Andor (Star Wars: Andor) - Disney+

[Dobber]

Ahh Wade I’ll never forget his face…

 

😜

Chris

[Chronocidal]

21 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

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I'm still largely without context for exactly how much money 80 million credits is... but it's clearly a lot since Cassian offers 15,000 for a used starship the doctor has, and he claims that's more than it's worth.  

 

Honestly, this sounds like it's falling pretty well in line with the credit value scale seen in ANH.  Han wanted 10k, and Luke countered you could almost get a ship for it, then I'm assuming the 2k came from Luke's speeder.

Not to make any overly-broad comparisons, but if you consider the difference in value between buying a car and buying an aircraft as a very rough factor of ten, that actually lines up pretty well.  It's not a great comparison, because you can't even pretend Luke's speeder was new, but who knows what the market was like on Tatooine.  

[Bolt]

Really enjoyed the latest episode. Good tension build up. 

Spoiler

We knew some were gonna die. So it goes. I wouldn't say everything went off so well, for obvious reasons. But I'm glad it was somewhat of a success. I was pleasantly surprised Andor quickly put a hole in the greedy talks a lot guy. Rather than some drawn out scuffle nonsense. 

Looking forward to seeing more.

[sh9000]

 

 

[derex3592]

Great episode!

[MikeRoz]

The episode was good.

But one thing I really appreciate about it was the TIE fighter hangar. They didn't have fold-up wings (which weren't canon prior to Disney), they hadn't been landed on their solar panels (also not canon prior to Disney), they didn't invent some new third landing method with super-long landing gear. They were held in a rack and dropped into flight, as they were always meant to. Bravo!

[derex3592]

Agreed! The Tie sequence was LIT! 

[Mog]

Nah, you mean:  the TIE’s got lit up.

Spoiler

Blown to hell by Eye chunks.

 

[sh9000]

12 hours ago, derex3592 said:

Agreed! The Tie sequence was LIT! 

Agreed.

[sh9000]

 

[Roy Focker]

Time jump towards the end of the episode and another possible time jump between this and the next episode.

[Seto Kaiba]

OK... "Announcement".

 

Spoiler

Why is it that the universal cinematic shorthand for "this character is depressed" is sitting alone in the dark?  I know several people who are grappling with depression, and I don't think I've ever once caught them sitting alone and perfectly still in the dark staring into space while otherwise immaculately groomed and neatly dressed.

We open on Syril Karn still living with his overly judgemental mum on Morlana One as the news reports the rebel raid on the Aldhani garrison.

Over at the Imperial Security Bureau, Lt. Meero does a dressing up montage while someone (the bureau's director?) gives a speech about the ISB's retaliation for the raid on Aldhani including tax penalties on sectors found to harbor rebels, revocation of local holidays used as cover for rebel activities even unknowingly, and re-sentencing of any criminals whose crimes affected the Imperial government in any way as what is clearly an equivalent to a top-level felony.

Lt. Meero, meanwhile, is busy being dangerously genre savvy AND dropping the episode title.  She's clever enough to deduce that treating the incident like a robbery is the wrong move entirely and that it needs to be treated like a declaration of intent from the nascent Rebellion.  Shame she's not also smart enough to realize the crackdowns being put into place are going to put more people into the rebel's camp sooner rather than later.

On Coruscant, Mon Mothma pays a visit to Luthen as he's listening to the reports from Aldhani.  (Can I just say I really like the design of her limo?  It's a very cool but very understated retrofuturistic design.)  She confronts him about the Aldhani raid without even waiting to get properly out of earshot of her obvious Imperial minder.  She's VERY upset with him.  Luthen is very upset with her by the same token, as she's chickening out from the actual goal of building his "network" of rebels.  Luthen is clearly a bit more savvy than she is, with regards to what it'll take for them to motivate an actual resistance against the Empire.

Syril Karn is interviewing for a government job with the Imperial government bureau managing standards... which, as someone who's seen a LOT of cube farms both private and government, is one of the nicest office spaces I think I've ever laid eyes on.  Little in the way of privacy with such an open concept floorplan, but damned pretty to look at.  It's interesting how utterly unbothered his superior seems to be about his reason for being discharged.

 

Oh boy, more purposeful dramatic walking!  I swear this director either has a foot fetish or does crossfit for the amount of time we have to watch characters purposefully walking to nowhere in particular.  

