The Gang Reviews Andor Season 2, Ep. 10-12

Robert, Mia, and Garrison discuss the final arc of Andor Season 2, covering how empires cannibalize their own, revolution as an infectious disease, and the politics of Yavin.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Coolson Media.

Speaker 2 (00:04):
Welcome to it Could Happen Here show about things falling apart,
and today the thing falling apart is the Galactic Empire.
This is episode four of our four part series talking
about the politics of and Or season two. And Or
has sadly come to a close. This will be our
final discussion episode talking about Ander season two episodes ten, eleven,

(00:30):
and twelve. I'm Garrison Davis been joined by Robert Evans
and Mio Wong. What a what a exhilarating For four
weeks this has been.

Speaker 3 (00:40):
Yeah, I'm gonna miss it.

Speaker 1 (00:41):
Yeah, we're getting relief from the horrors to live the
horrors in another universe.

Speaker 2 (00:47):
Yeah. No, it sucks now that we have to just
do all this stuff except like the eight years in
the past version, because the level in which they've advanced
here is far beyond certainly the US is revolutionary potential.

Speaker 3 (01:01):
Alas, yes, tragic.

Speaker 1 (01:04):
Hey, if anyone wants to be our mom Mouffbud taken
applications you you could, you can be the good liberal.
You can be it.

Speaker 4 (01:11):
Oh man, I'll take a fucking Krieger at this point.

Speaker 2 (01:19):
So I think we're gonna do these episodes a little
bit differently. I'm not gonna do a whole synopsis for
each of these episodes, since for these last three the
show has mostly a showed plot for emotional and character beats,
So instead, I want to quickly go over each of
those character points and then we can discuss those in detail,
and most of our discussion will probably be around episode ten.

(01:42):
Make it stop, yep. Let's start at the beginning Lonnie's
last meeting.

Speaker 4 (01:48):
Ah.

Speaker 2 (01:48):
Yeah, so the ICP double agent Leanna Young calls Luthen
to an emergency meeting to give him one final batch
of intel after burning his cover. It's really a shocking
and worrying when we see Luthen and Lonnie meeting in public.
That that that that already lets you know like, oh
this is this is the end. Stuff is like the

(02:10):
most jover it's ever been for Lonnie.

Speaker 4 (02:13):
There's a great line that got one of the strongest
reactions with the folks I was watching it with, when
Luthan's about to head out and he's talking with Clia
and she's like, don't do this meeting.

Speaker 2 (02:23):
If it doesn't look perfect, we don't engage.

Speaker 4 (02:26):
Yeah, and Luthen responds, I think we've used up all
the perfect, and if you're stuff all the perfect, it's this,
it's this really good. There's some very impressive like face
acting from scarsguard here where you you see he's There's
so much he wants to say to this person, who,
as we'll discuss, is essentially his daughter. But ultimately all

(02:46):
that happens is she says, Tucky's shirt.

Speaker 2 (02:47):
It's insane.

Speaker 3 (02:50):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (02:51):
So he meets with Lonnie. Lonnie needs like assurances for
like him and his family's safety. Luthen tells them that
they'll be able to flee to Yavin together. Sure, sure, buddy. Yeah. So,
by accessing Deadra's computer files, Lonnie learns that the Emperor's
new energy project, the Calcite mining On Gorman the kyber
On Jetta are actually part of a massive super weapon.

(03:15):
Luthin has worned that Dedra and the ISB are preparing
for a raid on Corouson, and he may be the target.
Luthen ends up killing Lonnie to tie up loose ends
and passes off the information to Claya to relay it
to the rebel alliance while he goes to thermite their
computer hard drive say yea quotes I'll do the burn again.
It's it's it's jover like our our shop, our little home,

(03:38):
our little base of operations in Coruscant is getting destroyed.
This is this is truly the end of an era here.
Luthen either knows or has like decided that he has
run out of time, and the only way to be
sure that the information safely reaches the Alliance is to
give the is B a distraction, and that distraction is

(03:59):
himself elf.

Speaker 4 (04:00):
Yeah, and again it's very consistent. He's clearly trying to
buy time for Claya to escape, right, Like, that's that's
part part of his purpose here. Yeah, and I think
he's also just done, you know, totally, he's done. He's
tired and he doesn't have it in him to run anymore.

Speaker 2 (04:17):
And that's kind of what he discusses in this next section,
which is such an efficient piece of screenwriting. When Dedra
arrives at Luthen's gallery, Yeah, you can. You can only
hide in plain sight for so long, and that time
has come. As as Dedre arrives, Luthen says, here you
are at last, uh huh. Every line in their exchange like,

(04:43):
but before before she lets him know like, hey, I
know you are, like but like every line leading up
to that is a double entendre, like like every single
exchange they have is actually communicating something else, and it's wild.
Forgery is the sad curse of antiquities. At the moment,
only two two pieces of questionable providence in the gallery.

(05:03):
Insane stuff.

Speaker 3 (05:05):
It's great.

Speaker 4 (05:06):
It's insane writing, and it's it's perfect that like she
keeps trying to like get some sort of acknowledgment that
she's one. That's all she wants out of this is
for him to basically she's actually kind of desperate for
him to say, you did good, kid, you cost crazy,
And all he does is thrift shade at her.

Speaker 1 (05:24):
Like the shit sucker.

Speaker 4 (05:26):
Rebellions already gone, you dip shit fascist, like you fucking.

Speaker 2 (05:30):
Failed, like referring to himself and in some ways her
as like as an antiquity, like like like you said,
like he is tired, he has done. He is he's
kind of a relic for the current era of the rebellion.

Speaker 3 (05:43):
And you don't know it yet, but so are you?

Speaker 2 (05:46):
Yes, and so is so is her. Only two pieces
of questionable providence are in the gallery amazing, So Lutha
and Hans Dedra ceremonial dagger. She asks if it's real.
He smiles and remarks, we still don't know.

Speaker 4 (06:00):
And the it's like, it's amazing.

Speaker 2 (06:04):
I get every single line. It's it's it's it's like
the screenwriter's playing with us. Just amazing. I think Tom
Besseol and Tony Gilroy uh for these episodes. Just phenomenal. Dedra, Now,
I'm nervous, Luthed, you've come all this way. And then
she unveils this, this artifact that she is brought to

(06:25):
Luthen for evaluation. She says, it's a little damaged perhaps,
but I'd say it's held its value. As she looks
Luthen up and down again, same thing, same thing, very efficient.
Luthen is a little damage, but he's held a value.
And Dedra reveals the vintage Imperial StarPath unit that first
brought Luthen's operation under Dedra's eye. And and now that

(06:47):
like both of them have their cards like displayed on
the table. They they get to exchange a little bit
more clearly without having to use these like coded coded
phrases like they were before. And they had fascinating back
and forth. She talks about how Luthan's been hiding in
the shelter of imperial peace and quiet and just wants
to burn the galaxy down. And Luthan gets to gets

(07:10):
to poke at her for how he's been aware of
of her this entire time and she's only learned who
he is. Quote, I've known you all along. Hardly seems fair.
She says, you disgusted me everything you stand for, and
he says, do you know why freedom scares you? This
is what Dedra's last arc is like really about, and

(07:31):
it eventually, you know, paradoxically leads to leads to her fate. Now.
I think probably the best line in this little exchange
is Luthan telling Dedrah, quote, you're too late. The rebellion
isn't here anymore. It's flown away everywhere. Now there's a
whole galaxy out there waiting to disgust youth great light.

Speaker 4 (07:52):
Yeah again, it's he's this whole time, he's been like
increasingly cooking her like.

Speaker 2 (07:58):
And also cooking his heart by time that's his hard
time burns up.

Speaker 4 (08:03):
Yeah, yeah, I mean, it's just it's just some great,
some great stuff and the Dedra we get some great
face acting.

