. You keep it alive until you know what to do with it. And when I tell you to move, you move. So, like...

He leaves her there. He's like, you're on your own, right? You're all alone here watching this. And like, again, that's that idea of like, you're alone, we're together, et cetera. But he tells her this

On the one hand, we're like, Luthan's wrong to walk away in this moment. She's right to stare down what is happening, to not flinch away. But then later, when they blow up the... When they're sitting in this cafe in Naboo, and Luthan's gonna... Ice cream looked great. It looked delicious. She didn't touch it. She went from, I'm hungry to I'm not eating this ice cream. Because they're about to do a... I was gonna say a terrorism, a rebellion. Like...

He tells her to not look. Right. Because looking means she knows it's going to happen, and so they don't look. Yeah. So that they can, you know, have plausible deniability of, like, what just happened. So they can escape, yeah. But it's also this idea of, like...

your decency, right? It's like this idea of like the, the walk away, the look away, the lack of immediate empathy is for the cause of long-term. Yeah. Empathy and healing and, and for a world that we don't get to participate in, but like we look away now so that people don't casually look away forever. And like watching her little Clea in that cafe, like,

First, he tells her to look around. Yes. Look around. See what's at risk here. And she sees this little boy with maybe his grandparents or something like that. And it's just sort of like, here's another kid who gets to live this very peaceful childlike... Am I going to take that away? This is not... I'm not going to take it away, but also that's just not available to her. That's just not ever who she's going to be. But I just think this is a really interesting juxtaposition of like,

And I think they are both right. And I think it goes back to what you need in a rebellion and you need the Luthans and Kleas who have ice in their veins. And then you also need the Cassian Andors who are like, I'm not leaving you in this safe house. You're coming with me. Fire in his heart. Yeah. Yeah.

I love that. I love that. I love the way that all of these flashbacks built into each other and like how it's just, you know, it's ultimately like quite a, an economical way of, of showing us their history for moments in time, a couple minutes in each scene, but to understand the evolution, not only of like their relationship with each other, but of that kind of, yeah, of that, like that creed, you know, when Luthan is, I mean, not only are we getting the birth of move there, but like when Luthan is saying, uh, uh,

All you know now is how much you hate another contender for a single line of the... I mean, who else? And, like, thinking of, like, thinking of Clea this whole time and, like, her performance as someone who was just, like, masking, seething... Yes. ...anger... Right. ...under this calmer facade. Yeah.

Yeah. Really instructive. Yeah. Yes. I love that. And like, this is the equation, right? This is what he's talking about. What they, what they, what they forge with each other here, this like pact and this, this way of life and the differences in their perspectives to your point. And also the things that they'll agree to abide by together, their contract, their code, their vow, like,

I wake up every day to an equation I wrote 15 years ago and here it is. And what a cool thing for us to get to see. I loved on the cafe and the Naboo memory. First of all, very cool to be back in Naboo. It's always, always great. You need to pay attention. Life shows us what we stand to lose.

It's unbelievable and very related to what we were discussing a few minutes ago, because this is a guy who can say all he wants to the person across from him, to himself, to all of the other people he's going to recruit and run, not to get attached. But he's looking at the thing that he could lose, too. He doesn't want he like the way that he said, you know, the only thing I'm afraid of is what I'm doing to you.

He doesn't want to lead her down this path. He doesn't want to corrupt her in this way. He knows what this is going to do. Share my dreams with ghosts. That's not what he wants for her because he already cares. And we can feel that so much in the way that he is looking at her there. And I thought like the sliding of the detonator

And it's like a test and a choice and a declaration that she should get to choose. And also a burden that he will carry for a little while longer. Yeah. Yeah. When he presses it instead, there was just so much packed in to that little exchange. I really, really loved, really, really loved. Here we go. We made our choices. Here we go. Really loved. Gilroy said to Megan O'Keefe, the decider of this, uh,

stretch and what we learn about their relationship through these memories, the young girl is actually the dominant one. She's actually in control. Luthan's not in control. Otherwise, it runs some risks that you can imagine of manipulation. You really had to find and design those scenes really carefully and then find a girl who could really believably bring the steel that older Clea has. Bring the steel. Mm-hmm.

I love that. I love that. Yeah, really good. Really, really, really, really, really, really good. And we go then now in our pod, but again, these are intercut throughout to the present day. Joanna, take me through Clea's infiltration of the hospital. Okay.

So before we get to the hospital, we get the like determined stride out from the safe house. Again, Cassian will do this walk later, but we get the stride to camera. She's sort of like a head. She's got a scarf around her head, like off to do what she needs to do. By the way, before she does that, when she like pulls out the bag that has the lock pick and the detonator and stuff like that.

And then later when we see her break the radio out of the wall, I just want to shout out, Clea's wearing like leather pants and boots and just like, is the coolest person ever. Looks amazing. Looks incredible while she's going through the worst emotional turmoil of her life. The fit is great. Okay. Oh, man.

So here we go. She goes into the hospital. Someone, I think it was on Blue Sky, responded to me. I posted something about, like, I'm ready for CSI Coruscant. And they were talking about how we got, like, a police procedural and, like, a hospital procedural inside of the same episode. And I was like, oh, yeah, these trappings of classic television. Here we are. That's right. Yeah. Welcome to the pit in Coruscant. Here we go. But, like, you know...

We already talked about the layout and what that means for her infiltration. She's in these scrubs. She's taking this long climb up and up and up all the floors that she can go to, you know, to get to him. I love the person she stole. Oh. She was like, eh? She thinks. Number one.

There's a closed captioning later when she leaves her of like, it just says granny scatting. Psychotic. Also, thanks StarWars.com, reminded me that we saw these old ladies on Nemos, aka Space Miami. We've seen these babes before hanging out in Space Miami. You think she likes to crush some pizzas?

Wash it down with some Revnog? She loves the blue. Granny likes to party? The blue, the green ones. Also, one other detail is the galactic muzak that plays in the elevator as they go up. Great touch. What? Also,

We got an email about this, but I had already, trust me, as a child of the 80s, I had already written in my notes, nurse jelly. She's got jellies on her feet. And I think they're supposed to like invoke Crocs. But to me, a child of the 80s, they look like jelly sandals to me. For sure. For sure.

And I just love that we watch her go up, like, innovate, kill people when she needs to, when she has the blaster behind the clipboard and just sort of coolly clips, like, shoots that guy and then just, like, calmly sidesteps him as he tumbles. His dead body tumbles down the stairs next to her. Yeah. Really, really incredible stuff. And, like, as you point out in our notes...

Later when they're like, it was definitely a three-person team. Definitely had to have been at least three people. And it's just fucking Clea. Just Clea. Killing it. Just Clea. I love thinking back now to Clea being the one in the field to remove the bug from Davo's installation. In that great scene in episode six with Lonnie. Lonnie? Hero of the Rebellion? Lonnie there he is again!

Has anything important ever happened that Lonnie didn't touch? I don't know. I don't think so. And when Lonnie was like, you know, what were you going to do if I wasn't here? And Clea said, anything I had to. Like, not only now, not only did a moment like that prepare us for seeing Clea in the field acting alone and getting it done here, but now when we go back, that's even richer because of what we have seen after. I just like, the way that Andor just is like a pinging and building the whole way. It's great. Yeah.

When she entered Luthan's room. Yeah. She gets to the, here's what I love about this. This is like a devastating moment.

She, like, you know, pulls the blinds, essentially, on the windows. And you think she's going to have a moment where she, like, talks to him or says goodbye or cries at him, and she will in a second. But immediately, she uncouples the breathing device from him. And by the way, this is really cool production design on that respirator. But she just goes right for it. And she's like, that's what I was here to do.

And she has other things she has to do. She has to get that mission, that, that message, um, pass that baton on. She has other things to do, but like,

in theory, if she then takes a beat to cry over him, which she does, you know, that's just her getting caught. She's already, like, killed him, which was her mission. But I just love that she doesn't hesitate. But it doesn't mean she doesn't care. Right. And we get that. She'll grieve when there's time. Yeah. I love to listen to the little, like, little kiss on the forehead. Yeah. Quick, tiny. And his little, like, grimace before his face sort of smooths out into just, like, peaceful repose. Oh,

Joanna, he burned his life to make a sunrise that he knew he'd never see. I love the way the episode closed just on Luthen. Slow. Slow fade. This thing that Clea had to do, you know, we'll hear Vel and Clea talk about it later and how hard it must have been. It reminded me a lot of in Last of Us.

Like, if somebody you love gets infected and you have to shoot them, and how horrible that would be and how painful that would be, but also, like, you know you're sparing them from a worse fate than that. And, like, that that was what Clea had to do here, but by infiltrating an ISB. Yeah.

Also later when Cassian is like, are you sure Luthan's dead? And she like flinches because it's like, she doesn't say it, but in that moment it's like, yeah. And I had to be the one to do it. Yeah. It's time for episode 11. Speaking of dead people.

Episode 11 is a... These are wild closes and opens for these episodes. We get a cliffhanger at the end of episode 11. Episode 10, slow fade out on the dead body of Luthen. And episode 11 opens with a shot of a dead stormtrooper on the ground. And we just stay there with him for a moment. When has the camera... Outside of, like, I don't know, our introduction to Finn in Force Awakens. When has the camera ever lingered on, like...

Because they're just cannon fodder, right? And there's really interesting... When we get to the Krennic-Dudra scene, you have some interesting observation about the way in which Krennic is framed there. But I was thinking about later when the tactical team is showing up to the safe house, the Imperial tactical team is showing up to the safe house. We get all these shots of fingers flexing, cheeks, toes tapping in the nerve sort of thing. And it was almost this...

very humanizing of the Imperial forces that we're about to see Kay just sort of rip through. But like, you know, they're evil people, but they are people. And we're used to just sort of stormtroopers being these, they're not stormtroopers, but we're used to stormtroopers being these like,

you know, shells. Like, we don't think about the people inside them again until we meet Finn. But, like, this idea of, like, these are people making this decision and they've got nerves and they've got this, that, and the other thing. And here's a dead stormtrooper on the ground and he's a bad guy. We don't like fascists and we don't like stormtroopers, but...

There's a cost of fascism and it hurts everyone on both sides. So I just thought that was a really interesting moment. That's a great observation. It makes me think of the kids, the green boys who were tossed out there in Gorman last week slash last year. Yeah, last year.

That's Chairman Corbin. Chilling to hear Joy Dolly, who are beginning this investigation at the hospital, just kind of run through the list of like, you know, slap charges, two ASB drivers dead, one missing. Guards and hospital staff too. It's like they don't really know what the death toll is. That was sort of disturbing. Clay had killed a bunch of people. Oh, yep.

the hospital. So that's a thing that we will just say and then we'll move on to the next point.

This is where Herod's just like... Is that Granny's okay? Yeah. Yeah, Granny was clear of the blast. She wasn't near the ambulance bay. Okay, good. Granny's thriving. Just safe in a brightly lit room just saying, eh, over and over and over again. Okay. This is where Herod's like, I need them to know that this was Denner's fault multiple times, which was very funny to me. I really enjoyed that. He is kind of like...