 

Poor Lt. Meero.  She walks in on some goofball sleeping on the job and gets the full Sir! Maam! Sir! treatment like this is Police Academy.  She's clearly still barking up the right tree for the wrong reasons and is asking said goofball to produce a huge amount of archival records regarding stolen or reported-missing military materiel over two years.  

On Aldhani, Cinta's unpacking something... a bike?... when she sees a lovingly rendered shot of a Star Destroyer sailing overhead at low altitude.  Not sure how something that big sneaks up on a person, TBH.  It's a bit like looking up and failing to notice someone's suspended a few city blocks over your head.  Back on somewhere, the lady doing all that dramatic walking meets with Vel who's now done up to look like a proper urbanite and she's complaining Luthen didn't come to meet her in person.  She tasks Vel with assassinating Cassian... Cassian who is back on Ferrix walking dramatically!  He went home, apparently.  He's come home to convince his mom to leave Ferrix and move somewhere nicer.  Wow, that's the first thing he's done that makes me think of Cassian as not a complete jerk.  His mom is acting VERY strange, though.

Mon Mothma's trying to bring an old banker friend in on her rebel activity, and doing a really roundabout way of it.  She's disguising her financial support for the rebellion as another charitable outreach program and wants to keep her idiot husband in the dark about it.

Cassian's doing parkour now?  Oh boy, he's stopped to reminisce with the girl whose dumbass boyfriend tried to turn Cassian in and got shot for his trouble.  Now Cassian's facing a rather reasonable scolding about how his killing two corporate mooks and hiding out at home was a bad idea, and how him coming back is likely to get him turned in by basically anyone who's angry about it.  He apparently came to find out how Luthen knew all about him, and in another oddly non-arsehole move, to leave enough money to pay off all of his outstanding debts before leaving town for good.  We get a flashback to Cassian watching the Imperials gun down some friend of his for trying to stop some agitators who were protesting the switch from Republic to Empire.  Cassian's mom refuses to leave town, and is apparently planning to join the Rebellion.  

... I have to admit, this is somewhat unexpected.  From the movies, I'm very used to seeing Imperials be starcharse sticklers for rules and Bad Boss types.  Major Partagaz is an exceedingly rare evil-aligned Reasonable Authority Figure.  He not only backs Lt. Meero's overreach because it produced actual verifiable results that point to a network of rebel activity, he subtly encourages the other agents to be more proactive about chasing leads AND admonishes the style-over-substance approach Blevin is taking.  He even shows concern for her because of the enemy she's just made.  

Cassian's apparently living on some nice sunny resort planet or something now with an obnoxious girlfriend under the alias "Keef".  He seems pretty annoyed by the Imperial presence there, with stormtroopers on the streets and droids flying around.  Oh hey, it's K-2SO or another droid of the same type.  Wow, OK yeah the Imperials are a bit sloppy with their programming.  Cassian gets strangled in a single armlift by an overly literal droid.  Ironically, he gets arrested and sentenced to six years in prison accidentally... for nothing more than walking on the beach.  Syril Karn is in his own ironic hell, flying a cubicle in the standards bureau at the episode's end while out-of-tune muzak plays.

 

As a build-up to the rest of the series goes, this one's a bit hit and miss for me.  

I'd wager Roy's right that we're in for another timeskip... likely to right around the time...

Spoiler

... Cassian gets done serving his six year prison term for a crime he didn't commit, rather than all the ones he actually did.

Talk about laser-guided karma, committing the biggest, most talked-about crime in the galaxy at the time and getting arrested and sentenced to prison on a false charge after making a clean getaway and assuming a new identity.

I guess that'll explain why the rebellion didn't...

Spoiler

... assassinate him for knowing about Luthen...

... then, since he would have been out of reach.

[azrael]

6 hours ago, Roy Focker said:

Time jump towards the end of the episode and another possible time jump between this and the next episode.

Spoiler

Unless he gets broken out...

Ah...

Spoiler

‘Andor’: Tony Gilroy Reveals Story Plans for Time-Jumping Season 2

Season 1 covers 1 year. Season 2 covers 4 years.

 

[Duke Togo]

Imagine if they had a talented writer (like Tony Gilroy) crafting the political machinations in the prequels? This show is frigging gold.

[sh9000]

Nice buildup of tension in this episode.  Looking forward to episode 8.

[Seto Kaiba]

7 minutes ago, Duke Togo said:

Imagine if they had a talented writer (like Tony Gilroy) crafting the political machinations in the prequels?

On the one hand, we'd have dialog that doesn't sound it like was penned by a writer who was only just starting to come down from a heavy dose of dental anesthetic.