Speaker 3 (08:10):
Oh yeah, what is it?

Speaker 4 (08:11):
Denise is her name, right, yeah, gow, I think where
you just see in a second, she sees the smoke
and then Luthen collapses because he has stabbed himself in
the heart, which is also like it serves as another
kind of rappost to every argument that she's been making,
like it's his ultimate counter to her claims that like,
you're fundamentally selfish. You're just doing this for yourself and

(08:33):
your own, you know, desire. He's like, no, bitch, I'm
gonna stab myself in the heart.

Speaker 3 (08:40):
Like you don't know what commitment is.

Speaker 2 (08:43):
It's a great Yeah. He uses this, uses this ceremonial
digger that he that he earlier hands to Dedra and
stabs himself so that the Empire will be able to
torture and try to extract information from him about the rebellion.

Speaker 1 (08:55):
But you gotta have some explosives, like you can't be
relying on staggering yourself with.

Speaker 2 (09:01):
This is this is like a screenwriting thing, like has
to get out of this. They have to they have
to access the computer later. Come on, I think I
think this is this is very like poetically written. Yeah, yeah,
you know, it's it's beautiful. I like like the romance
of it. Yeah, but man, Detra fucked up so bad here.

Speaker 4 (09:21):
Yeah, fundamentally ruins absolutely her entire life.

Speaker 2 (09:25):
The emotion's really got the better for she really wanted
to like like win one over on on access to
like validate herself and her obsession the same way like
Cyril does. And it fucking bites her in the ass.

Speaker 1 (09:37):
It destroys the empire.

Speaker 2 (09:39):
It destroys the entire empire.

Speaker 4 (09:41):
Yeah, yeah, I like that they they had her simultaneously.
She's both right and that if she had been listened to,
she could have stopped the rebel victory. But also she
fundamentally like destroys the Death Star as a result of
her insistence on being right.

Speaker 1 (10:04):
It fits into that old Marxist category of objectively revolutionary.

Speaker 3 (10:08):
Yeah, just by like how.

Speaker 1 (10:10):
She fucked this up specifically, And yeah, get to what
you know. I think we've talked about how how like
the Death Star plans got stolen like from her fucking heart, right, yeah, or.

Speaker 2 (10:21):
Like the the the learning of the Death Star existence
through the hard drive.

Speaker 1 (10:26):
Oh yeah, sorry say yeah yeah.

Speaker 3 (10:27):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, they don't have the plans yet.

Speaker 2 (10:29):
Yeah. So Luthen's transferred to the hospital and then we
get a flashback with Luthen as an early Imperial Army
sergeant involved in a massacre on Claya's home planet. We
see him like like huddled over in his ship with
a flask, repeating the words make.

Speaker 3 (10:49):
It, make it stop, make it stop.

Speaker 2 (10:51):
As like sounds of like carnage and destruction go on
in the background.

Speaker 4 (10:56):
What's what's interesting to me is, yeah, they have You're
basically just hearing what's happening outside. He's in an Imperial
Army uniform, and you're hearing like radio chatter, and it's
radio chatter that could have come from like any war
of the last twenty years. Like it's very much modern
radio call. It's it sounds like a lot of the
shit you heard and like the Collateral Murder video, like

(11:16):
some of the stuff that got leaked by Chelsea Manning
where people are like, yeah, hit everything on that hill dies,
you know, anything past this this point in this like
line of buildings, anyone you see on the heat scope,
kill them, Like it's that kind of stuff, right, Yeah,
And it's it's it's very much like it's very non
Star Wars chatter.

Speaker 2 (11:35):
You know. He's he's like horrified at like what he's doing.
He's trying to find ust to cope with it.

Speaker 4 (11:39):
He's drinking out of a flask and yeah, just like
repeatedly repeating to himself, make it stop.

Speaker 2 (11:46):
Just this like very short scene like recontactilizes a whole
bunch of things about Luthern's character, Yes, including his behavior
on Ferrix during during the riot, where he doesn't get
involved and instead looks on from distance with like a
very like a very blank expression. And like when I
first saw that episode, to me, it felt like Lucan

(12:09):
was like first confronted with like the fatality that he's
dealing with, like like confronted with like the consequences for
actually engaging in revolution, because he's always been kind of
in the shadows. He's been more of this like orchestrator.
He doesn't see like that, like the tactile death that
accompanies his actions. It's like that's how I first saw

(12:30):
that scene. And now this has been fully recontextualized as
like erics is like a PTSD moment for him, like
it's this is that's that's not the first time he's
seeing combat. Yes, this is this is. It changes the
way you can now look back at that scene, which
is very, very cool.

Speaker 4 (12:45):
Yeah, And it's also interesting to think that he's putting
himself in the perspective as much as anything of the
imperials doing the massacre. Yes, yeah, as opposed to the
civilian victims of the massacre.

Speaker 3 (12:57):
I read an interview with Tony where a parent.

Speaker 4 (13:00):
Because they did not have Luthern's backstory set up in
season one, like they didn't fully know where he was
going to go.

Speaker 2 (13:07):
And have a single one nail Yeah yeah.

Speaker 4 (13:09):
And it was apparently Scarsguard who was like, don't have
him be another person who's pissed, like who just hates
the Empire because it took everything from him, like.

Speaker 2 (13:18):
A normal revenge story where like the Empire like tells
his family so that he becomes an insurgent.

Speaker 4 (13:23):
Yeah yeah, yeah, And I really I think it's beautiful that, like, yeah,
his backstory is that, no, he was made complicit. Like however,
whatever got him into the army in the first place,
maybe just conscription. You know, he may not have even
had a choice to join, but the Empire forces him
to do, like puts him in a position, and he's
it's as much discussed with himself that he goes along

(13:44):
with it as far as he does, and you get
in those lines that he's just repeating him to himself
over and over again as he like make it Like
that's his whole motivation, right, Like that's the next twenty
years of his life. Are him trying to make it stop?

Speaker 2 (13:57):
Yeah, that's the title of the episode. Yeah, we'll talk
more about that and his motivation at the end when
we discussed kind of Claia, speaking of which, in this flashback,
it is shot from the perspective of Claia hiding in
like a cubby on on this ship. Yeah, and Luthen
named I think layer Lar, which.

Speaker 4 (14:17):
Is Layers Sergeant Lair is an original name. Well, we
don't know what his fearcht was, but he just reverses it.

Speaker 2 (14:25):
Yeah, which no, no, but like this is this is
this is also like poetic, right, this is this is
this is this is Star Wars poetry, right, it's like
poetry at rhymes.

Speaker 1 (14:36):
Pop seck wise, don't do that. I just I just
got to put this in there. Don't do that.

Speaker 5 (14:42):
Do better.

Speaker 2 (14:43):
But Sergeant Layer finds Claya as like a six year
old hiding hiding on this ship. We then go back
to the present as Claiya infiltrates a space hospital to
get to Luthen. Intercut with flashbacks showing how Luthen used
his military experience to train Claya in insurgent warfare. So
here we see like Luthen being kept alive in this

(15:06):
Corroiscant hospital for later interrogation, and then suddenly Dedra is
arrested in the hospital by an ISB. Marshall for at
first unclear reasons which we will get into later. The
ICP has found Lonnie's body, so there's a dead iced
B agent in Cororriscant. They've heard of how Dedra did
this raid without authorization without notifying the agent now in

(15:29):
charge of the AXIS investigation, and then she's taken into custody.
In these flashbacks, we see Luthen and Clia going town
to town pawning historical artifacts while he teaches young klaya
insurgent warfare. One of the most devastating exchanges is when
Luthen describes Claia as his daughter to a shopkeeper to

(15:50):
help like negotiate a price, and afterwards Claya asks, am
I your daughter? Now? He replies, when it's useful.

Speaker 4 (15:59):
Yeah, she's and then he and then he says, I'm
Luthen you're Clia like, that's all we need to know right.