I've spent a lot of time kind of mocking here, and I thought it was interesting, especially given that he's about to say, like, I'll lead this operation personally, to see him challenge the medical director, Reclal, when he comes in, and he just doesn't flinch at all, right? And he has that hubris and that arrogance of knowing that he's a part of the imperial machine. Oh, well, if you're going to ask me a single question, that means—

You're going to you're here to stop me and you're like a threat to me and I will threaten to take your life away from you and I will do it without function. I thought it was really interesting to have director Reckla who comes in and he's like, how dare you do this to my hospital? How dare you close the door so we can help people? And then a meat. Oh, you're going to arrest me. Right. Immediate back down. My risk. Oh, you need.

What do you need? Hey, Colman's like, my bottom line has been impacted by the rebellion. Tay, you got a new bottom line coming in. You're going to see it when Sinta turns the car over. Down at the bottom of the ravine.

Rest in literal pieces, take home. All right. I think we're going to be very present in each other's lives until one or both of us is dead. And I like the idea of like, you know, in our seventies, whatever the technology is, I don't know if it'll be texting. It just out of nowhere on like a Thursday, one of us texting the other. I'll mind meld you. Yeah, exactly. Just fire it into my brain. Yeah. Everyone's sent to turn the car over. Um, I'm, I'm,

I'm like dramatically disappointed in Chris and Andy for not asking Tony Gilroy about that. I know. I mean. I'm just kidding. It was an incredible interview and I loved every second of it. We don't ask a lot of Chris other than these, you know, 900 times a year where we text him and are like, can you ask this person this question about this thing? And this was one of those 900 times and he didn't do it. God damn it. He sure didn't. Here it has questions and it's like, who are the three people, the three people who did this?

When we talk about what spinoffs we want, I want this security guy. This guy killed me. Killed me. It's like, I need to see out there by the bay up and stop. Do you have a second choice? That's real burn. Second choice. I wouldn't sit there because I think his like coffee stuff was there. Like,

It's really good. And his cousin has an application in at the ISV. Oh, my God. That was so funny and so good. And they were cutting back and forth between scenes, but they're seeing repeatedly Clea head down, avoiding the camera, and hear admiration, I think, in his eyes when he pieces it together. Like, whoa, holy shit. It was just her. Yeah.

Dedra is not there for this reveal because she is in an interrogation room, much like the one that she once met young Cyril Karnan. And it was chilling, chilling to see her in this place, chilling to see how quickly she was discarded by the hideous fascist force that she had devoted her life to, chilling to see how quickly she was

Chilling to see Krennic slowly walk into the control bay and turn off. Turn off the recording. The recording. You're like, ah, I mean. Turn off his body cam. Not good. Not good. Not great. And stride in. And we're looking. The camera is positioned on Deirdre's face as Krennic comes in behind her. But it seemed like she saw in the reflection who it was. And she like squared her shoulders and yeah, like got herself ready. Yeah. Yeah.

So this was where in this opening stretch before he leans down and whispers into her ear, like say the word. And I'm like, Orson Krennic, you're a great villain. I love you. But Death Star's two words. Did Chris talk to you about that? Chris texted me about that. He's like, is Death Star one word? I was like, I was waiting for like, as was Stardust, like was the official copy book of Scarif that Stardust was one word. I was waiting for that maybe, but no, she said Death Star, definitely two words. Anyway, um,

You know who doesn't know that? Tony Gilroy. Did you read the story that he told about his son? Yes. Yeah. Telling him that he needed to do the origin for Rebellions are Built on Hope line. Basically, if people didn't read this, Tony Gilroy is like, yeah, my son was like, hey, how are you going to explain the origin of Rebellions are Built on Hope? And Cassian says to Jin and blah, blah, blah. And Tony's like, isn't that a thing people have said in Star Wars before? He's like, nope. You're dumb. Better fix it.

Tony Gilroy's son, we salute you for all your work representing the Star Wars community. Is that the son who was in the Maya paper game? That's his son-in-law, I think. Oh no, you're right, that's his son. Maybe, I don't know. What a contribution to the canon. Wow. I bet he was like, later he texted his dad, he's like, Death Star is too worth, dad. Yeah, I hope so. Chicago style.

horse and chronic style. Everyone agrees. Death star is, is two words. Um,

When Krennic first walked in, though, before he bent down to whisper menacingly in Dedra's ear and before he poked to the top of her head and before he grabbed her entire face and shoved her down into a chair, all fucking disturbing stuff in this sequence. This was where I really was struck by the framing because we see just from like, you know, the lip down. We don't see his face. Amazing. So we're not seeing any of his, such that it is with Orson Krennic, any of his humanity. We are seeing his cape.

and the sign of his rank, and we are seeing the mouth that is spouting this horror. It's all politics and power and the trappings of imperial might. And then we have the opposite with Dedra, right? She is being stripped of this power. I mean, when she has the interaction with Hirt later, she won't have the sign of her rank at all. She doesn't have her code syllabus. Her hair is my...

Her hair is must. The greatest sin of all. Her hair is out of place. Oh my God. Is that why I'm here for the murder of an ISB clerk? Clark? Oh, he says Clark. That's why reputation slid so precipitously. I love- Clarkville.

I love Ben Mendelsohn's chronic voice because he's doing this imperial toffee, like toffee knows British accent, but he's an Aussie and it just comes through as well. So it's just like, it's ISB clock. Like I was just like, it was just like really, really good. Oh my God. Great stuff.

He's the best. It's been really fun to have Krennic in the show. Really, really, really, really, really fun. I like to like thinking back to just the Krennic-Dedra origin and the way that, you know, he invoked Ferex and the failure of Ferex and like even in recruiting her and saying like, I want your assessment. I know that you've got one and kind of building her up. He was like, I'm going to remind you that I know how you failed. And

And that dynamic and that power dynamic between them was like really top of mind for me watching this interaction here. And he's basically like, uh, running through the list of people who know about the Death Star party guys. Yeah. I get that. What people I don't know. Um, LeGrette's brother who served on Scarif. That actually sounds like a potential. That was like, who can I implicate? LeGrette, have you heard of him? Yeah. They're besties. Think about it. LeGrette still standing at the end. Um,

LeGregg gets a great moment. Boy, does he. Young. Young had her coat, sir. How? And she has the outrage. She's like, if he had it, he stole it. I don't know that that makes her look much better that her coat.

Her clearance was stolen by a fellow agent. Yeah. And this entire sequence is incredible. Like, all of the information that she had access to, and she's kind of like at first, you know, yeah, well, no, I had clearance for Gorman. Okay, how about all this other stuff? Galen, orbital progress assessments, Edu, the jet o' working groups. You know, some packets got mailed to my office by mistake. I should have returned them, but I should have returned them.

And we're building and we're building and we're building toward her saying, you left me no fucking choice. I had to scavenge. I love this because, again, her panic face, right? Yes, I'm a scavenger, but I've had to be. First of all, if you say scavenger, I'm going to think about Rey always. Love you, Rey. But, like, this idea, Deirdre as...

You know, she was always this outsider in the ISB room. She was always this outsider. We talked a lot in season one and a little bit this season about, like, Dedra and Blevin as, like, the one Black man and the one woman in this room and the way that they were pitted against each other and stuff like that. And her being, like, the only woman inside of this layer of Imperial control is in itself worth remarking upon. But when we learn that she was raised in this Imperial kinder block, so, like, in this, like...

of, like, you know, smarmy, you know, upper-crust Brits, she came from nothing, right? Like, she... I love you, upper-crust Brits, but...

you know, like she doesn't have family connection. She didn't probably didn't go to like, you know, she's like, I wasn't an Oxbridge. Like I didn't go to eat and I didn't know, like, I don't have the academy. I don't, yeah, I don't have any of this. I had to bootstrap my way up. And as a woman inside of this room of all men and all this other stuff. And also you guys are fucking in college.

Yeah. Because you tortured a guy to death instead of following through on the intel he was giving you about the Fondor. That was so good. So that was like really, really good. And so what I love about all this is like this has been established from day one about Dedra. Yes. That she does scavenge her, that she loves patterns, that she is better than anyone else in the room at making these connections. Connections, yeah. So of course she made all these connections because...

she's too smart to not. But yeah, this idea of like, I had to scavenge. Again, I don't like fascists, but I do think it's interesting to think about Deirdre as someone who has their back against the wall in a number of different ways. Yeah, I agree. And on the Blevins front and just in general, that like,

Like pattern spotting and connection drawing and the aptitude. You know, we even hear, Crennick hears, like, how can somebody so competent have, like, done these things? Her competence is always centered, even in the moment of her failure. And I love that specifically that thing you're identifying, the ability to spot the thing that other people were missing, which was the thrust behind her rise, her ascent.

Is her downfall. What's her undoing? Talk about a human-relatable thing with somebody who in many other ways hopefully we can't relate to. Boy, really good. I thought that Krennic saying, if you're not a rebel spy, you missed your calling was just absolutely delicious. I loved that. It's not only kind of fun to think about the alternate history where Dedra made different choices and did different things and had wound up in the beginning in a different place, but also like,

This is just not in any way what Dedra believed she had been promised, right? And what she was promised. We heard it. We saw it. It's not just like that we saw her say to Cyril, we'll go home as heroes. Right. We heard Partagas say to her, everyone who matters knows what you did. Everyone, right? Let the image of professional ascendance settle your nerves. And then when she turns to Partagas in a moment of need, here it's like, who do you think sent me?

There's no one she can turn to and no one she can rely on at the end. I also just like really love this blame chain of like, you know, I just think that like watching him be like,

Just frame it all on Dedra here. Yeah. Because I don't believe that he believes all the things that he's accusing her of, but he needs to try to keep his hands clean as much. And then also put it on Partagas as well. Whoever he can scoop the blame onto, he will. And then we'll talk about Krennic, obviously, more when we get to our Rogue One rewatch. But it's really interesting to see him as sort of top of the chain here and then consider where he is in the larger picture. Yes, I'm excited. Yeah, it's like he's got arguments with Tarkin to have. I also...

Maybe I'll hit some of this in the Rogue One pod. Maybe not. We'll see. But Krennic's always fucking getting into it with people. Like...

He and Thrawn, that's one of the most enjoyable parts of subplots of the Thrawn treason book in the Thrawn trilogy. It's just like none of these people can get along. And that's something we've been talking about since the beginning of our Andor coverage as well. The infighting is a parallel across the sides, but it leads them to different places. And that's a very... Krennic is a great character for continuing to explore that. I also love for Dedra...

That she still thinks Luthan is alive, as Cassie and Will in his part of this plot. And then she has to watch them talk about it through that glass that Luthan's dead. And nobody tells her. No. Because she's not in the circle anymore. Talking about stepping in and outside of circles all season. Like, she's out. She's on the outs. Dude. And this has been her five-year mission. And the fact that he's dead is not something worth telling her.

What a fucking insult. Yeah. We'll do our best to carry on without you. That's what Krennic says as he forces her down into the chair. Wrenches her into the chair. It's hideous, horrifying, because she's like, the assistant, the gallery, she wasn't there to find her. We don't need you all. You're not a part of this anymore. Here it does. Here it does. Here it does. You'll come knocking, yeah. Great stuff. Clea signals for help. She goes back to the safe house. She's chipping away at the wall. It's like she's in Shawshank. Yeah.