On the other hand, 15-20% of each movie would be protracted multi-cut sequences of the characters purposefully yet silently walking everywhere like they forgot their space bus passes and don't have enough credits for cab fare.

[jvmacross]

Lots of "fanservice" on episode 7....and starting to think the Emperor may actually make yet another appearance on a Star Wars series...plus I could even see Thrawn showing up too...joining the rest of his white jacket wearing buddies

[TehPW]

Seto, Lt. Meero isn't dumb: She actually said that the ISB countermeasures will cause more people to opposite, to that effect.

[jvmacross]

So the Empire is so mired in red-tape that their wanted criminal was captured but they don't know it? And won't know it for 6 years?

[Seto Kaiba]

1 hour ago, TehPW said:

Seto, Lt. Meero isn't dumb: She actually said that the ISB countermeasures will cause more people to opposite, to that effect.

Oh, I haven't said she's dumb... I've been saying from the beginning that she's sharp.

Meero's problem, until now, was that she was right for the wrong reasons.  She was drawing incorrect inferences from reports on things Cassian did and using those as evidence of a pattern of coordinated rebel activity that did exist, but wasn't actually related to the cases she was investigating.

The irony in Meero's stance in this latest episode now that she's been vindicated is that she seems to think the Imperial response is insufficiently harsh, because they're treating the Aldhani incident ONLY as a robbery and not as a statement of intent from the rebels.  (She's arguably wrong about that as well, sinc it was a needs-must-as-the-devil-drives sort of situation where the rebels just needed the money.)

[Big s]

This episode was back to a slowdown. It wasn’t bad, but I feel like the tension would’ve been better if it wasn’t such a comedic episode. 

Spoiler

I kinda doubt he’ll be locked away for six years. If he was I think there’d be problems with him leaving his stash on top of the shower for that long. I almost have a feeling that the one who’s supposed to assassinate him will probably just break him out

 

[MikeRoz]

Spoiler

Does Luthen know about the kill order on Andor?

 

[Seto Kaiba]

... I just realized it can't do a lengthy timeskip.  The series started with not quite five years before Cassian's supposed to die in Rogue One.  He can't serve a six year prison term unless he's actually two people,.

[M'Kyuun]

Enjoying the show so far- def well written, especially dialog, and the acting is on point.  Not without its faults, but what is? Andor makes for a good anti-hero- given his lack of hesitation to kill even allies as we see him do in Rogue One, I was surprised that he hesitated so long to shoot the corporate Pre-Mor security dude. He didn't hesitate at all to shoot Skeen, though. That change of heart, or rather the sudden evidence of having one, also seems a bit out of character for the self-involved Andor for whom a take the money and run philosophy seems to be a lifestyle. Alas, chock it up to character development. I guess they want to show him manifesting at least a little humanity so that he's not so unlikeable.

Since Andor is set only five years prior to A New Hope, it seems a very short period for the scope and scale we see the Rebellion by that point- so many people, lots of spacecraft (and financing), a well-established leadership core, extraordinary organization, and any number of secret bases. It seems nigh impossible for such a large organization to have been established so fully, and so fully equipped, under the radar of a galaxy-wide Empire so bent on occupation, intelligence, and repression. I enjoy seeing the machinations of Luthen, Mon Mothma (who's being fleshed out nicely as her role expands), Vel & her band, and Andor himself as they are essentially taking the baby steps necessary to establish the far larger and far, far more powerful Rebellion we see in the OT. It just seems to me that five years, at least five Earth years, is an incredibly dubious amount of time in which a fledgling rag-tag Rebellion we see in Andor becomes the sprawling Rebellion we see in New Hope. I would have expected at minimum twenty or more years at least to reach the stage we see in New Hope, but I guess we'll see how it plays out.

[Mog]

I just chalk up Andor’s killing of Skeen to he’s already got a murder rap sheet tied to him, he had all that crazy stuff happen when he escaped the Corpos, and he just stole a crapload from the Imperials.

So, adding Luthen to that list of people that want him dead probably wouldn’t be the best idea.  Why add even more “heat” to yourself?  Especially since Luthen already knows a ton about him.  And gave that kyber crystal as a safety deposit.

Add in that Skeen isn’t exactly someone you could trust and already lied to your face once, and it makes sense why Andor pulled the trigger on the dude.

