Andor Season 2 eps 1-9
May. 11th, 2025 10:14 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
vaznettiTrue story: I thought this was a 9-episode season, and got to the end of the most recent episode and said, well, that was all a bit weak, as endings go. Luckily I have Spartacus watching with me to correct these issues.
The thing I absolutely adored, and think they hit it out of the park, was Syril's whole arc and especially his death. "Who are you?" and then being shot by the resistance guy, who Syril never cared about! Perfectly encapsulates his whole character and the journey he has failed to go on over the last two seasons. Loved it. I also loved that he sort of got cold feet about the whole thing, but I do feel that it was mostly because he realized that Dedra had been keeping him in the dark about what was really going on. Poor Syril, never as important as he wanted to be.
One thing that A pointed out to me today, that he said he hadn't seen much notice of, was that as far as the Ghorman massacre goes, Dedra and Luthen were both working toward the same end: a violent uprising that could justify bloody repression. Luthen makes no bones about being in the martyr business: he needs a sacrifice to get the Rebellion rolling, and Dedra is working within a structure that still thinks it needs an excuse to destroy a planet. I guess both of them are successful in the end, and neither of them care about the Ghormans themselves. I wonder if they will both make it out of the series alive? I know Cassian's mission was to kill her, but I would love for her ending to be an assignment on the Death Star itself.
I was not as moved by Mon Mothma's speech as other people seem to have been: for me the staging was better than the content. I did however love her arc this season so far, but most of all in the first three episodes. One thing I really liked there was the internal critique of Chandrilan culture: her attitude throughout was, why are my people even like this? I hear you, Mon Mothma. And yet at the same time, she knows she's going to go through with it, and I loved that at the end she threw herself into it, not because she had changed her mind about any of it, not because it was actually good in any meaningful sense of the word, but because at that moment she had nowhere else to go.
For me the main weakness this season so far has been Bix' storyline in the most recent 6 episodes. I liked what they were doing in the first three with the trauma she suffered from her torture, and how difficult it was for her to get over that, and I hated the way that played out in the next three. First she's very sad and can't do anything, so she starts taking drugs! Then she suddenly gets over everything after a really implausible sequence where she breaks into a top-secret Imperial facility, kills a guy, and just powerwalks out with explosions going off behind her. This is not a critique of the use of torture. And then, what is she even doing on Yavin? All we see her doing is playing house, and then deciding to leave so that she won't come between Cassian and the Rebellion -- but no sense that she has any desire to be involved herself. There were some interesting places to take Bix after the first three episodes which would have been about Bix and her own relationship to the Rebellion and to her own history of torture and survival, but sadly that's not what we got. And for me, because Bix and Cassian's storylines are so closely intertwined, it really weakens the whole season.
I like the idea that we are moving toward a unitary "The Rebellion" out of a set of disparate resistance movements, some more effective than others; I think this is what Cassian's arc is meant to be doing, as he seems to be zig-zagging between working for Luthen and for Draven, but so far this hasn't felt very clear to me. Especially as he still seems to have moments where he wants to ditch the whole thing and go live quietly somewhere, as in the last episode. I guess I feel like there is a plausible character arc about disillusionment, particularly after the Ghorman massacre (because Cassian knows for sure that Luthen set them up to fail), but I also feel like it could have been made more convincing so far.
I don't know, maybe I am being grumpy and picky. I like the bones of the thing more than the flesh, maybe. I hope the last three episodes pull it together for me.
The thing I absolutely adored, and think they hit it out of the park, was Syril's whole arc and especially his death. "Who are you?" and then being shot by the resistance guy, who Syril never cared about! Perfectly encapsulates his whole character and the journey he has failed to go on over the last two seasons. Loved it. I also loved that he sort of got cold feet about the whole thing, but I do feel that it was mostly because he realized that Dedra had been keeping him in the dark about what was really going on. Poor Syril, never as important as he wanted to be.
One thing that A pointed out to me today, that he said he hadn't seen much notice of, was that as far as the Ghorman massacre goes, Dedra and Luthen were both working toward the same end: a violent uprising that could justify bloody repression. Luthen makes no bones about being in the martyr business: he needs a sacrifice to get the Rebellion rolling, and Dedra is working within a structure that still thinks it needs an excuse to destroy a planet. I guess both of them are successful in the end, and neither of them care about the Ghormans themselves. I wonder if they will both make it out of the series alive? I know Cassian's mission was to kill her, but I would love for her ending to be an assignment on the Death Star itself.
I was not as moved by Mon Mothma's speech as other people seem to have been: for me the staging was better than the content. I did however love her arc this season so far, but most of all in the first three episodes. One thing I really liked there was the internal critique of Chandrilan culture: her attitude throughout was, why are my people even like this? I hear you, Mon Mothma. And yet at the same time, she knows she's going to go through with it, and I loved that at the end she threw herself into it, not because she had changed her mind about any of it, not because it was actually good in any meaningful sense of the word, but because at that moment she had nowhere else to go.
For me the main weakness this season so far has been Bix' storyline in the most recent 6 episodes. I liked what they were doing in the first three with the trauma she suffered from her torture, and how difficult it was for her to get over that, and I hated the way that played out in the next three. First she's very sad and can't do anything, so she starts taking drugs! Then she suddenly gets over everything after a really implausible sequence where she breaks into a top-secret Imperial facility, kills a guy, and just powerwalks out with explosions going off behind her. This is not a critique of the use of torture. And then, what is she even doing on Yavin? All we see her doing is playing house, and then deciding to leave so that she won't come between Cassian and the Rebellion -- but no sense that she has any desire to be involved herself. There were some interesting places to take Bix after the first three episodes which would have been about Bix and her own relationship to the Rebellion and to her own history of torture and survival, but sadly that's not what we got. And for me, because Bix and Cassian's storylines are so closely intertwined, it really weakens the whole season.
I like the idea that we are moving toward a unitary "The Rebellion" out of a set of disparate resistance movements, some more effective than others; I think this is what Cassian's arc is meant to be doing, as he seems to be zig-zagging between working for Luthen and for Draven, but so far this hasn't felt very clear to me. Especially as he still seems to have moments where he wants to ditch the whole thing and go live quietly somewhere, as in the last episode. I guess I feel like there is a plausible character arc about disillusionment, particularly after the Ghorman massacre (because Cassian knows for sure that Luthen set them up to fail), but I also feel like it could have been made more convincing so far.
I don't know, maybe I am being grumpy and picky. I like the bones of the thing more than the flesh, maybe. I hope the last three episodes pull it together for me.
no subject
Date: 2025-05-13 01:48 am (UTC)That said, it appears that the set designer has never been in a jungle, or even maybe a real forest: where were the screens on that bungalo in the woods? So much detail went into the sets in Ferrix and Ghorman, and this one just fell pretty flat. Also I want to know what they did about the giant person-eating boar monsters that we know are on Yavin IV...
no subject
Date: 2025-05-13 02:25 am (UTC)That said, it appears that the set designer has never been in a jungle, or even maybe a real forest: where were the screens on that bungalo in the woods?
Aha! I had not considered that, but I believe that my personal crack theory about biology in the GFFA will come to the rescue here. So you know how in general there are fewer female-appearing humans than male-appearing humans in SW? This is because (according to me) in that galaxy humans aren't mammals -- they're insects! So there are relatively few females compared to males or neuters, and they usually reproduce via eggs. This also explains what happened to Padme (unexpected twins and dying in childbirth), because physical obstetrics is a really, really niche specialty there.
So anyway, obviously they don't need to worry about screens because all the smaller insects are keeping their distance from the giant insects that have taken over that part of the planet.