It's just like incredible. Where's her, where's her poster to cover it? That's so funny. When Mel sheet later, when they were like, is there another way out? And she's like, I mean, actually, yes, but we don't have time for it. I love thinking about what, what it is. Like, where is the secret tunnel that they have dug? Crawl through miles of piss and shit. Exactly. They've got one. The, uh,

The fact that we, like, see her shadow on the ceiling before we see her, again, there's just, like, a lot of artistry in this episode. It's really good. And again, her pants and boots are quite important to talk about. That's fair repeating. I think you're correct to draw attention to it again. It is very meaningful. I really liked how her, like, series-long role as Com's overlord, you know, radio chief, you know.

uh, was so consequential at the end, not only what she knew to do and how, but in the training and the, the shared language between these people, like later when they're, when they're, there's no time to decode it actually. And it's like, Oh, Cassian, you already know what the message is. Yeah. Oh, great little touch. Loved that. I also love, there's like a lot of sound and visual bleeding inside of this episode or this arc. Um,

We hear the beeping of her, of the signal of the radio that she's constructed over the... When here it says alone, there's no team, it's only her. We can hear the beeping of her signal. And it's true, like, Clea alone, but she's reaching out. And then we get...

Yeah. Into Yavin. Yeah. You know, and so it's just sort of like, again, that messenger idea that you brought up last week, always like, where's the signal reaching? Who's waiting to receive it? It's Drina. It's Drina. We got a great email about this. Yeah, yeah. Alex wrote...

What a beautiful thing that a survivor of the Gorman Massacre, Drina, having sent out her desperate plea for the galaxy, is there to just barely fingertip grab the Clea Hail Mary. And then it goes to Wilman of the Right to Prepare lineage from Ferex, who brings it to our favorite intergalactic forest gump, Cassie Nandor. It would be you, wouldn't it? I love that. That Drina, yeah, just has like the barest little...

you know, grasp on this baton as we pass it. The thing I was thinking also about relay races,

I just want to use this phrase, which I think is a sporting phrase, which is breast the tape, right? Like that's what happens when you finish a race. You breast the tape. Am I right? And so the idea of relay race is if you're one of the people who passes along, you don't get to breast the tape. And so like who, who breasts the tape in this story? It's fucking like Luke and Han, not you Chewbacca at the medal ceremony, but who are all the other people who were in that race before we got there? Yeah.

Deirdre would insist on breasting the tape, right? She really would. Also, before we get to Drino, so when we first see Will, before we get to Drino, he's limping through the forest of Yavin, and

We will see him later when Cassian arrives back. Like we will see that limp in even more pronounced way. Like as everyone's rushing and everyone's like rushing past him and he just simply can't move faster than everyone else to get to Cassian. And I was thinking about like in when Cassian gets a message about Clea and he's like,

Will's like, I'm coming. He's like, no, you're not. You know I'm right. To me, you know, and he's like, I'll take Melshi instead. Like, to me, that's like, you're injured. You're too slow. You can't do this. You know I'm right. Go down and get us on the test roster, like, et cetera, et cetera. Something you can do. But it's not this, and you know I'm right. And I like all of this because...

Because Will doesn't have to die. He's still alive. He's still, like, got a sexy Drita girlfriend, et cetera, et cetera. But it makes sense, then, that Will is not with Cassie when he goes to get gin. It's Mel Sheave, that he's not involved in Scarif because he's injured. So I really like that. You know, because the question is, like, well, if there's a Will or if there's a Bix or if there's a Vel or if there's this...

Like, where are they in Rogue One? And like, the only question mark I have at this point, I think, is Vel, who I think might have been more actively involved. But I'm not mad about it. And if Tony Gilroy wants to give us that Clea Velo spinoff that explains where they were during Rogue One, I'll watch it happily. Who says no? I'll watch it happily. Who says no? The wrapping up in a coat? Yeah. Some warm tea. They're just having some tea.

who doesn't love a a cuppa a cuppa a cup of tea yeah i'm thrilled that we'll live thrilled absolutely thrilled um and yeah i like too that not only is cast like don't do a thing that isn't wise but like look at all these other ways you can help you know there's stuff you can do yeah yeah but it's not this yeah uh um on that front i mean not everyone can do anything everything uh when it comes to who's going to carry clay out of the building

It's Melchie, not our short king, Cassian Andor. So I'm just saying. Melchie fueled by Revnog. Even when they're like really breaking down what's happening with the radio, he's like, top me off. Yeah. A little more. A little mission fuel. Dude, before, so Will immediately when he, you know, he says to Adrena, like, I'll explain. I'll be back. I gotta go. It goes to Cass, of course. I love the way he just says Cass when he comes in. But before he arrives. Oh, God.

We basically get an Avenger shawarma scene, you know? It's amazing. Like, just a little slice of life watching game night with Cass and Melchi and the legend, the god, the icon, the king, K2SO, who is as good as we all knew he would be now that he has rejoined.

The story in full. Here's a fun fact from Tony Gilroy himself. Yeah, this is fascinating. That Melchie and Cassian and Kay all live there.

um he's like cassie's home is like a frat house they all live there um seems great i mean at least the plants are still thriving it's not like a complete dude the marva plants the marva marva plants but the fact that like bix left and cassie's like okay my bros will move in i guess

And then when Kay says they've played over 800 games. Now, I don't know if you're counting, but it's just been a year, a.k.a. last week. So there's 365 days, I believe, in a calendar BBY year. And they've played 800 games of Rianza. So, great stuff. That's...

You know what? Work-life balance. That's what I'm going with. No, well, it also reminded me of when I was watching those French Resistance documentaries. They would tell, you know, they'd all be sort of like

you know, bunked up in these like farmhouses in the country. And they would talk about these like nights they would have of like drinking and revelry to a certain degree. And there were, they would like often be sort of in a farmhouse where there'd be like a husband and wife who are hiding them. And like the wives would be like, yeah, every single soldier was hitting on, like every single like rebel member was hitting on me. And I was just like, I'm just, you know, a country lady. But I was just like, yeah, you have, you know, and like what I love about,

I mean, we see Cassian smile, like genuinely smile in this laugh in a way that like, I don't think we've seen all season. And this is what, I mean, we can find out that there are other reasons perhaps why Bix left, but like, this is what she was saying. She's like, you have to be here. You have to be in it. Right. You have to be connected to this community. You have to be in Yavin. And this is where he is. He is like,

However he feels about Bix, and we'll talk about that when he talks to Belle about it, is just like, he has done what she said, which is like, okay. And some of the council members may still be at odds, but he's found his people, his Melchi, his KX unit. He can definitely say...

With conviction to Clea, like, I made the choice and I made the right one. Yeah. You helped me make it. Also, all this other stuff with Bix happened that we don't have time to get into right now, Clea. But, like, you were a part of convincing me to do this. And I did it and it was right. Yeah, seeing Cass laugh was really great. What a little gift. Just to have a moment of joy and, like, time with your bros. Yeah.

Yeah, bro down over some red dog. Before the end. I really loved that. It's great. It's a great scene. Really good. It was really good. And then, of course, as they're trying to figure out the radio, it's like, oh, well, could it have been just like a flare-up? And Will's like, I keep it charged. We don't doubt Will for a second. We heard Plutie tout his prowess as an engineer. God damn it. The kitty Plutie. Great. Something made me think of that the other night just randomly. I was laughing.

The pulse code comes through again and we are off. I loved when Cassian was like, and if it's a trap, that makes no fucking difference. Like I'm not going to stay put when they need me. Do you know what broke my heart that the subredditors pointed out? What? He tells Melchie to hang on. Yeah. And they were like, Nemec?

Very upsetting. Incredibly upsetting. Oh my God. Jesus, that's sad. Melchie hangs on because he's going to live for at least, I don't know, four more days. A few more. He's got a few more in him. He's got a few more in him. Kasson, K2, and Melchie disobey 17, oh, make it 18 orders on the way to taking off. And this goes over about as well as you would expect. Back down on the base. Draven is enraged.

Chris texted me. He's like, is this guy's one job to keep prevent ships from taking off?

he's got a lot of very important Alliance intelligence work to do. God damn it. Great, great jacket. It is also, uh, don't let those ships take off. Also that, I mean, you know, he was last week slash year. Like this is not a base for privateers. You know, he's on the record. It's established. That's who enjoyed the securities. If you haven't must claim their loyalties. I liked this little moment between Draven and will, um,

like luthen rail whistles and you two come running he says they're jeopardizing the vulnerable thing obviously they are seeking order and predictability and stability but i've thought there was also just naked jealousy here you know like he's your real dad and you guys are the it's the it's what we've been talking about in last of us right it's the us inside of the larger yeah it's not just always us and them it's the us is inside of the us and like

The Raelle writers are in us, and that is true. And they always fucking will be, and no one can take that away from them. And I thought the way that we got to really celebrate that in this episode, or these episodes, was awesome. And I loved, we're going to see a lot of, like, staunch defenses of Luthen from Clea and Cassian, but just Will and this, like,

one-on-one conversation where it would be easy to shrink just saying you can run him down all you want but the truth is none of this would be here without luthan none of this hearing will uh the real writers as you uh call them love that hearing them speak up for luthan yeah and sing his praises um takes us back to that um

that part of Lutheran speech that he talked about, like not only like burn my decency for sunrise, I'll never see, but also like gratitude, no applause, no gratitude, no, like none of that. But it's like,

Actually, you do get it. Yeah. From the people who knew you and the people who matter. You get it. You get the accolades you thought you'd never get. So here you are. I love knowing that. The Star Wars fans for all this time didn't know. But the people who knew Luthen, the people who really knew him, and we'll be able to say I knew the good and the bad. That's how well I knew him. I knew it all. I saw it all. Still choose to speak for him. Even Vel. I was like, I'll toast him once. Mon too. You know? Mon's like, you know. Yeah.

killed Tacoma, but he did some beautiful shit. Not gonna lie to you. He didn't have to pick a convertible. But he did. Oh my god. Orson and Leo. Fucking loved this scene. Yeah. This was so good. How to find Clea. Sorry, really quickly. Let me get this shot again. I don't know. I think it's worth noting that

You don't need the shot of walking up to the building. We get the shot of him walking up to the building and being sort of reflected down the water as he walks. And it's just like all these moments where it's like that establishing shot gives us honestly nothing but a sense of the world and atmosphere outside of these rooms. Yeah. And the scale, which is like when Krennic... I mean, imagine being in this room with not only Partica as your boss, but fucking Orson Krennic. And you're like...

I'm going to have to be the one who makes him believe that I can solve this. And we get like, you know, he's like, basically Krennic's like, who are you? Right. He gets a little bit of the, who are you? He's like, what's your name? Um, it's such an intimidating place for here to have to be. And it was interesting to watch the dance between the three of them, given what we will then see transpire just between Partagas and Krennic.

And I loved the language that Krennic used, you know, when he said that they would get that image blasted, get it everywhere as wide and deep and far as it takes. And I was like, how did Krennic get a hold of the Cyril Dedra fanfic we've been working on, Jo? How? Wow. Yeah.

It's just waiting for him to say and then turn out the lights. I know turn out the lights should be the name of the fanfic, but should it be as wide and deep as far as it takes? Bad baby. Oh my God. This is where they're like, well, all right, what's the charge? Is it sedition? Is it murder? And Pardee says she's diseased and escaped the hospital, infectious and threat to all. Okay.

Gotta think of Marva again here, right? We have to. The speech, the hollow at the funeral. We let it grow and now it's here. It's here and it's not visiting anymore. It wants to stay. The empire is a disease that thrives in darkness. It is never more alive than when we sleep. Part of gas using the language. Can I?