Speaker 2 (16:07):
Now, that that's who we are now. Yeah, Claiah says, like,
I'll have to think about that, and Luthen says, sometimes
it's not up to us.

Speaker 3 (16:16):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (16:16):
Another exchange happens after Claio watches this like Imperial firing
line kill a batch of kids who are allegedly suspected
of shooting a stormtrooper. I think it probably could have
actually been Luthen, It's unclear, and it essentially just demonstrates
like collective punishment, right, and and Claia gets very upset

(16:38):
at watching, uh this massacre and runs off to Luthen
and also, like interestingly, like when Luthen knows that this
is going to happen, he like chooses to like not watch.
He's like, we don't need to be here. We can
we can, we can just leave. But but Claia chooses
to stay and watch and then runs back to him
and and he he tells her we fight to win.

(16:59):
That means we lose, lose and lose and lose and
lose until we're ready. Yeah, all you know now is
how much you hate you bank, that you hide, that
you keep it alive until you know what to do
with it.

Speaker 4 (17:11):
Yeah, And I love both that He's he's attempting to
give her as much like agency as he can within
this situation where he's also like crafting her into a person.
And so like, if she decides she wants to go
see this massacre, He'll let her do it. Like he's
not going to he's not going to try to make her.
But if that's what she wants, he's not going to

(17:31):
stop her. And then when she's seen what she needs
to see, he's going to give her the best advice
that he can give her. There's another line coming where
he's She asks if he's scared, and he's like, only
about what I'm doing to you, right that like you
Like he is still deeply he feels deeply compromised by
this position he's put himself in with this only other

(17:51):
person that he really can trust.

Speaker 2 (17:54):
Yeah. They do their first like large scale direct action together. Yeah,
on the Emperor's home planet of Naboo. He teaches her
how to blend into the surroundings as they remote debt
night and explosive planted on a bridge. While in the present,
Claia disguises herself as a nurse to disappear into the
hospital where Luthen's being held and blows up the hospital
parking lot as a distraction to get to Lutherin. These

(18:15):
two things mirror each other. It's like poetry at rhymes.
Clia says to Luthin, you're afraid, He says, I'm only
afraid of what I'm doing to you, as he hands
this child a detonator.

Speaker 3 (18:27):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (18:29):
Man, she's not willing to she can't make herself use
it yet.

Speaker 2 (18:33):
I mean, I feel like she was almost willing to
psych herself up. Luthan actually took it away and had
himself do it.

Speaker 3 (18:41):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (18:42):
But that scene by itself where he's like telling her
not to like look at it, to make sure you're
like looking at me, only turn after everyone else has turned.
Very fun stuff happening in Star Wars.

Speaker 3 (18:53):
Yeah, it's it's it's great.

Speaker 4 (18:55):
Like the whole the decision he made he makes here
is like, like you see a lot about their relationship
and again this like how deeply compromised he feels by it.
Of both like I have to get this person ready
for what's necessary and also I have to protect her
from like the worst things that we're going to have

(19:15):
to do together, Like he does want to remain primarily
the one complicit, so I think in part because he
does believe, I mean fundamentally, that's the core of his character.

Speaker 3 (19:26):
He does believe she has a future outside.

Speaker 2 (19:28):
Totally is That's the entire point of what he's doing. Yeah,
do you know what else is necessary, Robert for.

Speaker 4 (19:34):
Us to throw to ads because otherwise we can't keep
this moveable feast on the road.

Speaker 2 (19:48):
Okay, we are back back in the present day on Corrissant.
Clia finally reaches Lutheran in his hospital room and and
I guess, like leading up to this, to this moment,
it's unclear if she's going to try to like rescue him,
like extract him, and no, there's no time for that.

(20:10):
She takes him off life support and lets him die.
There is no escape for his character. Yeah, like Luthern
never gets to see that sunrise, but he did everything
he could to give the rebellion the best chance, and
Claia gets to finish and like live out what he started.
He wants to give Claia that sunrise, and like this

(20:30):
this relates to his core motivation as a character. He's
not getting revenge against the Empire for killing his family
or something like that kind of cliched stories is not
what they're doing here. Instead, this is all all about Clia.
It's about how he's like found Claia and both of
them are broken by what he has done. So then

(20:52):
he spends the rest of his life building the rebellion
for Claia so that she can live on and she
can beat there. And that's the entire point of him.
Like that, that is what's driving him. He is like
the most selfless character. Tony in an interview said, quote,
there are only a certain number of reasons that you
can change your life, and one of them is just

(21:14):
absolute self disgust. So we found a way for him
to have a belly full of it at the right moment.

Speaker 4 (21:21):
Yeah, and I love that that, Like that's his whole
motivation ultimately, is like undoing the only part of what
he was involved in that he can undo, which is
saving this person. And like saving this person involves destroying
the thing that took her life away from her.

Speaker 2 (21:38):
Yeah, the entire apparatus of the Empire. Yeah, yeah, I
think we're kind of wrapped up with this episode here,
But like the Clay Hospital, like infiltration sequence is superb,
so good, like one one person doing all of this
stuff to the absolute funnlement of like the Imperial Troopers.

(22:00):
She's really embodying the line from Rogue one, make ten
men feel like a hundred Yeah, and yeah, she's able
to infiltrate this hospital, like she's working with a team
of like ten people and it's and it's just her
shoutouts to the Granny alien in the elevator. Very very
great little comedy moment.

Speaker 3 (22:16):
Yeah, it's runnable.

Speaker 2 (22:19):
Yeah, but unlessly either have anything else to say about
episode ten, I.

Speaker 3 (22:23):
Mean, yeah, I like this.

Speaker 4 (22:25):
This is obviously like my favorite episode of this particular batch, maybe.

Speaker 2 (22:31):
The best in the whole series. Like this is absolutely Yeah.

Speaker 4 (22:34):
I love the Luthenan Claya moments. I love seeing like
how at the same time this like hint when you're
seeing them kind of haggle over the price of this
antiquity that they've got that like Okay, So Clay always
had this this degree of like cunning and yeah, this
ability to kind of like recognize what's going on, which
probably hows you survived in the first place. Right, She's

(22:57):
she was always someone who saw more than other people.

Speaker 2 (23:00):
Which she's the girl's it.

Speaker 4 (23:03):
Yeah, And at the same time, you get this piece
of Luthan like there must have been like whatever he
was before he joined the military, it was somebody who
had this kind of deep knowledge of antiquities and probably
this desire to make something of his life other than
what became of it and all that he's got left
of it is like utilizing that real piece of himself

(23:24):
to make a fake person, right, Like That's which is
such an interesting character beat for him, that like this,
this thing that is probably closest to the real Luthan,
the one that existed before his military service, before the
Empire ruined him, is completely remade in the service of
making himself into something he's not.

Speaker 1 (23:44):
So when I first saw this, I was really worried
because I think one of those interesting parts about Clay
as a character is that she is the only person
that Luthan trusts absolutely, right, She's the only person that
he She's fully as an equal. Yeah, she's the only
one who has all the information that he has. And
you know, I was like kind of worried that it
was Okay, well now she's effectively his daughter, and it's like, no,

(24:05):
it's actually like she is still the only person. Yeah,
Like even though Luthan has been sort of raising her
like is, like he's been trying to raise her as
an equal as much as much as he possibly can.
I think that's a really really yeah, sort of fascinating
like way for this thing to have gone.

Speaker 2 (24:21):
Like the actress of Claya has said, like, like from
Claya's perspective, like she doesn't really fully see Luthin like
as her father figure because like inherently like he was
like involved in the actual killing of like of her family,
like she she is she has found a way to
kind of love him through that. But it's it's not

(24:42):
like it's not like that that like immediate familial love
like it's it's it's it's a different rationalization that she
can still like give him like a final kiss on
his deathbed and like does like does care for him,
but like it's so much more like complicated and murky
and like m like roped in with politics and roped
in with Yeah.

