Andor (Star Wars: Andor) - Disney+

[TangledThorns]

Ehhhh,.. OK I guess.

[Seto Kaiba]

16 hours ago, electric indigo said:

We get 4 blocks of 3 episodes each, with Tony Gilroy penning the first block, followed by Beau Willimon (Makina arch from S1), then Tony's brother Dan (Aldhani Heist from S1). The writer for the final episodes is Tom Bissell, who was not involved in TV writing much, but has a pretty colorful bio as an author & journalist.

So far, it's all sounding pretty good... breaking it up into mostly self-contained story arcs worked for the previous season, both the Gilroys and Willimon delivered solid writing in the previous season too.  IMO, the main concern is going to be leaving the all-important task of sticking the landing to Bissell.

I'd like to see a little less focus on Mon Mothma in the second season.  Genevieve O'Reilly's a very talented actress, but Mon Mothma only really seems to be in this story to be the incompetent figurehead that Stellan Skarsgard's Luthen Rael has to circumvent to Get Sh*t Done and occasionally rebuke when she starts in with her ivory tower pearl-clutching.  

[Big s]

I’m just hoping the person that did the first two and a half episodes on the last season lea bed a lesson. That’s really my biggest complaint about season one and kept most people from finishing the show 

[Bolt]

1 hour ago, Seto Kaiba said:

I'd like to see a little less focus on Mon Mothma in the second season. 

Not a bad idea. But she's a continuity asset that still working for them. IMO . So i expect to see her quite a bit. 

[TangledThorns]

7 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

 

I'd like to see a little less focus on Mon Mothma in the second season.  Genevieve O'Reilly's a very talented actress, but Mon Mothma only really seems to be in this story to be the incompetent figurehead that Stellan Skarsgard's Luthen Rael has to circumvent to Get Sh*t Done and occasionally rebuke when she starts in with her ivory tower pearl-clutching.  

 

I disagree and want to see more Mon Mothma. Especially for a pre-ROTJ series that can go into how the secret plans for the Death Star 2 was stolen. Having Luthen Rael involved would be an added bonus.

Mon Mothma doesn't use a blaster or lightsaber like many of the other characters in Star Wars film and series but that doesn't make her incompetent. It makes her more interesting as she has to do everything from the sidelines imho. 

 

[Big s]

1 hour ago, TangledThorns said:

I disagree and want to see more Mon Mothma. Especially for a pre-ROTJ series that can go into how the secret plans for the Death Star 2 was stolen.

I don’t think that’s gonna work for this show since Andor dies before the Death Star 1 gets destroyed 

[TangledThorns]

6 minutes ago, Big s said:

I don’t think that’s gonna work for this show since Andor dies before the Death Star 1 gets destroyed 

It would be another spin-off centered on Mon Mothma and Death Star 2 and not Andor so obviously its title would be different.

[Seto Kaiba]

3 hours ago, TangledThorns said:

I disagree and want to see more Mon Mothma. Especially for a pre-ROTJ series that can go into how the secret plans for the Death Star 2 was stolen. Having Luthen Rael involved would be an added bonus.

As others have noted, that's not going to be in-scope for Andor Season 2.  Cassian's story ends with his death on Scarif during the mission to steal the plans for the first Death Star.

I'm honestly not sure what she would have to do with the theft of the second Death Star's plans, since that was done by Bothan spies.

 

3 hours ago, TangledThorns said:

Mon Mothma doesn't use a blaster or lightsaber like many of the other characters in Star Wars film and series but that doesn't make her incompetent. It makes her more interesting as she has to do everything from the sidelines imho. 

An incompetent figurehead... that second word is important to my point.

Mon Mothma not using a blaster or a lightsaber isn't what makes her an incompetent figurehead.