Counter your quote with another quote? Please. Season one part of gas. Really? We are healthcare providers. We treat sickness. We identify symptoms. The longer we wait to identify a disorder, the harder it is to treat the disease. That's him describing what the ISB does. I love this. So good. To your point, like having the same language come from a Marva and a part of gas is wild. Also, it sort of goes back to what I was saying about that idea of like,

Yeah, no, Clay is not actually diseased, but this idea of this information is poison. Yeah. And as soon as Lonnie touches it, and as soon as Luthen touches it, you know, it's just sort of like that person dies, and that person dies, and that person dies. And it's true to a certain degree. I was thinking of death and funerals in the next part of this scene. Yeah.

As you often are. As I often am. Because I was really, the way that Partagas was sort of like chuckling and laughing to himself, that kind of nervous laughter that you have at a funeral. Like,

You can have this sort of like, I'm observing the irony of the situation. I'm uncomfortable. I don't know how to process this and what has happened to us and the thing that we've tried to wrap our fingers around, that imperial chokehold. I just loved this. Death Star, what a prescient turn of phrase. Fantastic stuff from Party Guys, as always.

That guy knows something about a turn of phrase. And Krennic replying to this by just saying immediately, I can't protect you, Leo. We had been texting with Chris about this. He told us it was like his favorite line. And then he brought it up to Gilroy on the watch. And like, it was really cool to hear them talk about this. And I loved the way that Chris framed it. I really agree. Like,

There is an entire history between these two people that is captured in that one utterance. And, like, we don't know the particulars of their history together, but we can kind of understand all of the true things about it. Is this how we keep Tony Gilroy working at the Star Wars salt mines forever? We just, like, threaten him with, like, if you don't...

Write it. Someone else will write the Orson Leo backstory. God. You know, have you seen the memes of... Sorry. Sorry to be like the haven't seen the memes person. Meme lord today. You usually are more on top of the memes than I am, but have you seen the memes of...

You know, the sort of like... The Lisa Nalgaib from Doom Part 2, it's like, he says he's not the Mahdi and that makes him the Mahdi more than ever, but applied to Tony Gilroy. Tony Gilroy's like, I don't want to do Star Wars. That's what makes you perfect to do Star Wars. Oh, man. Reluctant destiny, Tony. You keep talking in your interviews. I don't want it. Here's the deal. Krennic says, we're moments away, days, and...

Part of it is like tosses his head incredulously, like snorts, like likely story. Again, it says like save the sermon. He knows Krennic is in trouble too. And Part of it is he'll be dead before the day is out, essentially. Krennic will be dead in a matter of days. They're dead. These are dead men. Best of luck to both of us. Kirt also dead. Man, I love the little nod after the best of luck to both of us.

I like that just this, again, if these are people with a history together, it doesn't mean there's like just such fondness and love and adoration and affection, but there is history. And it's like, and this is what they say to each other in the moment of the reckoning? I can't save you and you should have been ready? Man, right?

You sound like Tarkin though is like a sick burn. Honestly, that's, that's a mean thing to say to someone. I don't know. Tarkin has incredible elocution and really good cheekbones. Yeah. But you know, the guy saying that thinks that he sucks. Do you think, do you think here is related to Tarkin? Do you think he's like his nephew? Uh,

or something like that. The facial structure is just remarkably similar. Cheekbones. And it's time for Mission Clay Possible. Let's get Clay up. Okay. Here. It's like, I pushed out the order. I gotta go visit my old boss, Dedra. This is when she's just, like, wearing her Imperial uniform but without any of the stuff on it. What did you think it looked more like? A prison jumper or, like, a straight jacket? Oh, that's funny. Um...

Okay, first of all, hair slightly askew. Also, when she hears someone coming, she stands up and she straightens it. And then she sees it's here and she's like, never mind. She's like, fuck it, I'm getting back in my chase. She's like, never mind. I'm stretching. I won't stand for you. I know you're the board of inscribers. Those little touches do just like, I mean, that's just so good. I really love it. Oh, it's fucking here. Okay. She knows, though, right away what it means, Luton's dead. Right? Yeah.

And it's all on you now, Young's best friend. We were never friends. I know the feeling. We talked about this already and what this meant to us. We got a really great email about this. Rachel wrote in to say, the rebellion thrives when individuals and the cause they serve coexist.

The Alliance needs Cassian to struggle with how much to give, needs him to resist hierarchy and control. Without his independence, Cassian never would have gone to Scarif against the Alliance orders. Accommodating people, flawed, messy people ultimately serve the rebellion, while Cyril's entrepreneurial spirit could only be a liability for the Empire. I think showing us this false tension between personal identity and community says something profoundly optimistic about pluralistic democracy."

The cause is better for accommodating Cassian's capriciousness. People with their doubts and failures in tow can never subsume themselves entirely. The work then is building a world that welcomes in privileged Shendrillans, Phyrexian rogues, Rhydo Huffers, and true believers alike, keeping us close enough to each other that one can pick up the slack, another chooses to let go. So that idea of like...

and mini-rebellions inside of a larger rebellion. This idea of alliance, uneasy as it might be, friction, like we see Mon and Saw butting heads, as much friction and conflict as there might be. This idea of, but there's a common enemy that we have to keep in line and we need those mini-rebellions inside of the larger rebellion. Meanwhile...

well over the ISB. One taught a line and no friends. No friends. No one listening. They both have a North Star, but one of them is pure and one of them is brittle. Ah, great stuff. What a wonderful email that was. For Rixian Rogues. Ritohuffers. Ritohuffers. Hell yeah. Hell yeah. I would have liked Saw in the Hollow to be just like, you know, take one hit, but we've got Rogue One coming. Um,

Here it's like, why is this a Krennic project? And Deirdre says, is this a test? Incredible. Yeah. But no, he's here for advice, which of course, like, is very tasty in a couple different ways. She was the one who,

Was like, you're not going to come to me? You're not going to ask for my advice? You don't want this? And now here he is, right? Needing it. Needing her help. But also there's like a tactic at play from him because he is appealing to her ego by saying, oh, I did need you after all, actually. Like you can see something here that I can't.

And she does have something to share, right? She points him to check the old access files. There were radios. We found one on a Ferrix. We found one with Krieger, old frequencies, pulse codes. And that takes us to the gallery where Lepori, our new favorite character, I was like, where, where have I seen this person recently? And then went to the IMDb and realized that she's on industry. Yeah.

I just saw her. It's iconic on industry. I know you, I was just talking to you about this episode of Doctor Who from this season. Yes. She's like the lead guest star of that episode of Doctor Who. She's incredibly good. The actress's name is Keelan Dunn. It is a very hard to spell Irish name. And I looked at the pronunciation. I believe I am close.

but I tried. She's incredible. I love her in this moment. She's so good. I thought the moment where she's, because she's kind of, she's like very impressed. She's like, this is brilliant. Oh my God, the splice, the tower, they're using the strength of the Imperial broadcast and that like, the smile and then looking and,

Joy Dolly is like, no. I wouldn't. I simply wouldn't. I would not. I would not bring her in front of here. There's space inside of Andor for the hospital security guy and this woman nerding out over the comms is just why this show is so special. Totally agree. More blinking lights, more red lights, more signals being sent and received. And it's time for everybody to converge on the safe house.

the not-so-safe house pretty soon. Cass, Mel, she, K2 arrive above Coruscant. Mel, she's like, I've never been here. And K2's like, I was in a parade with the emperor once. By the way, parades for the emperor. Parades for Hitler. Not good, Kay. And I don't know if you know this, but Donald Trump has decided to have a massive taxpayer-funded military parade on his birthday this year. Just putting that out there in the universe. It's all true. Christ almighty. Yeah.

Are you watching? Are you current on the rehearsal? No. I was thinking of the rehearsal. One of the most remarkable things that's ever happened on television is currently happening in season two of the rehearsal. I won't get into particulars. It involves pilots and the relationship between pilots and co-pilots. This is a season-long pursuit. And so when Cass was like, I'm taking over, it's like, oh my God, we're in a rehearsal episode all of a sudden, but we weren't.

Cassian tells him to keep the engines running and Kay's like, great little setup for Rogue One. Of course, he will not stay on the ship as he is supposed to. Stay in the car, Kay. He's like, nope, not for me. And honestly,

Thank God. Thank God. I love this moment before Cassie and Melchie go into the building and Melchie's like, are you okay? Because of course he's thinking about like being there with Bix. This is a home, this is as dilapidated as it may be. This is a home he made with Bix. Yeah. When they get up to the 27th and Melchie's like, is this it? Is this right? And the way that Cassie was like, it's been a while. Yeah. Look how it has changed this place. Oh my God. Yeah. That was sad. It's been two weeks. It's been half a month. Yeah.

For the people at home. Here tells Partigas that they have a location. Tactical's en route. He's going to lead the operation personally. What could go wrong?

This guy seems seasoned and trustworthy in the field. When he gets his little Kevlar vest, which will do him no good. If only it were Kevlar. I mean, this shit is like fucking Tupperware. It reminded me a lot of Cyril Karn on Ferrix. Oh, yeah. You know? Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's not, you can't quite match the, like, I'm in a dumb little hat and I'm attempting to make a speech and Mosk is making very amusing faces behind. Oh, sir!

But it's still pretty good. And we get another iconic space cockney and this mustachioed guy who's leading the charge here. Great stuff. First and final warning. This is your first and last. That was great stuff. ISB, Hot Zone, they shut down the comms, right? All frequencies other than their own. And Kay's like, uh, uh-oh. Time to spring into action. And he does. Cassian knocks on the door. It's the secret knock. It's the code knock.

But Clea is, of course, on guard. And it's only when Cassian speaks aloud and calls Luthan's name that she opens the door and says, as you mentioned earlier, it would be you, wouldn't it? And this was just, like, perfect, right? Yeah. This idea of Cassian as this central figure, not only in this story, but this slice of galactic history and, like, what we heard from the Force healer last arc, gathering as they go, there's a purpose to it, he's a messenger, there's some place he needs to be. And then from Luthan, that, like, the place he needs to be is...

Always a new place. And he's always there. You appeared when I needed you, is what Luthan said. And so, of course, he appears here. And of course, he's there for Clea. And of course, later when he's describing it to the very frustrating non-quorum council, he's like, an old friend needed me. Like an old friend needed my help. Absolutely loved it. Yeah.

Gleia tells him what happened. This is obviously very important. What Cassian hears here is very important. This is like a direct bridge to Rogue One. Galen Erso, say it! Galen! Galen Erso? I loved it. This was great. And this is where he starts to just say, like, you can't stay here. This is when I was certain that she was going to die.

I was like, oh, she passed the mission along. R.I.P. Claire. It's a miracle she survived. I can't believe she made it out of this. I cannot believe it. It's amazing. I know. That's like, you know, it's like, what a fun trick that Andrew played where it's like, so many shows were like, oh my God, they tried to shock us with the death. This shocked me with how people lived. Yeah. Mel lives. Sick. Bix lives. Okay, great. Say the most important one. B. Oh. Dead drugs.