Edited October 24, 2022 by Mog

[Seto Kaiba]

On 10/24/2022 at 5:36 PM, M'Kyuun said:

Andor makes for a good anti-hero- given his lack of hesitation to kill even allies as we see him do in Rogue One, I was surprised that he hesitated so long to shoot the corporate Pre-Mor security dude. He didn't hesitate at all to shoot Skeen, though. That change of heart, or rather the sudden evidence of having one, also seems a bit out of character for the self-involved Andor for whom a take the money and run philosophy seems to be a lifestyle. Alas, chock it up to character development.

Cassian in Rogue One is someone who's spent, apparently, years working in Rebel Intelligence doing all kinds of unpleasant things in the fight against the Empire.

At the start of Andor, Cassian is just a civilian ex-con with an active dislike of the Empire who's being held up by a pair of crooked cops.  He didn't come to Morlana One looking for a fight, and he certainly wasn't naive enough to think he'd be let off with a boys-will-be-boys after accidentally killing the first cop even if it was in self-defense.  He clearly hesitates to kill an unarmed man begging for his life, and in the end it's his sense of self-preservation that wins out because his options are to leave a witness who'd ID him and probably go to jail on a murder charge despite the killing being accidental or kill the witness and hope to slip through the cracks of Preox-Morlana's hopelessly inept justice system.  

Skeen... well... Skeen's a piece of **** and Cassian is clearly disgusted by him.  For all his fuss and noise about being a mercenary only in it for the money Cassian is clearly deeply and profoundly disgusted by Skeen's willingness to betray the "true believer" Rebels who survived the operation on Aldhani.  That, I think, more than even the risk that Skeen might identify them if caught by the Empire with 40 million credits in stolen Imperial payroll drove him to gun Skeen down before he could betray them (or him).  

Gunning down the informant who brought him the information about the cargo pilot in Rogue One... well... aren't the Imperials big believers in torture as a method of interrogation and apparently just for fun?  They tortured Leia offscreen in A New Hope as part of an interrogation and they torture Han and Chewie in Empire seemingly just because they can... so one can imagine Cassian's informant would be in for a REAL bad time if he fell into Imperial hands and was exposed as a Rebel intelligence informant.  Giving him a quick and relatively painless death rather than leaving him to be captured and tortured was arguably an act of kindness from someone who knows only too well what the Imperials are like.

[Big s]

Not a bad episode this week. Seems the pattern is two filler episodes for every big episode. As fillers go this set is definitely better than the first set

[sh9000]

On 10/24/2022 at 2:36 PM, M'Kyuun said:

Enjoying the show so far- def well written, especially dialog, and the acting is on point.  Not without its faults, but what is? Andor makes for a good anti-hero- given his lack of hesitation to kill even allies as we see him do in Rogue One, I was surprised that he hesitated so long to shoot the corporate Pre-Mor security dude. He didn't hesitate at all to shoot Skeen, though. That change of heart, or rather the sudden evidence of having one, also seems a bit out of character for the self-involved Andor for whom a take the money and run philosophy seems to be a lifestyle. Alas, chock it up to character development. I guess they want to show him manifesting at least a little humanity so that he's not so unlikeable.

Agreed @M'Kyuun.

[Duke Togo]

2 hours ago, Big s said:

Not a bad episode this week. Seems the pattern is two filler episodes for every big episode. As fillers go this set is definitely better than the first set

There are no filler episodes in this show. 

[Seto Kaiba]

Like Sith Lords, there are exactly two filler episodes in Andor... and they are episodes 1 and 2.  There's maybe five minutes actual plot-relevant goings-on at the very start of the first episode and nothing remotely important, interesting, or plot-relevant happens again until episode 3.  Cassian just goes on a walking tour of the dingy industrial town he lives in and keeps bumping into "colorful" undeveloped stock character locals.

Aaaaaaaanyway, on to Season 1 Episode 8 "Narkina 5".

Spoiler

According to the subtitles, the Stormtroopers in the sand-colored armor are "Shore Troopers".  That is... ... ... that feels like something they're doing specifically so they can sell a slightly redeco'd Stormtrooper figure to fans under a new name.  They're also kind of arseholes who abuse the prisoners under their watch seemingly for no reason.

Poor Syril Karn is hard at work in his new soul-crushing cube farm government job when two Imperial officers show up looking for him.  I actually feel worse for him than I do for Cassian.  The poor bastard is visibly twitching nervously in an all-white interrogation room and looking very much like he'd like to cry.  Apparently Lt. Meero was planning to have him brought in as part of her investigation but had to bump him up the queue because he's been abusing his new position to look for Cassian.  He rather guiltily admits that he's actually filed even more false inquiries about Cassian than she listed, which is just so HIM.  He is apparently VERY angry about the whole thing with Cassian and doesn't mind even a bit of backtalk to the ISB about it.  I have a feeling this is it.  This is how Karn makes the transition from a former corporate security officer to an ISB agent.