What makes Mon Mothma an incompetent figurehead of the Rebellion is that, from what we see in Andor and Rogue One, her "leadership" is actively detrimental to the Rebellion's cause.  Luthen and other rebel leaders have to go behind her back to actually get anything done because she's so naive, sheltered, and out-of-touch with reality thanks to the ivory tower lifestyle she's lived as a senator that she's offended by the day-to-day necessities of running an effective resistance movement.  She wants to make a principled stand, but she doesn't seem to understand that most of the galaxy is too busy trying to make ends meet to have any interest in her high-minded ideals.  If the rebels had actually listened to Mon Mothma, the rebellion would've failed early on... either because they would never have grown their forces without needless Imperial cruelty like the post-Aldhani crackdown driving public discontent with the new order or because they'd have scattered their forces upon learning of the Death Star and been picked off one cell at a time instead of going on the Scarif raid that directly set off the events of the original trilogy.

Spoiler

When she finally did land herself in a position of actual power and authority, she dropped the ball hard. 

The New Republic she inaugurated proved to be so weak and so disorganized that the remains of the Empire quickly began undermining it from within and it was ultimately overthrown by a resurgent Imperial faction less than 30 years after its founding.  

What Luthen Rael understands, and Mon Mothma clearly doesn't, is that anger will motivate the normal workaday people of the galaxy to take up arms against the Empire where idealism never could.  The Rebellion is made up of people who are pissed.  The Empire has taken something from all of them, whether it's their livelihoods, their liberty, their loved ones, etc., and they're angry enough about it that they've decided the Empire has to go.  That's why Luthen goes around the galaxy acting as a go-between for the various cells of pissed-off people getting them to support each other despite varying priorities and alliegances and focusing their anger onto targets that will benefit the cause as a whole.

Mon Mothma's real role seems to be little more than being the Rebellion's token Senator, there to lend credibility to their stated goal as the Alliance to Restore the Republic and not just the Alliance to Burn the Empire Down.

[azrael]

I actually liked Mon Mothma's story in Andor. 'Said that early on. As much as Luthen is the lone-wolf person, he is behind-the-scenes. He has no political capital to spend to rally other cells behind the cause. The other cells will do what they want to do just as he does with his group. Eventually, the Rebellion would need a political figure-head that all Rebel cells eventually rally under. And that's Mon Mothma.

[Seto Kaiba]

2 hours ago, azrael said:

I actually liked Mon Mothma's story in Andor. 'Said that early on. As much as Luthen is the lone-wolf person, he is behind-the-scenes. He has no political capital to spend to rally other cells behind the cause. The other cells will do what they want to do just as he does with his group. Eventually, the Rebellion would need a political figure-head that all Rebel cells eventually rally under. And that's Mon Mothma.

As we saw in Luthen's visits to Saw Gererra, he doesn't need political capital to rally rebel cells to his cause.

He has the respect and trust of a bunch of rebel cells because he's out there providing them with intelligence, with money, and with the logistical support they need to continue the fight against the Empire.  He's able to get the infamously intractable Saw Gererra to agree to work with a rebel cell he's ideologically opposed to with minimal arm-twisting thanks to being respected as someone they can't do without.  That's more than any other rebel leader could claim, since all of the other rebel factions had failed to get Saw on-side as of Rogue One.

The Rebellion would eventually need a political leader, but that day is still a ways off as of Andor.  Her main contribution to Andor's story is screwing up.  She's supposed to be the rebellion's financial backer but she half-assed the money laundering, so her entire subplot is her trying to cover her arse before she gets audited and the Aldhani heist is green-lit because the rebels need alternate sources of funding because she dropped the ball.

If they're gonna do a story with Mon Mothma, do a story about Mon Mothma instead of just making her the rich idiot everyone else has to work around.

Edited Monday at 09:48 PM by Seto Kaiba

[Big s]

I’m ok with a minimal amount of Mon Mothra. It would be weird if she wasn’t in this upcoming season, but I don’t think her character needs a heavy focus beyond a bit here and there.

And I really hope they don’t do a spinoff series for her past either. Disney is really really bad at those and so far Andor might be the only exception.

I’d rather they finish Andor and try something new in the Starwars universe