Yeah, I guess in a fashion, yeah. Not you, Lonnie. Okay. Yeah, not Lonnie, but we will honor him on his bench one day. God damn it. Yeah. Cleo's not into it. She says, I know what they think of Luthan. She wants Cassian to be the messenger. You tell them what I've just told you. And I love the way that Cassian not only refused to leave her behind, but was like, you need to tell them. And then as we're going to build to at the top of the next episode, one of the contenders for, you know, best line of the thing is,

You need to see the place you helped build, which was, I thought, just really, truly, truly incredible. I also love at the top of the next episode, good old Melshi back on his somebody needs to tell them beat. People need to know. Melshi's like, I am one thing that I know. Two things. Ravnag, delicious.

Gotta spread the word. Somebody needs to tell them. So, yeah. This. Good old Melchi. Yeah. Seems like a great hang. So this is a day, this is a night. A night that began with a Revnog Fuel game. Mm-hmm.

Into the rescue of Clea. Yeah. Into bringing her back to Yavin. Mm-hmm. Her in the infirmary. Her wandering in the rain. Vel giving her tea. She sleeps in Vel's tent and wakes up to the dawn that is the end of the episode. Is there not daylight behind them on Coruscant when they're leaving? Is it not day? No.

Like, Twilight. So you think it was nighttime when they were playing the Ranza game. And then they get to, yeah, I guess it's like, yeah, Twilight. Okay, so that's day two. So it's a cheat. It's 3.2 days. 3.1 days is what this arc is. Oh, man. We get our cliffhanger.

And then we go into the final episode. I couldn't believe it. I know. It was wild. It really was wild. We pick back up right with this conversation about Yavin after all of this. What a bitter ending. Nothing's ending. You're keeping Luthen alive. Big words. Ugh. So good. There are multiple, there's like a shot of Clea inside of this safe house earlier when she's all alone. Yeah.

So there's like a

A shot from Partagas after Krennic walks out. Partagas slumped over his chair, sort of like leaning down on the desk, cut to Clea in the same position in the safe house, shot through this sort of narrow gap in the wall. So it looks like everything is closing in around on her. And we get a similar shot of Melchie and Cassian and Clea again through sort of like a section of wall. So again, it just looks like everything's closing in around them. So good. Oh, man. I love that. Yeah.

I thought that you need to see the place you helped build was like one of a, you know, a few examples, but like one of the moments where it felt like the show was stating its mission directly. Right. Like all of the people who helped do this thing in a way that we did not previously understand, like that is what this story is exploring. All of the small hands who do it because they must. Yeah. And like,

Whether they get to see the sunrise or they get to feel the gratitude, they were a part of making it. And like, I loved hearing Cassie and especially be the one to pitch that. I just thought that was like,

really powerful and really cool cassie and casting offering up hope to someone else and being the one to draw someone else again like watching him do this as he will think about as he will do this for jen you know what i mean like that he is in again as we've been tracking this like leadership role yeah we haven't really seen cassian on this like much of like a hard recruit path

We saw him talking to the bellhop on Gorman and the seeds that he planted there. But this gambit of, come to Yavin, we're doing something there. And you get to see that sunrise. Luthan didn't, but you get to. Come with us. It's really good. No one can do this alone. I had to learn that. And now I can give that to you as a gift because rebellions are built on hope. Not sure if you've heard. Not sure if it's come up. Once or twice.

Great stuff. It's fight time. Fun little action sequence here. You can tuck in, sir. We have this for you. I really loved the cut from the ISP command center where they're like, what happened to the feed? To the soldier's head smashed into the... Seeping blood into the controls. Yeah. Clea...

defeated has conceded the point on the Yavin front. She's like, fine, I'll go with you. Get your fucking rebel base. She's got her little satchel. And this is when Belchery opens the door, sees them all, and is like, oh, ducks back in. Cassian says, don't close it. Chaos ensues.

They toss this stun grenade and this was another moment where I was like, Clea is toast. Dead. Like, holy shit. I mean, Cassian probably should have gone through concussion protocol before going into the events of Rogue One. He seemed like he took a pretty hard bump to the noggin as well. Melchie was kind of fine. Melchie seemed completely fine. Totally fine. It's the Revnog. I know.

yeah he probably like flocks pretty loosely i have to say uh love respect to cassie and clay had two characters who i really admire they just stared at that stun grenade for a while kick it into the hallway cover like something you know brace yourself no everyone's really stressed you know it's a tough high intensity day but yeah i was like is anyone gonna try to kick it no no one's gonna do a steve rogers either

Like no one's going to dive on top of it. Try to spare the others. Oh, I know what you meant, but like who would do that? No one. Just Steve. Yeah. Just Steve. That's why Steve. That's why his cap.

But K2 is here. So we're good. We're good. This is just an absolute annihilation path through these, as you noted earlier. So now I feel bad for laughing. Human beings who seem very stressed about having to do this, at least some of them. But they're assholes who work for the Empire, so fuck them. Indeed. Indeed.

Cassian, I've cleared a path. And he has. And so it is time to make the push on Yavin. Yeah. As they leave, again, with Melshi giving the officer and gentleman carry to Clea, Cassian gives, like, one last sad look to the safe house. I was waiting to see if they were going to blow it like they did Gors' office, but... Excellent. And this is the A Cassian hero walk to the camera that we get. Yeah.

Excellent use of this set this season, right? We used it for Bix and Cass. We used it for Mon and we used it for Clay. I thought that was just brilliant. I agree. I love that as well. And now I want to know what those couple nights were that Luthan spent there previously, you know, that he alluded to. And also whose job was it to hide radios and concrete and... For sure, Clay. No question. She's like, I know I bricked in a radio here somewhere. Yeah.

Oh, man. Brazo did not get a stone, but Clea got plenty of concrete mixing training in. Okay. It wasn't your finest hour, but I still support you. I just wanted to say it one more time. No stone for Brazo, but concrete sure makes a difference.

Oh, God. All right. Melchie, tending to Clea. With very gentle hands, I should note. And I would say, were he not to die in a couple days and were I not fully on board of the Vel and Clea train, I would ship it. But yeah, no, he's not around for long. Very gentle hands. Yeah. Yeah. That was nice. That was nice. That guy has handled a full shot class of time or two. What?

Oh, Melchie. Great stuff with Melchie, truly. We head back. We're flying into Yavin. And before Cass returns, we get to witness a really fun scene where our guy Saw Gerrera calling in with some real zingers via holo. But before we talk about what Saw says, we must once again...

Go to Wigwatch TM with Joanna Robinson TM to talk about Mon Mothma. In order to get to this particular Wigwatch segment, we have to walk through what Patton Oswalt once called in a stand-up routine a Sparks Factory. They're just like constantly welding in the oven. They're just like, we got sparks flying everywhere always. Okay, anyway. We walk through the Sparks Factory to...

to get to Mon. And here it is, the sad Yavin hair. Say what you texted to me and Chris. You called this the saddest damn show.

I didn't remember saying that. I mean, Jennifer O'Reilly is still absolutely beautiful. Stunning. The prior Mon hair was electric. Yeah, so this is a sad comment. However, I will say, shout out to the costume department for really trying to thread the needle on this, you know...

bed sheet look that Mon has used elsewhere. Here's a, here's a quote from the costume designer. When she takes off her council robes, they're like, get the bed sheets off of her. She has an extremely simple and more relaxed look underneath. She has a long top trousers and boots that to me are the signal of her future. She's sitting down with people at the breakfast table and not putting herself on a pedestal. She's really rolling up her sleeves and working out how to move forward with the rebel alliance.

I did like that. I liked it. It was like Mons and her athleisure for breakfast with Val. Wait until she learns about leather pants from Glea. She's not some intergalactic superstar senator. She used to be with the people, collaborate and wear clothes for a jungle setting. So I was worried that we would just be swathed in like sheets, but I did. I liked it when we saw her like Eileen Fisher separates that she was. Yeah, it was great. It was great. Um,

As was this exchange that Mon is largely leading. I mean, Bail is there, Draven is there. They're chatting with Saw. As we've discussed on other Andorapods previously, you know, not the first time that Mon and Saw have gotten into it over the years. Not the first time that Saw and anyone else in the Rebel Alliance have gotten into it. Just going to hit some highlights. Why should I believe anything you say? What you know? What you hear? Poking at my window? How many...

meddling squealers have you said my way great moment after when Bale's like he's crazy and Draven's like no actually he's right we are we have infiltrated and we are spying on him that's how we know the things we know when he says meddling squealers timeline wise he's not talking about Bodhi yet right or is he I don't think so Bodhi should be coming shortly though but like how long is Bodhi in there before they arrive could be there

So in my heart, because I love Rosanna, Bodhi is the titular meddling squealer. Let's rewatch and see if we can spot a Borgullet tentacle in the background of the hollow at any point. It's entirely possible. Deception! Wonderful stuff. If only you could fight as well as you lie. Might be the winner.

That was fucking unbelievable. Very good. Obviously, this is Saw, I mean, Days, right on the brink of the peak paranoia state that we find him in in Rogue One. And he has completed his journey from cutting himself off completely from the people who should be his allies. And it is actually really quite sad. This is Tubes erasure. Like, it's erasure.

Tubes is still there. Tubes is still there. That's true. That's true. We all have friends everywhere, I guess, as long as we have a Tubes. That's nice. Nobody here knows yet that Luthen is dead, so this could not have actually happened. But I did feel sort of sad that we didn't get to see Saw learn that Luthen had died, just given the nature of their relationship. That would have been fascinating. Yeah. Raddus is like, Draven, come here. We got to talk. The U-Wing's coming back. And if Merrick...

Had been here, he'd shoot it down, so we're lucky he's away. And we would just like to state for the record on this podcast that Raddus can fuck off and that not today nor ever will we agree that we are lucky that Merrick is away because we are never lucky. We are never lucky that blue leader Ben Daniels is not with us. This was outrageous. Rogue One is where I met Ben Daniels.

Um, and I believe I've told you that I used to call him Captain Handsome Mustache. Um, and... Appropriate. Um, you know, of course, we talked about him a lot when we talked about Rings of Power this last season. Um, I don't know if he's not in this show because he was filming Interview with Vampire Season 2, in which he is incredible. Or if...

With love and respect, not all of us can pretend to look the way we did that many years ago. You know what I mean? He still looks great, though. He looks amazing, but I'm not sure he looks, you know, the way he did in Rogue One. I also thought they kept, like, some other people in somewhat soft focus on the council meeting. Anyway, we're doing our best. Oh, man.

They land. She's injured, needs care. Let's get her to the infirmary. And then Draven's like, all right, you have some stuff to fill us in on. Takes Cassian to meet with the council. There's no quarrel, but here's who we have. Draven, Bail, Mon, Raddus, Jebel, Pamelo. Still the worst, both of them, as always. Just awful. Awful!

Awful. So unlikable and terrible. My great people. Oh, man. Cassian fills them in. Tells them energy project cover for the super weapon. They're like, oh, we know all about the energy project. We've been funding it for years without details or inspection.

Amazing stuff. And it's like, you know, for so many of these former senators to have to confront the way that Palpatine used like the official power to then work his shadow operation, an interesting thing. I mean, obviously they're here because they rebelled against Palpatine. So the continued insights, like even after leaving Coruscant, a fascinating thing to think about. And they ask what kind of weapon, and Cassian's like, I don't know yet. You're going to have to see June 1. Come on.

I don't know. I haven't answered Tivik's call yet. I don't know. Here's where I have to... Okay. He says there's a tie to Gorman, right? And Jedha. Because he's like, Claire repeated some words to me. I can repeat them back to you. And Mon's like, oh, Gorman, I'm invested. Draven's like, oh, Jedha, we're spying there. Get some meaningful looks from both of them. Yeah. Um...