Speaker 4 (25:02):
But here's here's the thing what I'll say about that,
And and this is kind of my favorite part of
that is I can see how she would be like
this feeling I have towards them, like isn't like what
someone would feel towards a father. But also she doesn't
really know how people feel about their parents because she
didn't get to have them very long.

Speaker 2 (25:20):
Keep people can't feel like that can feel about their father.

Speaker 4 (25:24):
Feeling both this deep sense of love and disgust towards
your parents is a totally normal.

Speaker 3 (25:29):
Experience, and she just doesn't.

Speaker 4 (25:31):
I think maybe there's a degree in which she doesn't
even really realize how how common.

Speaker 2 (25:35):
That is because of what was taken from her. No,
that's a good point. That's a good point. Yeah, all right,
Episode eleven, who else knows Krenick and Dedra queen out together?
Hell yeah, look at them go so detrasid this interrogation
chamber and cretic grills her. How this piece of information good?

Speaker 3 (25:58):
He's so good?

Speaker 2 (26:00):
House piece of information has escaped containment and Dedra's Dedra's
face strote this whole scene. Oh my gosh.

Speaker 4 (26:09):
She comes into it. You can tell she thinks I'm
gonna get out of this. I'm gonna talk my way
out of this. Yeah, surely, I miss I'll sort this
all out.

Speaker 2 (26:17):
Uh yeah, No. Once she realized this that this is
actually about like the leakage of like the death Star
plans and not just as simple raid on a rebel
like weapons dealer. She realizes the kind of gravity of
her situation. She complains about how like she's been forced
like scavenge for information because there's not like an efficient,

(26:39):
efficient intel sharing operation across different imperial branches, and Credit
says to her, if you're not a rebel spy, you
missed your calling, which is the biggest insult you could
say to her.

Speaker 3 (26:50):
My god, this destroys her.

Speaker 2 (26:54):
Yeah, like this is the this is the same mistake
that like Cirrial makes right. They're trying to like to
like do this like try hard stuff.

Speaker 4 (27:01):
You think initiative is rewarded here exactly. Yeah, yeah, you know,
you follow orders. You do not take your own initiative.
You are not your own person. You follow what you're
told to do. You don't take things into your own hands.
This is how the whole system crumbles. Yeah, it's it's phenomenal.

Speaker 2 (27:19):
How like she is so much like you know, like
it's especially in Cyril's eyes, right, she is like everything
that he wanted to be but like couldn't And yet
she has all the same flaws as him. They're both
children trying to like grab and seize their spot like
in the in the imperial world, and they can never
escape the logic of children. Yeah, it's phenomenal. So so yeah,

(27:42):
basically because because she was sent memos accidentally, she was
accidentally added to HOO THEPC small group. Uh, she had
she had information on the desk start that she shouldn't
have that she sorted that she stored on her computer
that then Lonnie was able to access with like a
stolen code cylinder, and this is why she's detained.

Speaker 4 (28:01):
And I love too that Lannie makes a statement that
like he didn't tell Luthen he had this because he's like, well,
you would have made me use it.

Speaker 2 (28:06):
And well, yeah, it's super cool.

Speaker 4 (28:09):
And there's this yet like Lannie has gotten very good
at this, Like he was right to not tell his boss.

Speaker 2 (28:16):
Sometimes you share and sometimes you don't. And yeah, yeah, no,
like the idea of him holding onto this code cylinder
this this whole year, knowing that you can only use
this once before you're kind of found out, and then
like waiting until he's heard chatter that like Luthen's gonna
get raided uses the cylinder. Then discovers all these other files.
It shows how important Luthen's operation is. I think this

(28:36):
is I think what these last two episodes are really
about is kind of like, yeah, the redemption of Luthan
in the eyes of the other rebel agents. So so yes,
Dedra is completely fucked and it's hilarious and Ben Mendel
is transing around the scene.

Speaker 3 (28:54):
He's having such a good time.

Speaker 1 (28:56):
It's so good. This is like it's like this and
the thing where he's going pwel Kite episode.

Speaker 3 (29:03):
Yeah, he's so good.

Speaker 1 (29:04):
It's only his two best like, yeah, that's also just
really like Bob they didn't let him cook an and
or like oh it's him written like you know, oh yeah.
But it's like it's like like these it's like this
series is you've been getting to watch yeah sorry yah
in Rogue one. Yeah, it's like you've been getting to
watch these people who have just been playing like kind

(29:24):
of generic Star Wars characters and you get to watch
them cook and it is a thig of beauty.

Speaker 2 (29:30):
It's a real freak gets to be let out because
you think they're all freaks.

Speaker 4 (29:35):
There's that glorious moment when she realizes how fucked she
is when he puts his finger on.

Speaker 1 (29:41):
Her head.

Speaker 4 (29:44):
Like she's just an odd she's there for him to
act off. She's a button, right, She's a button.

Speaker 2 (29:49):
We can push you when, we can push you when
we desire to, but you don't. You don't go off
by yourself. It's phenomena And he's turning her off.

Speaker 3 (29:59):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (30:00):
He has this line where he's like, you think I
would come here for the death of an ISB clerk.

Speaker 2 (30:04):
Say say the word phenomen Yes, say the word death star.

Speaker 4 (30:10):
Yeah, amazing, And then yeah, he turns her off and
is like, yeah, we'll get it.

Speaker 3 (30:14):
We'll get by without you somehow.

Speaker 2 (30:16):
Yeah, hopefully, hopefully we'll be able to get by without you.

Speaker 3 (30:20):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (30:20):
And it's so funny because like he is just he
is nuking her. There's nothing left after this, And also
they can't say actually actually, but he's dead in like
two days.

Speaker 2 (30:34):
Targets obliterate his ass with.

Speaker 4 (30:37):
The bargain's about to be sick of dust and everyone
else Yes, everyone's a button.

Speaker 2 (30:44):
And it's crazy how much of like the is B
gets totally wiped out like the week of the Death
Stars destruction. This shows like the real decline of the Empires.
It's like this like administrative bureaucratic state that's been running
the real day to day operations gets completely wiped out,
and now these two like scith lunatics have to personally
run everything themselves and they can't do it. They just can't.

(31:06):
They were they were relying on all of like the
republic holdovers that actually knew how to like run like
run a stage.

Speaker 3 (31:11):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (31:11):
These guys like Laren and whatnot, who are like hard
seems like job yes yeah yeah, oh part of gas
and they they all get iced out.

Speaker 1 (31:22):
Yeah yeah, I mean, and this is this is a
dynamic that I think like because like everyone you were
trained from birth in the US to know the like
the revolution devours as.

Speaker 2 (31:31):
Children thing and the Empire talks about this just like.

Speaker 1 (31:36):
No, the liquida should rate for these people is astonishing.
They also all like turn through these people and it's
like you can you can watch like Vader doing this
to people were like Vader, Like Vader just keeps fucking
killing his officers.

Speaker 2 (31:49):
On his Superstar Destroyer all the time.

Speaker 4 (31:51):
Well and what and what we what we see throughout
and or is rebels fuck up all the time.

Speaker 3 (31:57):
They fail all the time.

Speaker 4 (31:58):
We see moments of fail from Luthen, we see them
from cassi In, we see them from Draven and by
guys at Indoor, bail Mon Mathma. They all fuck up
and then they get the chance to learn from their
mistakes and get better, which is ultimately why they win.

Speaker 2 (32:15):
And that privilege is never extended no to the Empire.

Speaker 4 (32:18):
Even if you're really good, you're going to make some
mistakes and the first time you do, Darth Vader chokes
you to death, and so the Empire never gets better.