Cassian, meanwhile, is arriving via prison transport at some kind of formation of Imperial bases that look to extend below the surface of an ocean or lake on a moon that I'd assume is "Narkina 5".

Lt. Meero is once again proving to be dangerously sharp (if a bit wrong genre-savvy).  She's figured out the existence, but not the identity, of Luthen and the network that he's been building across the galaxy and brought together enough evidence of a pattern that even the wrongheaded conclusion about Cassian apparently fits well enough that Maj. Partagaz is willing to go to bat for her to get funding and tools to start hunting him and Luthen.

Oh boy, Narkina 5 is home to an Imperial factory run by convict labor... and all the staff wear amazing day-glo orange moon boots!  I wonder if that's what they make.  The lead officer, who I assume is the warden or camp commandant, boasts about how humane the facility is compared to other Imperial prisons.  Apparently they've just electrified the floor of the entire place and everyone in the staff wears insulated boots?  

Back at the ISB, Syril Karn is outraged at Lt. Blevin's report of all things.  About how it fails to mention his superior's negligence (really his commonsense decision to sweep the evidence of an obvious criminal misadventure by his own officers under the rug), Andor's co-conspirators, etc.  Meero indicates he's free to go and she'll let his superiors know he's in the clear and was of service.  He tries to volunteer for service and gets shot down.  

Cassian's new prison digs are surprisingly clean and tidy.  The unit supervisor's surprisingly confrontational though.  Clearly there are some unpleasant consequences for them should their subordinates slip up.  It looks like they do something horrible to whatever team is least productive in any given room.  It's not clear what the hell they're making... it has a lot of joints, whatever it is.

Mon Mothma's apparently throwing a party to rustle up votes against the Emperor's latest policy changes.  Her husband is still kind of a turd, but he at least seems to be on board with her politics (sort of).  She tries to have a conversation with her banker friend but it keeps getting interrupted.  I'm really starting to wonder what the point of having her daughter show up and then immediately leave in every scene is.  They have a talk about some of the Emperor's vague rhetoric about public order.

Back on Narkana 5, Cassian gets asked about the new government crackdown that apparently extended everyone's sentences and apparently knows nothing about it.  He gets the grand tour of his cell, which is apparently exactly as humane as the commandant said it would be... though the electrified floor does kind of mean that he can afford to be, I guess.

... what is it with Star Wars and making random teenagers represent their entire planet in the galactic government?  Mon Mothma apparently got married at 15 and by 16 was the senator for her planet?

Maarva's apparently sick, had to be dragged away from the hotel where the Imperials have set up shop.  

Vel and Cinta are on Ferrix, apparently waiting for Wanted Criminal Cassian Andor to walk in the front door of his mum's house so they can kill him or something.  Apparently they're a couple too.

Luthen gets a call from the contact on Ferrix asking about Cassian's location, so apparently nobody knows he's actually in the slammer after getting arrested under a false name.  He shuts down the channel to Ferrix.

Cassian's going through a dehumanizing prison sentence still, and witnesses one of the inmates in his unit commit suicide on the electrified floor of their cell block.

The guy who runs the yard where the secret rebel transmitter is apparently got arrested.  The Imperials start asking after Bix, and she runs away.

Luthen's gone to somewhere called Segra Milo, which from the very familiar guy with the long rifle from Rogue One looks to be where Saw Gerrera's hiding out.  He's come to recruit Saw for something and is paying for it in equipment.  Saw refuses, and offers to buy the stolen equipment outright.  Apparently Lt. Meero wasn't kidding about how much missing hardware Steergard has been covering up.  Saw goes on a bit of a rant about the different ideological groups within the greater "rebel" banner and Luthen brands him an anarchist. 

Meero's apparently on Ferrix, having the shop owner tortured and is about to interrogate Bix, the obnoxious girl whose boyfriend got shot.

 

They're building a lot of tension in this one.  It's pretty clear the sh*t is about to hit the fan in a big way that will lead to further Imperial crackdowns and bring the Rebellion into actual armed opposition to the Empire.  Luthen, Saw Gerrera, the unseen Emperor Palpatine, and others are all pouring huge amounts of gasoline into the fire pit and we're just waiting for someone to strike a match.  There are some hints that suggest there might be a prison riot or something in Cassian's immediate future, while there's likely to be some overt and very bloody rebel activity on Ferrix soon.