You've already mentioned that you like the Pamelo Jebel sort of infighting that we get here and that it makes you think more about Rogue One. Were you thinking about the Maya Pay Brigade and the way in which they are important founding members of the spirit of disagreement that exists inside of...

the rebel alliance were you like sure the maya pay brigade is alive and well at this council meeting i was thinking of it as we panned over thinking of them as we panned over yavin and i thought about the um wild creatures in the jungle who had eaten them yeah okay you think of them as kibble i think of them as inspirations we're not the same

This is what an alliance is. That's what Andor has taught us. Oh, man. I genuinely really love your affection for the Maya Pay Brigade. It makes me happy. If they had all died together on a bench, I would go visit it and lay down some, I don't know, biscuits. What was it they were eating? Anyway. They would not have died together on a bench. They would have died together scattered across the plaza where they were on opposite sides shooting at each other. Two different benches. Yeah.

Both alike in dignity. Okay. Joe, convenient rappers, paranoid fantasies. These are some of the things that we hear. And, you know, we got to say, Bail Organa, an important figure in Star Wars history, is not exactly ready to accept this either, right? And Bail and Raddus are kind of like, the ISP was on to Luthen. It's just as likely that they were feeding him false information than Raddus even has the fucking gall to imply or worse. I was like, frankly, how dare you?

Oh, my God. And we get just a great moment from Cassian here and a great moment for the Cassian-Luthin relationship because Cassian's like, it's the opposite. The reason that I know this is real is because I know Luthin. Do any of you? When I say I know Luthin, I mean I know the good and the bad. I know what was wrong with him. I had a front row seat to that. And I made my choice two years ago to join here and be part of this. But none of that can take away from what he did.

and how hard it was. I don't know if what he was told was true or not, but it's insulting to hear him run down by people who have given a fraction of his sacrifice to this rebellion. I think Will was just outside the room, like, snapping. He's just like, preach, Cass!

I'd like to think so. Yeah. I hope that someone like played this for Clea later in the infirmary when she was healing. Maybe Vel shared it with her later in the comfort of their new home. The light of gratitude. The light of gratitude, dude. Yeah. I was like thinking of, I was thinking of Luthan describing, when we're talking about Cassian at the beginning of the show, like special people are hard to find and how cool it, how cool it was for inside of these very complicated relationships, like,

some of the people who knew Luthan the best, good and bad, balance in the force, right? To talk about him that way.

Like, to talk about and remember how special he was, how unique he was, how the things that he did had, like, a bearing and a consequence and a weight and a heft that could not be replicated. And I just thought that was, like, really cool and in some ways much more powerful than, like, just somebody who had hero-worshipped Luthen coming in and saying it, right? Like, that's not what this was for them. And I really liked that Cassian was such a...

staunch believer like not a defender of luther's morality but a believer in what he had achieved and what he was trying to achieve even still like i just really really loved that bales like when did you last speak though last week fucking guys a year ago last week ma'am when i rescued mon mothma from the senate

Because your team had a spy sent by Lonnie. The goat. Duly noted. Duly noted. Luthen was the character who said to Saw in episode eight of season one, aren't you tired of fighting with people who agree with you? And the fact that Luthen was then in that place at the end is like very tragic. It really is like so deeply tragic, but...

That's why he's an interesting character. It's so interesting to me. You keep bringing up this Saw conversation because like, yeah, my read on that is a little different in that. Like, I think he, because he wanted something from Saw inside of that, he was selling him something because he was constantly disagreeing with Mon. Like Luthen was like the king of my way or the highway. Yeah. Alliance under me. Yeah. Yeah. Now you want me to go to your base? Yeah. No, absolutely not. And that's sad. I liked the way that Gilroy talked on the watch about, um,

the originators of a movement and like his interest in them and what happened to them. And it's, it's interesting to think about, like, you know, we talked about this a lot last episode, but you know, Mon and Bale have been involved from the start and Luthan and Saw from the start and all in different ways. And where did they all end up and why it's like such a, the show, the show's ability to explore that was. Who gets to stay with the rebellion, who is outgrown by the rebellion and,

I get sad thinking about what happens with Mon Moth. I know. Tough. Everything's tough. Okay. It's time to reflect. It's time to remember. They say, Cass, you're confined to quarters. And he's like, can I do a quick trip to the infirmary? And Draven's like, sure, I'll babysit you there. And then they just forget that Cassian's confined to quarters. Because Cassian just then...

goes and talks to Will and sort of does whatever he wants. So I'm just saying, if you're going to ground a kid, you got to like enforce it or else they'll never learn any boundaries. I mean, he's famous here in Yavin for following orders. So I don't know, you know, since he's never disobeyed an order before. He goes to see Clea after this exchange with Draven where he learns about Tivic. I like that when he heard, he was there one more day, won't talk to anyone but you. And

Cassie's like, that doesn't sound very promising. I was like, well, it's not going to be for Dimmick. Nope, ultimately. I really loved the way, like when they were talking about Tivic and Draven asked if he trusted him and Cass said, I try. And that made me think again of the try idea and Nemec and try. When he said, I try, I was just like, Nemec! Exclamation mark in my notes. Like, absolutely. That idea of like,

Yeah. Try just, just keep trying one foot in front of the other slow march towards, you know, uh, your inevitable death on a beach somewhere, but listen, you will have done, you will made it worth it. And that's what really matters.

Yeah, I love this. I love him visiting Clea and saying, not the hero's welcome, he promised. I love holding himself accountable for that. It's going to take time. It's going to take some time. And then talking to Will about Luthan also, like, he made it worth it. That idea of, like, that's the philosophy. Yes. If we die, make it worth it. And so when thinking about Cassian and Jyn at the end... Don't want to give it all for something real. Yeah. Cassian and Jyn at the end of Rogue One, like...

It was worth it. Right. What we fought for was worth it. So, yeah. I love that. Mon Asvel, help me believe him.

I love that. And can I just note something really quickly? I forgot to bring this up when we talked about Belle previously, but I love to see her with this red hair, which I assume is her because it's Mon's hair color too, her natural hair color. But I just love to see that connection between the cousins who are no longer like, I mean...

pretending not to know each other in certain ways. And it's just sort of like, yeah. Yeah, you get to just understand that they're spending a lot of time together. Like when Mon shows up, Vel's like, oh, I thought we were having breakfast together. And then they will. Like they're in each other's lives. They don't have to go these long months without knowing if the other one is okay. Or putting on a show as they are together. Yeah. Yeah. He should stop saving people. That's what Vel says of Cassium when Mon fills her in and says he's grounded. Yeah.

We know what Bix would say. It's not up to us what we save. And Cassian's like, what if it could be? But also then I have to confront that it isn't always. Why? Sad. And Vel goes to visit Cassian. And before she brings up why she's there and what Mon wants to know, Cassian asks her if she'll drink to Luthen. Just this once, she says, right? This was magical. This was so beautiful. They have this toast. Revnog? Cassian says they can't toast them all.

And then she starts with Gorn, with Nemec, with Terriman. He says, Cinta, not you, Ebon Moss McCrack. Yeah. Because Keen doesn't get a mention. Keen, betrayer, no mention. Okay. The Gormans, Ferex, your mother. Mother.

the Donnie's and then he says, I'll Donnie like that idea of like wrapping in like the Donnie's the Gorman's the Donnie's. Yes. But like also those are the people, but a Ferrick's a place. I'll Donnie a place. What did the empire take from us? These entire places, these entire communities. Yeah. I mean, they didn't fully take it because stone and sky is like with us. You know what I mean? But this is so when he said Sinta,

Like, thinking about when Vel and Cassie met each other in season one, that, like, very caustic hike to the camp. Another long walk. Just, we watched them hike for a very long time to get to their camp. And she does not want him there. And she does not want him there for real. And then she was, like, tasked to kill him at the end of season one. So, like, them finding common cause, but also, like, you know...

we've never heard Cass talk about Cinta since, you know what I mean? And it's just sort of like, but he knows what that meant to her. And, and fricking Vel was there for the Marva speech. You know what I mean? So it's like,

Again, similar to the, like, I can't protect you, Leo line that Chris loves so much. There's a lot of, like, his, you know, the fact that Val knows Bix, but we haven't seen them together that much. You know, like, what is all the history that we missed? And, like, again, I don't feel it in a I missed it so I don't understand it way. I feel like I understand what these...

Four weeks slash four years has done to change the relationship between these people. Yeah. I've really, I loved, I mean, obviously Aldania thing they shared directly and, you know, Gorman too in different periods of time there. And like, but yeah, your mother really got me too because like thinking of how they were waiting on Farrick's

watching spying just like the empire was, you know, and like to think about then the evolution of their relationship together over time is, is really incredible. I thought this was such a great, beautiful way for us to be sharing this experience with the characters as they, as they shared it with each other and just to like reflect and remember and mourn the people who we like lost and miss and love. And yeah, the Gormans, it's like the, the Donnie, you know,

all the people who they didn't know their entire lives or ever fall in love with, but still chose to help. And like, that's what this is. That's what this is about. That's, that's what the rebellion is. You know, I love that Gorn and Terriman are mentioned here because like, we talk about Nemec all the time when we talk about Aldani and we talk about Cinta, obviously because of what has happened. And like, I don't know, I'm sure occasionally we talk about Skeen, but like, we don't talk about Gorn and Terriman, but they were there and they mattered and they were part of this as well. And yeah, so good. Yeah.

Belle tells him why she's there. She's like, mom wants to know what's up. I love this. She always, she's like, here's why I'm here.

She's great. She's great. And this is where Cassian says Luthen died for this. Does it matter what he did to us along the way? Does it matter how it twisted him? None of this exists without him. I think it's great that the show has characters who would say yes and no to that. You know? Like, that's just... It's not a simple equation at all. So there's the equation Luthen wrote, and then there's the equation the show wrote, and they're both very complicated. I was just like...

I don't know. I've been thinking of, obviously, Marva's mentioned in the toast. I know I've been talking about her a lot the last two pods. I'm like, she's just, I think, I guess, I mean, the whole way, you know, since we talked about her picture being there with them on Mina Rao. And the part of Marva's speech that I was thinking about here is,

was like this parallel in like how you influence after you're gone. You know, I was always eager, always waiting to be inspired. I remember every time it happened, every time the dead lifted me with their truth. And now I'm dead and I yearn to lift you. Not because I want to shine or even be remembered. It's because I want you to go on and

And that they're finding their version of that with Luthan now, too. It's just, like, amazing. I was thinking about that quote, too, in the context of, like, the relay race, right, that we talk about. But also, like, if you think about Marva... It's your turn now. Marva's From Beyond the Grave hollow message echoing through history. Nemec's manifesto echoing through history. Kina Loy echoing through history. It's just...

And thinking about like Kino and Marva and Luthien and Nemec and these big speeches from season one that were such showstoppers, but they weren't just like flashy television. They are just sort of like messages that are woven into the heart of this larger story that we're telling. And we keep going back to them. You know, there's like, there's other moments in television where you're like great speech, great monologues of television. You know what I mean? Like,

When we covered White Lotus, Bill Simmons was like, is this the greatest monologue talking about White Lotus? And that made us think of TV monologues. But I can't think of another show where the text, the philosophy, the thought behind these various speech moments...

is something that we return to again and again and again as we process how the characters move on beyond it. I just think it's so special what we've watched today. I really agree. I love that. That's such a good point. We get to hear one of those. We get to hear it. Did you freak out when we went to Nemec's voice gig then? Before we get to Nemec, yes, of course.