Speaker 1 (32:28):
It's just because this was a point in the Old
Canyon where like one of the arguments of like why
the rebels won the war was like X wings have shields, yeah,
and tie fighters don't. Yeah, and you could, so you
can make a mistake in an X wing, but if
it makes say a tie fighter, you're done.

Speaker 2 (32:42):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (32:42):
So the rebel pilots end up being better than the
imperial ones because they survive. And there's this other like
there are lots of these interesting parallels too, where like
the death of the Administrative State was also sort of
an old cannon thing, where it's like, so the why
it plays out in the old Cannon is like at
Endoor and this is the thing that you canon too,
I guess, but like all of the best officers are
trying to get moded up the ladder and so they're
all on the Emperor the Emperor Superstar Destroyer. Yeah, and

(33:06):
when that thing goes down, it's like yeah, it like
and this is partially just a thing that also about
like how imperial administration works is how centralized it is.
Is that they have single points of failure. And this
is for example, Hoberodijia fell. It's like, yeah, they put
it's like we don't have a state anymore because everything's
so centralized and it being so centralized and everyone being
so essential, and also you killing all these people because

(33:28):
your organization doesn't tolerate failure. It just it creates these
discuss scating failure points where you knock out a couple
of people on it and suddenly it's like everything's destroyed.

Speaker 2 (33:36):
I do want to return to the point of kind
of of how fastiss in like eth the zone at
the end, because Tony has some quotes on that, and
I'm just going to speed run through these next few
kind of points here. The ic B tracks clay As
movements via hospital security cameras. Even though she tries to
avoid an evade detection, she is basically stuck on Chorussan
and starts hiding out in the old safe house, broadcasting

(33:58):
an emergency pulse code to her on Yavin. Meanwhile, a
divorced Cassian and Melchie get drunk and start bullying their
autistic robot friend while playing poker. So good, it's so
funny cases Hey, I know, oh, I know, I'm well aware.

Speaker 1 (34:15):
I am the sober autistic girl in every one of
these things.

Speaker 4 (34:18):
Well, and they understand the most important thing about television
sci fi, which is a robot awkwardly playing poker with
a human freak.

Speaker 1 (34:27):
I know the grace.

Speaker 2 (34:31):
Data K TWOSO holding hands meme and I.

Speaker 4 (34:35):
Love the K two s O is also constantly being like,
you guys are drinking a lot, Like.

Speaker 2 (34:41):
Yeah, I love that.

Speaker 4 (34:41):
When they're about to go on this last mission, Cassian
is canically drunk driving. Yeah, he is one and a
half shot away from blacking out his time to pilot.

Speaker 5 (34:53):
A spacecraft most realistic in searches, No one will be
this drug again until like no, like many many years
later in this galaxy, until like there's until like civil
war generals.

Speaker 1 (35:07):
Yeah, are finding each other's next tip, and we'll be
this drunk.

Speaker 2 (35:10):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (35:10):
Ulyssie Simpson Grant is the last person to be as
drunk as Cassian and or was in this scene.

Speaker 2 (35:18):
Willman's old like Luthen radio goes off with an as
West message. She takes it to Cassian, who then yeah,
drunk drives there you way off yeaven.

Speaker 4 (35:28):
And let's let's have a shout out to our man
Draven here.

Speaker 3 (35:31):
Who is he?

Speaker 4 (35:32):
He's kind of he's kind of he's kind of based.
I loved I love that they managed to both make
him be. He has to be the foil to Cassian
because Cassian does not want this chain of command bullshit.
He's so sympathetic, but he's not wrong, and he's not
a dick. He's like, look, man, I've got like four
hundred other freighters. I'm worried about right now, those shipments

(35:53):
of rifles that I that I have to keep. I
have to keep all of this in my head. I
can't write any of it down. I haven't slept in days.
I dums like. I can't even drink hot coffee because
otherwise my fucking ulcers light on fire. I don't even
remember when I hate solid food. My ibs has ibs.
Can you please stop taking off in the middle.

Speaker 1 (36:14):
Of the night.

Speaker 2 (36:16):
It's so funny that the thing that Cassian does at
the end of Rogue one, it's just like a regular
currents on the face. He's doing this, but no, like
like consistently Draven, even even if he gets pissed off,
a Cassian consistently has his backstill, which is I think,
really really sweet. Yes, yeah, Krenick realizes how fucked they

(36:38):
are and and tries to get tries to get the
entire Icept immobilized to locate Claya as she is probably
in possession of the death Star intel quote. There will
be no horizon to the scope of your inquiry. And
this is where we have some of the most interesting
stuff from Partigas and how he viewsed like rebellions and
revolutions as a disease yea. And this relates to some

(37:00):
of his lines from season one where he describes the
ISP as quote unquote healthcare providers. We treat sickness, We
identify symptoms. We locate germs, whether they arise from within
or have come from the outside. The longer we wait
to identify a disorder, the harder it is to treat
the disease unquote. Yeah, and then when the ICP decides
on what grounds they are looking to apprehend, Clia Partograz

(37:24):
proclaims that quote she's diseased. She escaped the hospital with
infectious condition that threatens everyone with whom she may come
into contact unquote.

Speaker 1 (37:35):
I'm so glad they did this because this is such
a core part of the ideology of fascism, right of
seeing that the body is a nation and there being
these sort of like parasitic infections that are inside the
nation that are like undermining it. That's that's like just
the core of fascism. And you're just getting You're just
getting to watch like the people in the middle of
the empire just literally trying to do the thing in

(37:58):
the most literal way possible, right, Like they're just they're
just coming out and saying what the ideology is and
how it works. And I it may it may still
be a level of metaphor that is slightly too high
for the average Star Wars viewer, but they are just
telling you the politics. Yeah, and I really appreciate that.

Speaker 3 (38:15):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (38:17):
Now, while stuck in an ic BE holding cell with
with with an unbuttoned collar. Detra is crashing out and
you can tell because the caller is unbuttoned, but somehow
she is still able to give the ISB a lead
to track Claya through her use of obscure radio signals.
One of the cool parts here is an Imperial radio
technician is impressed at Lusen's radio setup and can and

(38:41):
can't help but be excited when like learning how it works.
But they say that Luthan targeted the storage files and
the radio signal library when he burned the console, but
still they were able to track Claya's pulsecode to a
nearby apartment on Coruscant, and in preparation for the raid
on the safe house, the ice peaed jam calms around
the area right as Cassian, Melchi and K two arrive

(39:04):
to extract Claya. As Cassian gets into the apartment and
finds not Luthen but Claia and then tries to plead
with her to come to Yavin. He also like kind
of lambass Luthen for not coming to Yavin sooner because
he couldn't swallow his pride, and Claia says, quote, thank
the Galaxy, he didn't he stayed for this that people

(39:26):
in Yavin have to know what they're up against, thank
the Galaxy, and he did it.

Speaker 1 (39:32):
Yeah, so good.

Speaker 2 (39:33):
All right, let's go on break and then we'll return
to discuss the final episode. Okay, we are back. Episode twelve,
Jetta kiber Urso. So Cass is trying to convince Clia

(39:54):
to leave, like right now, write this very second, please
dear God, come with me, and Claya's still like kind
of pissed him with the whole situation, like Gavin after
all these years, what a bitter ending. Cass tries to
argue that if she comes, she's helping to keep Luthan alive,
which she calls big words the Imperial Swat Team importantly

(40:17):
not stormtroopers. Instead, these goofy s swat guys surround the
apartment trying to locate Claya. As the ISB locates casts
Claya and Melchi, they throw a stun grenade, which, this
is very interesting to me, does not really affect Cass
and Melchie as much. Like like, Claya gets knocked out,
but the Narkina five prison shocks conditioned Melchi and Cass

(40:41):
against the stun grenade, which is again phlometal it's so good,
and I think just generally like Claya has again, Luthen.