[Big s]

2 hours ago, Duke Togo said:

There are no filler episodes in this show. 

Other than the filler episodes in this show.

I could’ve easily skipped most of the first couple episodes and the getting to know the robbers and the cereal stuff went on way too long. The last couple episodes weren’t so bad as far as filler though. More like light fluff rather than the waste of time that we’re those flashbacks 

[Duke Togo]

5 hours ago, Big s said:

I could’ve easily skipped most of the first couple episodes and the getting to know the robbers and the cereal stuff went on way too long. The last couple episodes weren’t so bad as far as filler though. More like light fluff rather than the waste of time that we’re those flashbacks 

You’re missing the entire point to the show. But, to each their own. 

[Big s]

1 hour ago, Duke Togo said:

You’re missing the entire point to the show. But, to each their own. 

I think the first couple episodes missed the entire point of the show. I’m glad I stuck with it though. Unfortunately a lot of people I know tried watching one or two episodes and gave up on it. I keep telling them it gets better, but it’s like the wandavision conversation all over again 

[M'Kyuun]

20 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Cassian in Rogue One is someone who's spent, apparently, years working in Rebel Intelligence doing all kinds of unpleasant things in the fight against the Empire.

At the start of Andor, Cassian is just a civilian ex-con with an active dislike of the Empire who's being held up by a pair of crooked cops.  He didn't come to Morlana One looking for a fight, and he certainly wasn't naive enough to think he'd be let off with a boys-will-be-boys after accidentally killing the first cop even if it was in self-defense.  He clearly hesitates to kill an unarmed man begging for his life, and in the end it's his sense of self-preservation that wins out because his options are to leave a witness who'd ID him and probably go to jail on a murder charge despite the killing being accidental or kill the witness and hope to slip through the cracks of Preox-Morlana's hopelessly inept justice system.  

Skeen... well... Skeen's a piece of **** and Cassian is clearly disgusted by him.  For all his fuss and noise about being a mercenary only in it for the money Cassian is clearly deeply and profoundly disgusted by Skeen's willingness to betray the "true believer" Rebels who survived the operation on Aldhani.  That, I think, more than even the risk that Skeen might identify them if caught by the Empire with 40 million credits in stolen Imperial payroll drove him to gun Skeen down before he could betray them (or him).  

Gunning down the informant who brought him the information about the cargo pilot in Rogue One... well... aren't the Imperials big believers in torture as a method of interrogation and apparently just for fun?  They tortured Leia offscreen in A New Hope as part of an interrogation and they torture Han and Chewie in Empire seemingly just because they can... so one can imagine Cassian's informant would be in for a REAL bad time if he fell into Imperial hands and was exposed as a Rebel intelligence informant.  Giving him a quick and relatively painless death rather than leaving him to be captured and tortured was arguably an act of kindness from someone who knows only too well what the Imperials are like.

Good points and very likely closer to what the writers had in mind for the character. To me, though, Andor comes off as a very self-involved person. However, he's not without feelings; he clearly loves his surrogate mother, Maarva, whose surname he's even taken as his own. He has an affinity for Bix, and for the droid B2EMO. He wants to find his sister and is willing to put himself in considerable danger to that end, so again a demonstration of emotion beyond pure selfishness. But he's not above using people to get what he wants, and all too often the mercenary side of his personality takes precedence over his humanity, as it were. That was my perception; that he's become exceptionally hardened, and little matters beyond saving his own skin and accomplishing his own ends, regardless of who he has to lie to, steal from, injure or kill to accomplish his goal. But, there's no love of the Empire in him, and I think they give him a sense of admiring those who would fight against it, making him an ideal candidate to do the fledgling Rebellion's dirty work, as he hasn't as many scruples as some in the Rebellion. 

& yeah, Skeen was a POS, but honestly, I wouldn't have batted an eye if Cassian had taken him up on the offer and later blasted him, or maybe had a change of heart and attempted to make amends to Vel. As I said, I think there was a grudging admiration for what Vel's party had been through individually and what they were attempting at grave risk of being captured or killed by the Empire. He def took a shine to Karis, whose death I hope we'll see affecting him as the show continues. 

[Mog]

Don’t forget that he did pay back his debts to his Ferrix buddies/associates.

So, he’s not a complete arsehole.