Alex Lothar. Alex Lothar, who I've said before, sounds to me just like Ben Whishaw, who has my favorite voice of all time. Paddington himself. But, like, when...

When Cassie is talking to Vel and he says, Clea wouldn't lie about it. And Vel looks up when she hears Clea's name and then we get to Clea. And as we hear this manifesto, when we get to alone, unsure, that's when we see Clea pulling in her tubes and walking into the rain. It's just like, very good. I mean, Partagas, Partagas listening to it being revealed as like diegetic sound inside of Partagas' office is like,

An all-timer. But like hearing it over Clea as she sort of, similar to Cassian at the end of season one, sort of walks into this new phase of rebellion is...

very powerful i loved it and i loved bleeding from the oven into isb hq and what those words mean in each of those contexts right like this is this is the root and the heart of the cause and then this is the reminder and the proof of why you failed and why the thing that you were trying to do was never gonna last so good um

When LeGrette walked in and Partagas stopped playing the recording and said, I'm assuming you've heard it before? Bits and pieces just keep spreading, doesn't it? It's hard to contain. I was just like...

The fact that the section that says, where Nimick says, tyranny requires constant effort, it breaks, it leaks. And Partagas just looks so weary as he hears that part. I mean, he's about to, you know, depart again, like, you know, leave this earth. But like, I don't know.

I want Nemex Manifesto to play over every scene of television. Like I just think it's so strong and so powerful. My God. There will be times when the struggle seems impossible. It's just so fucking good. And this is like the empire confronting. I have never regretted that we can't play clips on a podcast more than I regret we can't listen to Nemex Manifesto right now. Well, it's a long one. This is a meaty one. Meaty soundbite. Yeah.

It's just so good. It occurs spontaneously and without instruction. And this is the moment, right? The thing that he is describing, like one single thing will break the siege. Part of God staring that in the face, confronting at the ISB, the empire over the coming days. Like Luthan said to Dedra,

The rebellion has flown away. It's everywhere. They can't stop it. They can't contain it. They have lost. Like the shot has not been fired into the Death Star yet, but they have lost. And I just thought this was, it was remarkable to see that reckoning on Partingaz's face here. I also love this, like, LeGret being here again. Like Lonnie's dead. Here it's a puppet and dead. Dedra's in prison. Yeah.

Levin got disappeared between seasons. We don't know. And so it's like, it's just regret left. And yeah, this moment where, you know, part of guys is like, I just need a minute. Right. And regret knows exactly what he's going to do and lets him do it.

Yes. And that moment when you hear the shot and LeGrette just sort of like wordlessly signals... Wraps his hands to the troopers to stop them. We know what this is. Holy shit. This is a suicide and we let him have that way out. You know, it's a... Again. Unbelievable scene. I don't like fascists. No. And I don't like... I would not want to have dinner with Partagas. But this is an all-time character, an all-time performance from Anton Lesser. It really is. And I miss watching him. He was a great character. So is your read that...

Cassian, who inherited this manifesto, put this out into the world? Our messenger? He had to have. Absolutely, right? I just love that so much. What an incredible, wonderful thing. And people have been, in breaking down Cassian's

costume in Rogue One and identifying Bix's blaster, et cetera, there's this like little square almost book that he has on his costume up here. And some people are like, is that Nemex Manifesto? It isn't really, but like I choose to believe it is. I just believe that Cassian had Nemex Manifesto by his like heart as he went into, you know, the events of Rogue One. That makes me really happy. And it makes me think of how proud Marva would be of him.

And she already was. She already was. Like Brazo, who didn't get a stone but did get to tell Cassian in season one what Marva said. Tell him he knows everything he needs to know and feels everything he needs to feel. And when the day comes and those two pull together, he will be an unstoppable force for good. Tell him I love him more than anything he could ever do wrong. This is where Cassian is. Unstoppable force for good. This is what is happening.

And I love, that's why I was just like, when he stopped to water the plants before heading out on his long walk to the Ewing, it's like, that was Marva's ritual. And that was what she did. And Marva's there doing that for her. And she's there with him. It's just like, God, really overwhelming and so beautiful. Oh man. The road to rogue. They'll have some advice for Cassian is they part reconnect with Bix. And what does he say? Joanna? He says,

Once it settles down, maybe I'll think about it. And she says, don't wait too long. This is both painful, but also like maybe one moment where I was like, they pressed on the bruise a little too hard. Like we're already like when Bix gave her speech at the end of the last arc and is like, when this is all over, find me. Like, I think we had already experienced this, but like, don't wait too long from Vel when we know Cass is about to die. I was just a little like, I already knew that. We already know. Yeah.

That he's going to wait too long. You don't have to say the thing. But yeah, thinking about it coming from, of course, Vel. Yes. Who knows? Thinking about Cinta. Yeah. Who knows from waiting for too long. Yeah. I thought this was very, very, very, very agonizing.

Very, very agonizing. I liked hearing Gilroy talk with Chris and Andy about Bix and Cassian's relationship and their history and the way he described them as like they were each other's first kiss. Got a real kick out of him being like, they're two really good looking people and Farrix found each other in her. He was talking about how he and his wife talk about these two kinds of marriages that there's like the marriages where you grow together, you grow up together, and then the marriage where you meet each other when you're grown. And I kind of liked thinking about that

As I continue to contemplate what this relationship with Bix means for how I view Jin, like, if Bix is the person, the marriage that he, like, grew up with, and then Jin, again, they knew each other for just a couple days, but, like, they had this very strong connection in Rogue One. That's the person he meets when he's already cooked. We've seen him...

arc and arc and arc and arc through these like, you know, chunks of time so that he could meet Jin exactly where he needed to be, to be who she needed to be in order to get through this. Right. Very hard thing that they do together. And so thinking of it as like the two different kinds of the Gilroy marriages, I thought was, was really interesting. Um,

I like that. Shut up, Tim, which Tony Gilroy did mention. All the Tims! They can survive all the Tims! Yeah, we'll talk about this more when we get to Rogue One, but I will never watch Rogue One and their relationship as anything but completely platonic again for the rest of my life. So, it's interesting. I don't know. I think it's okay to be attracted to someone. Sure! Yeah. I think there's a connection. There's a connection. Especially in the heels of this conversation with Val, it's like,

Though I don't know. Maybe that's like the, they can survive all the Tims. All the Tims and all the Jinns in the world. All the Tims and all the Jinns. This is where Vel kind of like scoops up Clea in the rain, brings her in. They talk about Luthen. This is so important to me. This is so important to me. All right. I'm thinking about this in the context of like, well, first of all, we noted this.

at the very beginning of everything, when sort of Vel clocked Clea as a hot piece at the wedding. So that seed was planted right at the beginning. And just connecting these two characters again and giving this to Vel, who has been grieving Cinta, obviously. And

It doesn't have to be romantic, but it definitely is romantic, I think. And I love this. She's like, you're here. She gives her... Wandering in the rain. And she's just like, here's a coat. Here's a blanket. Here's some warmth. Here's some tea. We got this beautiful email from Gil, who, again, also wrote... This is only part of a much, much longer email, but...

Gil wrote, Andor is fascinated by the motives of its revolutionaries. Loss, vengeance, ideology, a yearning for freedom. For Vell, the catalyst is love, not abstract or romanticized, but embodied, reciprocal, and deeply personal. I'll pause here really quickly to say that elsewhere in his email, the email, sorry, I actually don't know the gender of this person. Elsewhere in the email, they were writing about

The idea of the Shandralyn like transactional weddings and marriages and how growing up inside of the high society of Shandrala, how like the idea of love is like not available to Mon Mothma. She has to marry Perrin, you know what I mean? So, so to back, back to the email, this idea of,

Love embodied reciprocal and deeply personal. Vel doesn't seek escape from the past, but instead longs to build something more human in its wake. That's why she resists the emotional austerity that Luthen, Clea, and Cinta embrace. She understands it, but refuses to adopt it. For Vel, love is not a distraction from the cause. It is the cause.

In a world that seeks to deliberately sever connections between individuals and peoples and to punish intimacy and empathy, Vel sees it as the most radical act to insist on caring for others and to make friends everywhere. So when Clea stumbles through the rain in the finale, believing she's now well and truly alone in her ever-compounding grief—

Yeah.

There's a brief moment in which she holds Clea's face in her hands. It is quick and almost thoughtless. And yet this is a gesture of facial recognition and care that is so loaded in this series. It was, after all, Clea who ordered Vel to kill Cassian at the end of series one because he couldn't identify Luthen. He could identify Luthen.

This repeats throughout the series multiple times to be seen or recognizable is to invite or necessitate violence in response. And this very arc, we spend the overwhelming majority of our time watching as Clea's identifiable features and allegiance are poured over by the empire and the rebellion alike as a target to exterminate, punish, and isolate her without a thought.

Vel offers her jacket, her home, her food, and her bed. And for the first time in decades, Clea sleeps through the night. She wakes rested to a sun that has already risen, a sun that she believed for years and has recently eased yesterday that she would never see. Being seen by Vel and loved by her, Clea defies each and every one of her own expectations and finds herself coming home. What's up, bad babies? You're the best. This is so beautiful.

I was like really struck by the Vell and Clea connection here at the end of all things. And yeah,

This idea that when we meet Clea in the opening of this arc, and she hears the big bell ringing because she is not sleeping, or not sleeping soundly, inside of the showroom where they live. She's there in her jammies and her hair down. She was in bed, but she wasn't resting. She hasn't been resting. And here she gets to rest, and...

And wake up to the new dawn. And it's just really beautiful. The smile on her face when she looks out at the place she helped build and gets to see it teeming with life and possibility and hope. That was magical. Really, really, really lovely. Yeah, it's a beautiful email. And I love thinking about Vel that way. And I love that all of the characters who ultimately are going to be the most rewarding and interesting to watch. You know, she...

Has her moments of doubt, too. Like, she's such a proponent and believer in a thing, but, like, when she and Mon are on the ceremonial wedding hike, Vel's like, no, there's work to be done. You know, has kind of, like, talked herself into how this could be the way things are. Into perspective. Yeah. And then Mon has to say to her, well, we have to live to do it, though, don't we? And so the way that they're always...

helping each other to see the path forward. And now Vel can do that for Clea, just as Cassian told Clea, she had in a way done it for him. It's like, that's really what an alliance is, right? It was beautiful. I really loved it. And it was just, I mean, it was really cool to hear like,

when clay is saying you know lutheran always said you know no you're out before you and i don't even know where i am clay's like vel's like of course you do like you're with friends you're with friends my friends everywhere this is a tradecraft code line so that they can go about their missions and it is the it is like a hyperspace lane to a sense of belonging come into the circle welcome into the circle you know really good very good really really good um

I ship it. I hope that they're happy together. I hope we get to find out what their life is like one day, but only if Tony Gilroy is interested in telling us. Okay. That's all I want. That would be great. Belle and Clea do crimes for the Rebellion? Sign me up.