Speaker 4 (40:49):
Has protected her from a lot of like the direct
she doesn't have CTE. Right, if Cassie and had lived
another thirty years, like his fucking brain would have been
melting because he's been around many goddamn explosions and he's
been electrocute And the same thing's to a melchie, right,
they just barely feel.

Speaker 1 (41:06):
It, to be fair, It's not like she hasn't blown
up a bunch of things, like she's a distance from
a distance, we just watch her liquidate an entire Imperial
security compliment to go kill Luthen. Like it's not like
she hasn't done this.

Speaker 4 (41:20):
No no, no, But she's raised by an old soldier who
does the responsible thing that you do if you have
the experience, which is you tell the younger people no.

Speaker 3 (41:27):
No, no, use your ear pro no, get further back.

Speaker 4 (41:31):
I know you don't think you need to be, but
get further back, like my ears ring all the time.
Don't fucking take risks. I also kind of what I
wonder if maybe there's a level of protection from the
stand green age you get again when you are still
right on the edge of a blackout.

Speaker 2 (41:51):
Yeah, that's that's compelling. So as K two just completely demolishes.
So Imperial Team, uh, the the i SB calls for backup,
but everyone is spread too thin because they're out searching
for the emergency Disease warrant from partagraphs.

Speaker 3 (42:12):
Yeah, so good.

Speaker 2 (42:13):
Yeah, Claya does get to Yavin, and here we see
a lot more of like the tricky aspects of Yavin politics.
Saw is kind of getting impossible to deal with. He
is haffing way too much fuel.

Speaker 4 (42:26):
He's huffing an amount of fuel. I don't know how
I'm gonna say it's too much. But his insistence where
they're like, dude, we know you're we know you're on Jetta.

Speaker 2 (42:36):
We know idea, you don't know where I am? You know, Yeah,
trying to argue with him about about how they're trying
to get to the bottom of like the Imperial kiper
mining on Jetta and they're like, we know you're on
Jetta and he tries to deny it. You don't know
where I am? Yes, we do.

Speaker 1 (42:55):
There's also this great thing at the end of that
where Moth was like, we're just trying to help you.
And then and Saw just cuss the line, and I
think it's draved.

Speaker 2 (43:04):
Whatever.

Speaker 1 (43:04):
The the rebel intelligence ghoul in the room cuts the
line and Moss was kind of just going like uh,
and he goes, oh, no, we've absolutely been sending spies
into his group and she's been.

Speaker 4 (43:16):
So we've been bugging him. He's he's absolutely right.

Speaker 1 (43:20):
And it's something I think it's interesting about because, like
it in Rogue one Saw is like seems like such
an unbelievably paranoid asshole. It's like, no, like the rebels
really have been like trying to the rebels and the
Empire really have been trying to infiltrate his group for
like so fucking long that he's completely lost his mind
from just like the paranoia.

Speaker 4 (43:39):
Also, he is canonically again a forty six.

Speaker 2 (43:45):
Puffing all that fuel really does rapid age you.

Speaker 3 (43:47):
Yeah, yeah, it's not great for you.

Speaker 2 (43:50):
So then we have I guess the most frustrating part
of the episode, Like good but frustrating to watch with
this this this Rebel spokes council meeting about Luthen and
the Death Star in tell, oh my god, are these
people annoying? Uh? Yeah, what pieces of ship? These people,
These people who have like done basically nothing. Yeah, there
are senators who's like who's who have who have defected

(44:11):
to Yavin and they don't know the cost of things
that that they're actually dealing in. Bail says that that
Luthen stayed on Corussants too long and and again no,
no Luthen state for this piece of information.

Speaker 1 (44:25):
Mm hmm.

Speaker 2 (44:25):
And and Mon's getting kind of increasingly frustrated as everyone's
kind of like bad talking Luthen. Again, we've we've we've
been very clear on the show about how Lusen as
a complicated character with some people more pro Luthen than others.
But and and a Mon like Mon herself has a
lot of reservations about Luthen, but yeah, she also knows
is like her directly and everyone else are only here

(44:47):
in part because of what he's done. That's not saying
he was right about every single thing, but he he
but that still is true, right like he this is
He's still very important to this. And everyone's being quite
dismissive of of Cassiean and and and the intel from
Lutheran and Cassian kind of gets you know, put into
put into confinement and it gets dismissed and requests to

(45:08):
visit Claia in the hospital, and this is where Mon
finally speaks up and immediately grants him permission because like
she's she she knows all these people like like these
she's and she's the only one on this little council
that like knows all of these people and knows like
how much they have sacrificed. Yeah, but still like mon
Mon is still like a good operator here, and she
asks her cousin Vell to like talk with Cassie and

(45:31):
and like suss out how real this death Star intel is.
When Vell does this, she doesn't try to do it
like covertly. She like talks talks to Cassie and very
like flatly being like, hey, like Mon sent me here
to try to figure out if if this is legit
is is this legit? And they discussed the intel. Meanwhile,
Claia gets up from like her like medical medical bay

(45:53):
and starts walking around Yavin in the rain and like,
oh my god, somebody please hug her, like someone like
do something like she should not be left alone, like
she's had one of the one of the most traumatic
days of her life. Someone like take care of her.
And Bell runs into Claiya and like Vell and Clay
have had like kind of a kind of like a
dicey relationship, but like in this moment, we see like

(46:16):
just the importance of like sheer solidarity and Bell like
cares for her, gets her to like cover, gives her
like a place to sleep. And it's a really touching scene.

Speaker 1 (46:25):
And I want to talk about this moment a little
bit because I think it's an interesting character thing with
Claia here where Claya, throughout this entire show is the
only character who has been put together the entire time. Yeah,
Like even part agast At like the very end starts
to sort of crack, right, Claia is the one character who,
like when everyone is falling apart around her, when Andre's
falling apart, when when like even when Luthern is falling apart, Clay,

(46:46):
Clay is always on it. Fuck you pull yourself together.
You have to hold this together. Yeah, And it's like
her and you get this moment, like her task, this is.

Speaker 2 (46:54):
When she's finally is able to break. Yeah, she's been
holding in so much.

Speaker 1 (46:58):
Yeah yeah yeah, Like one her task is finally over
and so she can like let herself fall apart. And
two it's like a thing that could finally actually drive
her to fall apart is the fact that she just
had to fucking kill lu kill the person who raised her. Ye, yeah,
she had to fucking kill Luthan and then get out.
And you can see this thing where that I think
is like very familiar to a lot of people were

(47:18):
like she's been. And she also has to hold all
this information in her head because if she forgets any
of the information that she's been told by Lutheran, the
rebellion is doomed. And and and when Ander like first
meets her on Corrussants, she's just like is spilling it out,
springing it out, She's out just jumble of words. Yeah,
and it's like and it's and it's a thing where
like she's she's finally reached the point where it's like

(47:38):
she has one last thing to do and she can
fall apart, and then she can finally instead of having
to be the one who's caring for literally everyone and
holding literally everyone else together, she can finally like rest.
And she doesn't know how to do that because she's
always had to be the one who's holding everything together
this entire time.

Speaker 2 (47:56):
I do love the moment when Lutherin first gives her
the information and he like forces her to like repeat
it back to him, like make make sure you can
you can express it to me. And then she does
the same thing to Cassian, and Cassian like doesn't like
Cassian doesn't repeat it back to her. And but yeah,
like like that small like you know, like like you
have to have like a ritual, you have to have,
like you have you have like a protocol to make
sure you actually like to make sure that I know

(48:17):
you actually have this information, you need to like express
it back to me. Yeah, it's it's just a nice
little short moment. In the next morning, we see Cassian
taking care of Bix's plants. Good for him. Yeah, And
then this is when casson Vell talk and they say
that they're gonna drink to Luthen Justice once, which again
Cassian's drinking right in the morning, good.