Sign me up. I'm in. I'm in. Speaking of doing crimes for the rebellion, this is where Draven comes by, brings K2 and Melchie back and tells Cassian about Tivic. We get the I try exchange. Melchie's like, they're tired of listening to this one and K2's like, that's a lie. It's very funny. Love a droid banter. They had really great energy together. Cassian's like, well, all right, like,

How are we going to do this? And Draven and Mon go to convince Bail. They have to convince Bail. And then Bail goes to Cassian in the morning and the drops of water are hitting the cup out on the windowsill. And then we realize that every night, speaking of uneasy sleep, Cassian Andor, who was worried about how Bix was sleeping her dreams, is dreaming every night of the sister he lost. I fail her again in my sleep. I'm failing in my sleep. My God, this was heavy.

Sleep well? No. Ever sleep well? No. Then we have something in common. This is like a very present idea in this conversation between Bail and Cassian, because when Bail's like, oh, you know, what changed? If I die fighting the Empire, I want to go down swinging. And Cassian's like, you and Luthen have more in common than you realize. This was his whole pitch. This was his whole thing. And Bail's like, yeah, but did he look this good in a cloak? Yeah.

Yes, actually. Our listener Jack wrote in. I just want to include this. I'm not going to read this whole email because I just read a very long email. But Jack's email was just titled, Does Baseball Exist in Star Wars? And this is where I learned that to go down swinging is a baseball term. And I actually didn't know that. I thought... And it is. I corroborated Jack's email. I thought...

It was like, I don't know, just go down fighting. Go down swinging your fist or your sword or whatever it is. I did not think it was go down swinging at the ball, but apparently it is. And I, like Jack, like the idea that there is some version of Alderaan-y baseball that they play and enjoy. Yeah, Bale's got the MLB package, and he's got a fantasy league, and he's racking up Ks, but he's also a real fan, so he knows, yeah, like you...

You don't want to just, you don't want to strike out looking. No. Can't strike out looking. Is that, is that, is that the opposite? Strike out looking versus go down swinging? Yeah. Okay. Because if you, if you, you know, if you're looking, I mean, maybe you walk. Good earn a walk. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You do want to be patient and like work the count. But like, at the end of the day, you got to take a cut, right? And then Bale walks out to go home to Alderaan and everything will be fine. Things are fine. Things are fine. How did you, how did you feel, how did you feel about Bale hitting him with a may the force be with you?

I'm fine. I was like, bail, bail. It is good. Yeah. Bail among the people we meet here who spent time with Jedi, you know, makes more sense. We're about to hear it a lot, obviously in Rogue One. So another nice little, nice little bridge there. And speaking of our bridge, we get that montage, that closing montage that you said Gilroy was working back against. I did get a real kick out of him being like, and as if we could just not do it in slow motion. Yeah.

been great. This made me fucking sob. I was just like a wreck watching this. This was so emotional, all of it. Cassian suiting up, putting the blaster on, watering Marva's plants. I thought this was wonderful. Melchi running with the soldiers. These people who will be loyal to him and will be loyal to Cassian and will stand with Cassian and who will stand with Jyn. This group of people who Bodhi's going to be able to say, it's going to be crowded, but we can fit. Let's go.

Rogue One. I love the Marvel connection is so perfect. It's like clear cut and perfect. We did get this heartbreaking email from Timothy who says, when it hits you on the third viewing that Cassian is watering those plants on Yavin because he wants them alive when the war is over and Bix returns to him. Pain! Oh my God.

Yeah, Melshi, fun fact from StarWars.com, there are like a couple little like alien critters in that troop with Melshi who are also on the Scarif. So, yeah. Beautiful. Melshi just like, Melshi just like running off the hangover, I guess. Nah, he's spiking the morning coffee for sure. He's just remnogging through the rest of his short life. Okay, cool. Yeah.

Mon-Vell sharing the meal in the new outfit. This is where we got the incredible Perrin. Earrings. I honestly can't believe that Perrin made the closing montage. He had to. This is just a little gift to us. He had to. Yeah, this is the good shit right here. Clea waking, looking out, smiling. Dedra in an Arquina jumpsuit and Sel on the floor, the red light, the floor is hot. Like, holy shit, this was...

And her hair looks real fucked up now. No longer must. Oh my god. The light's going out and we can just see her silhouette kind of shaking and hear the sobs. Rough. What Gilroy said on the watch was the box she's been trying to get out of her whole life. Denise Goff, by the way, is just like, love this for Deirdre. She's just like, this is where she belongs. Because Denise, like us, does not enjoy fascists. So...

Love that we got one more glimpse of Saw Gerrera and the place where we will meet him soon. Yeah. Okay, so the Saw shot looks new. The Krennic shot is definitely from Rogue One. Because with love and respect, Ben Mendelsohn is a little younger in that shot of him looking at the Death Star that we get here. Great stuff. Cass passes the Force Healer, Jo.

A little moment. This is great. A little nod. Yeah. They lock eyes and he nods. I really liked this. I thought that was lovely. He gets into the U-Wing, tells Kay where they're going. And with respect to Tivic and Rogue One, a great film that we're going to talk about next week, we don't give a shit where they're going because here's what happens next. B. I was trying to think. I was really, like, really trying to think.

It was cute when I, because Adam didn't watch the screeners with me. So when we were watching it on Tuesday night on Disney+, and this is his favorite show, so he was just like, you know, riveted and so happy, but like really locked in. Like I kept looking at him and he wasn't looking at me at all. He was just locked in. And when Bea came on the screen, he was just like,

It turned to me. It was like, it was really sweet. We did get a lot of emails from people being like, how excited is Mallory that we got to see Bea. I was so happy. I love this. And I felt like I should never have doubted it for a second. We deserved it. They knew we deserved it. They knew we wanted it and needed it. They gave Bea a little friend. His buddy. Talia is there. Talia, who we like so much from Mina Rao. She's like, I'm still in good care of my guy, Bea. They can care of Bea. Yeah. And also, Bea gets to hang out with Bix.

And Cassian Jr. And Bix's baby. I love knowing that Bix and Bea are together. It really makes me happy. I think this is as relieved as I've been to see a character again since Ghost at the End of Thrones. Seriously, I was trying to think of what else I could put this up close. I'm just so happy we got this little glimpse. You're going to read a quote from Tony Gilroy about Bix and her baby in a second. I just want to say really quickly, um,

We got a lot of, I would say the majority of emails we got from our listeners. And I'm again, we got hundreds of emails. Yeah. Where people who were actually like fairly uncomfortable, felt very passionately uncomfortable with his ending for Bix. They did not like that baby. And, and plenty of people did love that ending for Bix and love that baby. But I would just say from, from my part, and I, and I think some of the arguments are quite compelling and,

I think for my part, and this is actually might be damning because I'm like, it's not even about Bix for me. I'm like, B gets to grow up like with like gets to grow up with this little boy, like this little boy and B are going to like be pals until, you know, forever. B's going to be fine forever.

B, like, helping to raise Cassian's child is deeply meaningful and moving to me, but also extremely sad. I mean, Cassian not knowing about this and not getting to meet his kid and his kid not getting to meet Cassian is really heavy and hard. Yeah, I thought this was, like... It was interesting to think about Bix's decision through the lens of knowing that she was pregnant and Bix knowing that she was pregnant. I...

I thought there was something about not only the look on her face, she's looking up at the sky and she's smiling. Yeah.

There's this very... A pensive, but also a gentle tone to the score here. Very pastoral. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yes. And it felt to me incredibly sad. I was sobbing. I was texting you and Chris. I was inconsolable. I finished these episodes for so many reasons. But it...

It felt like a really sad and mournful note and sorrowful note to not, to know that they weren't going to share this life together, but also like a little hope, a little hopeful on new life, you know, new possibility. Oh, definitely. Definitely trying to be like, and especially having your look at the sky and thinking about the final shots of Rogue One and thinking about this sunrise you'll never see. But, you know, this idea that like,

There's a sunrise that Luthan will never see, but Clea will see it. And there's a sunrise that Cassian will never see, but his kiddo will see it. That relay race passing the baton down generations and stuff like that. I cannot understand. I don't know. I'm actually at this point a little of two minds about it. I'm not mad about it at all. I wasn't like, ah, Jesus, which a lot of our listeners were. But I'm compelled by some of their arguments, but I'm also just sort of like thinking about

B in that baby is really sweet to me. So, yeah. Here's what Gilroy said. This was in his interview with James Hibbert at The Hollywood Reporter. He said, I think it makes his sacrifice that much more bitter, his being Cassian's, of course. And I think that for anybody who had any lingering doubts about Bix leaving in episode nine, it explains it for anybody who was hesitant about buying into that scene. And finally, ultimately, I was desperate to end on a hopeful note.

Rebellions are built on hope isn't just a t-shirt. It's a legit flame that a lot of people need to see. So hopefully I was ending on something that was upbeat and it was important for me to do that. That's very beautiful. It's not just a t-shirt. What a show. Legit flame. Absolutely beautiful. And then we got a bunch of emails from people who wanted to note that you hear...

Over the closing credits, you hear the Rogue One score. And then you go into not just like any old Star Wars music. It's the music that plays over the medal ceremony at the end of A New Hope. Plays at the end of this. So again, in terms of like thinking of the end, I mean, obviously Star Wars goes ever on after A New Hope, but like thinking about the end of this chapter, this Death Star centric chapter of Star Wars storytelling and thinking about like,

Yeah, all of these characters, none of these characters that we're seeing in this show are at that medal ceremony, but they all are in their own way there, you know? And now we know. Even you, Perrin. Perrin was at the bar. He missed the ceremony. He was at the bar. Yeah. Oh, man. And or. Just devastated that it's over. Me too, I'm crushed. Related that we're going to watch Rogue One next week, though. And A New Hope. And...

Actually, can we next week do our definitive, as of right now, Star Wars rankings and where everything sits and where Andor has... A movie TV mixed list? Yeah. Let's say top 10. Very hard. Top 10 and you're allowed to put shows in there. I'll try. I'll try. It's hard. Mixing the movies and the shows is hard. I think I can...

I can do it, I think. It gets really hard at a certain point to be like, how am I weighing these things against each other? Do you want to do seasons of television? That's what I was going to ask. Is it specific season? No, I think that would even be harder, actually. That's probably harder. Well, it is. I mean, the only reason I would want to do it is I would like to peel Mandalorian season one away from the rest of the Mandalorian. Oh, no. Mandalorian season two rules. Come on.

But it's not as good as Mando season one. I think Mando season one is like way above the rest. And then season three is whatever. Anyway, Star Wars. We love it. It's the best. It's been great to have a really, really, really wonderful time talking about Star Wars. Yeah. And spending time in a galaxy far, far away. I've loved it. I'll really miss this show. I'm glad we get to hang on for one more week. And then, you know what? We don't need excuses to talk about Andorra. We'll revisit it whenever we want. Every May at least. Every May at least.

All right. We did it. We didn't break our record, man. I know. Shocked but proud. By all of our threats. Shocked but proud. Thank you. Thank you to all the bad babies for sharing and or with us all of the incredible emails, listening to these incredibly long podcasts every week. We do not take it lightly. We cherish the time that you spend with us. You know you have a lot of options when you fly. Thank you to our...

our little alliance here, our little rebel alliance here at the house of our Steve Ullman, Carlos Chiriboga, John Richter, producing this episode, producing these episodes. Thank you to Arjuna Ramgopal for his production supervision and joining me at dinner on... Yeah, feel better, Arjuna, for the work on the social for this episode and all of our Andor pods. Until next time, the tension mounts!