Speaker 3 (48:38):
Time, as like he does every day.

Speaker 2 (48:43):
Yes, but but they say, you, like we can't toast
them all like Lieutenant Gornnamic, Santa Feryx, Marva Gorman, the
l Donny's and one one short little tidbit here Vell
talks about how there's people falsely claiming that they were
part of the Aldawnie Crew, which is the most accurate

(49:04):
thing I have ever seen.

Speaker 4 (49:08):
Where they're like everybody keeps taking credit for this, and
she's like, man, if someone did that in front of me,
I just there.

Speaker 1 (49:14):
And killed him.

Speaker 2 (49:15):
Yeah, they're the only two people from the old Donnie
Raids still still alive, and like, yeah, like the idea
that we're getting like rebel stolen valors, but very realistic,
you know. I actually I actually punched Richard Spencer as
like as like a fourteen year old. Yeah, it's very
well cool.

Speaker 3 (49:34):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (49:36):
We then start hearing Nemeck's Manifesto playing, and it's unclear
that if there's playing it like for the show. But
then yeah, but then we realized that it's part of
Grays listening in the Imperial Security Burroughs briefing room, and
it's it's a really wonderful thing to return to. Yeah,
and one of Partagras is like you know, Underlings walks

(49:58):
up to him and says like it just keeps spreading,
doesn't it, And he says it's been hard to contain again,
using this like a disease like rhetoric. He then asks
for a moment to collect himself and then shoots himself
in the head. This is one of the most fascinating
parts of the show, like like knowing like the kind

(50:19):
of the tear that he's going to face for like
for failing, while also being confronted with like how much
of his work for the Empire has been worth it?
Like it's not. His emotions here are not clearly laid
out to you, because it's more interesting for you to
think about them yourself.

Speaker 4 (50:36):
Yeah, and I've seen everything from like, oh, he realizes
he was wrong to he realizes like the Empire is
the disease or just he realizes the disease got out
of control, like more than they had realized.

Speaker 2 (50:49):
But the punishment he could be facing from the Empires
not worth it, like he is he is he's a
career man, And why would he be sent to Narkina five?
Like he is not going to El Salvador. Finally, Cassian
is sent to meet a source on Kafring. That's that's
one of the guys infiltrating saws operation to learn the

(51:10):
location of Galen Urso, the designer at the Death Star.
And then we have this final montage across all of
our characters. We have mon and Vell having breakfast with
the grunts. You have divorced paren flying flying around on Coruscant.
You have Dedra in a Narkeina prison, and Claya gets
to see the life of the rebellion, Saws at Jetta,

(51:33):
Kronik is at the Death Star be too, Emo has
a new friend, and Bix is holding a baby watching
the sunrise.

Speaker 3 (51:41):
Uh huh.

Speaker 2 (51:42):
So I want to talk mostly about Bis here, but
first I think of mon eating with the rebel troops.
Is like very cool to have her just like with
the regular people. She's not like with like bail and
like not like not like often like a special like
counselor's room. She's like like just with everyone. We'll also
talk a little bit about Clay here as well, But
I think I think I want to just do Bix

(52:03):
to start, if that's okay, sure, sure, yeah, yeah, yeah.
So Tony has talked a lot about this ending scene
and about how he wanted to end with a sense
of hope and like the hope for like life beyond
you know, the empire, like like life beyond imperial oppression,
and and Bix with the babies was to like symbolize this,
and Bix is literally like looking at the sunrise, right, like,

(52:25):
and this this metaphor of the sunrise has been something
for Luthin, how he's never gonna actually get to see
like life beyond the empire, and he knows that he
sacrificed that. It also calls into calls into view a
Cassian dying at like the false sunrise of the dusth Star.
And I've seen I guess some people upset about Bix

(52:46):
just you know, being like off planet with a baby
and feeling this is a kind of like relegating her character.
And I think that there's a lot of things going
on here. This show goes so so like way way
beyond like simple politics of like representation and like vocasting right,
which can often end up feeling like shallow boxes to check,

(53:06):
because this show actually like depicts things like carceral injustice,
manufactured consent for genocide, how structural patriarchy drives imperial oppression,
Like the depth of the political mechanisms the show is tackling,
I think is so much more worthwhile, and it's it's
not immune to criticism for those reasons. But I think
that aspect can be overlooked.

Speaker 1 (53:25):
Oddly.

Speaker 2 (53:26):
I think we kind of like take for granted, like
how good the show is at so many aspects, so
many aspects of politics, and like this show specifically has
women in so many different roles beyond like the you
know pop feminist girl boss Badass, which has been linked
to Star Wars through Lea Ahsoka and to a lesser
extent like Ray and Jim, and this tribe is itself
kind of low key misogynistic. But in and Or, we

(53:48):
have man Mathma, we have Vel, we have Sinto, we
have Cla, we have Dedra, we have Marvel, we have
Bis And I think motherhood is something that characters should
be allowed to embrace. And like motherhood's always had a
very tricky relationship up with Star Wars because of Padme,
But like, being being a mom is not the issue
with Bix's character. You can still critique how she was
relegated to becoming like the punching bag for the show,

(54:10):
but being a mother is like not bad. There is
there's a quote from the Palestinian militant Leila Khalid like
revolution must mean life, also every aspect of life, and
she specifically referenced motherhood. And like Bix is a fighter,
she is a survivor. She she fights her way out
of depression and PTSD, and she does spend years engaged

(54:34):
in revolutionary action. And yes, it may it may have
been nice to see more of that revolutionary action on screen.
We do see some it might have been nice, But
this is also write a limited series show with a
ton of characters, like four hundred speaking roles, and that
is not been afforded to everybody, and that can be unfortunate.

(54:54):
But I think I understand what's going on with this character,
and I do not. I do not think the problem
is the baby itself. I think that's actually fine, and
her deciding after years of fighting to take like a
few years off to have a baby should be viewed
as a choice that like she's like allowed to make.
I guess.

Speaker 4 (55:14):
I also think there's there's something like there's a lot
of agency in the choice to like I'm done, but
I'm not gonna make that decision for this other person,
for Cassian. Yeah yeah, but I don't know, like it
scanned to me. I do like thinking that in this
last scene is where like watching these last bits of
all our characters, you know, not only as people have
pointed out, is Cassian gonna be dead in like two days,

(55:37):
along with Ben Mendelssohn and shortly thereafter grenmav Tarkin. But
like all the other stuff that's canonically going down, like
right right as fucking Claya sees that first sunrise, Like
you have to imagine Han Solo somewhere is doing a
line off of like a space prostitute in some sleazy bar.
It's like four am in the morning where he is.

(55:58):
He hasn't slept in days. You know, Luke Skywalker is
looking at his on uncle being like, well, they're never
going to be lit on fire, obviously.

Speaker 2 (56:05):
Just beautiful To kind of reiterate on the point about
how like fascism that also eats its own is something
that Tony has discussed before, specifically in relation to like
Cyril and Dedra and partographs right. Tony says, like quote,
fascism doesn't just take down the oppressed, It doesn't just
come for the people trying to control. It inevitably destroys
the people who have worked the hardest to build it.

(56:26):
And that's been true all through history as well. In
a different interview, he says, the empire is just shattering, fragmenting, grabbing,
destroying and taking, and then the people that are doing
it on the imperial side are all isolated. They think
they're part of something, but really they're not. Look at
what happens to Dedra, Look at what happens to Partographs.
Look what happens to Cyril carn He tries to believe

(56:47):
in the dream. It's the carelessness and the cruelty and
the lack of empathy. That's what I'm pitching. Even in
this little final montage, we have this brief shot of Parin,
which is interesting. That's man Mathma's a strange husband, I guess, uh.
And Tony has discussed parent as well, and during like
the wedding scene, we learned that that as a kid,
like while he was in school, he was kind of

(57:08):
a a quote unquote political fire brand. Yeah, and he
has sacrificed that a little bit. Tony says, quote, there
are a lot of sacrifices in this show, all variety
of sacrifices. He's made his sacrifice for hedonism. He doesn't
look happy in that car unquote.

Speaker 3 (57:24):
No.

Speaker 2 (57:25):
I do like the little wrap up we have we
have on parents character there.

Speaker 4 (57:29):
Although I also love if you'll notice he's with the
wife of the Golden their daughter off too it's that
you have to assume has gotten purged at this point
because they realized that he had been funneling funds to
the rebellion. But I I do like we even get
that this is this is the only little private rebellion
that he can manage right now as he's he's fucking

(57:49):
this guy's wife.

Speaker 2 (57:50):
Everyone has their everyone has their own rebellion.

Speaker 1 (57:53):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (57:54):
Oh man, I guess I finally, I at least for me,
I guess part of me wanted to see you more
of like the development of Yavin as like how like
revolutionary cells come together. And Tony has addressed this as well,
quote Yavin makes me nervous if you want to know
the truth, there's things about Yeavin that make me nervous,
and the logic about Yavin that makes me nervous. Even

(58:14):
within the Star Wars canon, the security there and how
some people know about it but the ice beed doesn't
know about it. And there's some places where you don't
want to poke to aggressively because you don't really want
to get into the undercarriage. That was a place where
I didn't really want to get into the undercarriage very much.
That is that is understandable, and then finally on Claya
and Luthen, and specifically like Claia's last look there, like

(58:39):
in the morning after her walk in the rain, after
all of this, you know, frustration between like Luthen and Yavin.
Tony says, quote Cleia and Luthen are over amplifying the
distrust and hate in the same way that some of
the people on the Alliance are over ramping the disagreement.
I think one of my favorite moments in that montage
at the end is when Leo wakes up the next

(59:00):
morning after her night in the rain, and she looks
out and sees that there's people running and people caring supplies,
and she's seen how big Yavin is, and there's this
mona Lisa's smile that she has that's almost beginning to
take pleasure in some sense of ownership of what she's
helped create. She realizes how much of a contributor, how
much of an investor, she and Luthen are in y Avion.
She's watching the people there, and just a little moment

(59:22):
of pride comes on her face that she warms up
just a little bit and begins to take ownership of
the rebellion. That's everything to me unquote.

Speaker 1 (59:31):
There's something I love about Yavn. Well, you get to
see sort of the beauty of it and the beauty
of what's going to destroy the empire, where it's like
you keep just seeing like people who survived all of
this shit and make it to Yavn. Like Meshi is
like the other survivor of the Narkina five like prison break, right,
and he's like one of the people going on with

(59:52):
the indoor the what's the what's the what's the other
rebellion twinks name the Kidy through the brain? Yeah, yeah,
Willman's French resistance girlfriend makes it there, and like all
of these and you get this this little microcosms, like
all of these people who are like the survivors of
all of these imperial sort of like horrors like have

(01:00:13):
gathered in this place and it's like these are the
people who are going to destroy the empire. And I
think something really beautiful about that. And then I also
think there's a really interesting thing in the Yavun politics
we do see, which is that like you know, so
like I get I am notoriously the show is like
luth and hater. I'm not really a hater of Luthen.
I just don't want the most annoying people in the
world to try to replicate him in real life. But also,

(01:00:34):
like the central rebel command is a shit show. It's
completely exasterly. They're like top down hierarchical command from that council.
Those people at every every single instance of this attempt
to lose the boar, Right, they're too pissed off at
Luthen to like listen to the information that he literally
fucking died to give them, right, Like this entire operation
a bit about giving them the information to destroy the

(01:00:55):
super weapon that will destroy the empire, and they don't
want to listen to it. And like in rogue, like
that counts tries to surrender, like they literally vote to
be like yeah, sorry, we can't fight the Empire. They're
too strong. And then like the rebel military defects and
this is not the fact, like they say disrection, they
go right, they rebel, Yeah, they go rogue and they
and they're the ones who do this. And I think
there's this interesting thing here. As much as Gilbert doesn't

(01:01:17):
want to like touch Yavin that much, there's this there's
an interesting political dynamic of like yeah, okay, so like
we finally developed this sort of like centralized political force
capable to bring all these things together, and they're useless.
They are worse than useless. They they they nearly destroy
the rebellion that they had been sort of like trying
to bring together on multiple occasions, and they're only stopped
by doing that by these sort of like unhinged gorilla

(01:01:39):
like people who are completely out of control and like
these like rogue operator people who.

Speaker 4 (01:01:45):
Are fundamentally like the the inheritors to Luthan's legacy, right
like which is cassian.

Speaker 1 (01:01:51):
By the actual rebels, not the fucking senators. And I
think that's like a because I've been I've been seeing
there's been I've been seeing some small attempts to like
recuperate mon Moth. But from this, it's like, no, Mafa's
the only senator who backs the like go for it,
like we're we're carrying out this ray to see the
desk star plants, like she's the only one, right, And

(01:02:12):
I think there's this is this is like the fund
the actual fundamental break here is between these people. Is
it's like when when when the chips are down, are
you willing to fight and most of the sort of
like like liberal sort of like defecting noble leadership isn't
except for Mathma, and she's just so is like I

(01:02:35):
want to go down fighting, and.

Speaker 3 (01:02:38):
I'm going to go down swinging. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:02:39):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:02:40):
And that's the fundamental difference between like someone who politically
I don't like, like the Marquis Lafayet, like that motherfucker
went down swinging like he That man, at every single
point of his life was always funding an insurrection, was
always like I will take.

Speaker 3 (01:02:55):
Let's they're a punch. Let's they're a punch. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:02:57):
And then and it's like you can compare that to
like the German liber roles or like like the liberals
who when Pinochet like takes power, were like, yeah, when
Pinochet called them all to like report to like have
meetings with the government, they all went, yeah, we're gonna
go report to like talk to the secret police. And
they all got like killed, right, And that's different between
those two things, And that I think is a really
really is a crucial political distinction to draw out is

(01:03:19):
like it's not even necessarily like your class background, it's
not even necessarily like what your politics are because a
lot of these people believe the same things. It's like
when the chips come down, will you fight or will
you try to surrender?

Speaker 3 (01:03:30):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (01:03:30):
And that's the only thing that I think I don't
know like that. That's to me, the best part of
and Or is like that. And I think that's the
part of it that's like being set up in this
episode that I love.

Speaker 2 (01:03:40):
The very last thing I'll say, because this has gone
on wait for quite a while, I'm sorry, is it
is like I was talking with a friend after we
watch these episodes, and we were talking about how this
show really, in the end is a call for internationalism.
Planets are stand ins for different countries and different cities, right,
and like they we aren't doing the full revolution on Corescant,

(01:04:02):
like the Center for Imperial Power, right, the Imperial Core.
There is some organization happening there, right, Like there is
people based out of there. There's networking, right, like Luten's
intel shop is there. But most of like the physical
arm struggle is on other planets. The first base for
the Alliance is built on yaff and four, but the
rebellion isn't initially like overthrowing the empire on Correscant though

(01:04:24):
through their interplanetary efforts, the whole galaxy gets liberated and
the seat of power can be seized, and that sort
of like galaxy wide cooperation mirroring like a worldwide cooperation
that we have like really like lost in the past
past few decades. Yeah, I think is one of I
think one of the points that that should be taken
away from from and or here.

Speaker 3 (01:04:45):
Yep, all right, well I think that's our episode. Yep,
bye everybody.

Speaker 2 (01:04:55):
It Could Happen Here is a production of cool Zone Media.

Speaker 3 (01:04:58):
For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website
Polsonmedia dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Speaker 2 (01:05:08):
You can now find sources for it Could Happen here
listed directly in episode descriptions. Thanks for listening.