Andor (Star Wars: Andor) - Disney+

[Seto Kaiba]

Climaxes don't come much more explosive than "One Way Out".

I'm half tempted to check that my eyebrows are still on.

Spoiler

The episode opens on the deceased worker from the previous episode being wheeled out by the medic while the entire room watches.  Cassian makes an appeal to his shift leader that they need to make an escape attempt during the next shift when a replacement is brought down.  He makes a compelling case that a riot is all but inevitable with five thousand prisoners discovering that there is no actual parole... just transfer to another prison work camp.

It's interesting to note that Cassian implies the workers don't know what they're building any more than the audience does.

Cassian spills the beans to the entire shift, and Kino backs him up about what they've been told regarding never actually releasing prisoners.  

At the ISB, the coverup of their interrogation of the Rebel agent and his subsequent murder proceeds apace as they discuss ways to keep the Rebels from figuring out that they already know about the attack his group was being planned.  One agent suggests having the ISB launch an investigation of the coverup they just executed to make the coverup look more genuine.

Over on Ferrix, someone escorts a doctor to Maarva's place.

Mon Mothma's had a visit from the dodgy moneylender.  They spent a bit of time beating about the bush before getting down to the price he's demanding in exchange for his services covering up the princely sum of money Mon Mothma transferred to the Rebellion and providing back channels to continue funding the Rebels without attracting any undue scrutiny from the Empire.  The deal falls through when his fee essentially ends up being an arranged marriage meeting between Mon Mothma's obnoxious daughter and his (I'd assume equally scummy) son.  

Luthen apparently needs to meet with an agent that demands a face-to-face meeting with him... the first in a year.  They discuss that it's probably a trap.

Down in the prison, Cassian's room are psyching themselves up for their jailbreak.  Cassian's in the loo, tinkering with some kind of conduit, sawing at it like he was doing in previous episodes.  Turns out it's a water pipe for the loo.  He puts his back into breaking that pipe as the guards bring the new guy in.  The men in the room stage a fight to distract the guards, which allows Cassian to jam the lift and start the attack.  The guards open fire on the prisoners, killing severa, while Cassian climbs and the rest begin to throw parts at the guards.  The guards shout for the floor to be activated, and the prisoners get on the tables as the leak in the bathroom spreads.  The floor shorts out, and one or two prisoners who were still on it die.  The entire room goes dark with a power failure.  Cassian knocks one guard down and shoots another with the gun he steals, before taking down the supervisor and allowing prisoners access to the guard-only levels of the facility.  

Water starts to drip through the floor into the levels below as Kino and co. hand out guns to the prisoners and the revolt picks up speed.  Other rooms see the 5-2-D day shift breaking through guard station after guard station.

Just as the guards are starting to finally get their heads in the game, Kino and Cassian reach the central control station.  They gun down one of the guards to show they mean business, and the floors are deactivated on their demands.  They shut off the hydroelectric power station that drives the prison, and the whole place goes offline and switches to backup power.  Cassian exhorts Kino into announcing to the entire prison that the prisoners have taken the facility and are staging a mass breakout.  The prisoners swarm out of the prison chanting "One way out!".  There's a shot of anxious guards hiding in a closet to avoid being massacred by the prisoners as the prisoners make it to the loading gates and start jumping off into the water to swim for shore.

On Coruscant, the ginger gofer from the ISB is walking around some vaguely cyberpunky markets looking out of place, heading deeper and deeper into grungy, dimly lit corridors.  He finds an earpiece in the elevator, and Luthen calls him and congratulates him on the birth of his daughter.  The ISB agent warns Luthen about Axis and the suspicions of Lt. Meero.  Luthen is pleased at the news, and claims Meero is wasting her time.  He also warns Luthen about the captured pilot and the coverup.  Luthen decides to let Kreegyr's 50 men die rather than forfeit the man who appears to be his inside man in the ISB.  The agent wants out, he's had second thoughts now that he's a father, and after six years he's terrified to go on.  Luthen shoots down the excuse he was planning to use to quit the ISB.  He asks what Luthen sacrifices to keep going... and Luthen goes on a rant about everything he can't have because he's devoted his life to the Rebellion and has spent fifteen years building the Rebellion up.

Back on Narkina 5, we see Cassian and one other prisoner running down the beach away from ships with searchlights.

Now that is some damn fine writing and acting on display.

If they'd had that level of talent on display in the sequel trilogy then movies 7, 8, and 9 would've made roughly all the money.

This is headed towards displacing Rogue One as my all-time best Star Wars title.

[Mog]

So, we saw the Attack of the Melshi, Revenge of the Melshi, and A New Hope (for Melshi) all rolled into one.

But back to THAT scene,

Spoiler

Lonni had every right to ask that question, but Luthen absolutely delivers a monster of a speech:

Still don't completely agree with the way he does things, but the imagery he used, the phrases he utters. . . . I can understand where Luthen's coming from.

 

[azrael]

Good episode. But spending 2 episodes again to build up to this does feel like a drag. Since this will probably be the only season of the 2 seasons where this happens is fine.

Spoiler

Luthen, another unsung hero of the Rebellion. We know he's gonna die. He knows he's gonna die. But it's all for the cause. Guess that makes him the most dangerous.

 

[Mog]

I don’t think we can call

Spoiler

Luthen an “unsung hero.”  

A necessary evil?  The guy that’s not afraid to get his hands filthy dirty.  The guy that will act like the Empire and adopt their unscrupulous tactics to take down that same Empire?

Yes.  

But even he knows he’s no effin’ hero.  He’s done the mental calculus and accepts he has to act “evil” to take the Empire down.  

He’s basically Saw Gerrera but without the external war scars.

 

[Seto Kaiba]

1 hour ago, azrael said:

Good episode. But spending 2 episodes again to build up to this does feel like a drag. Since this will probably be the only season of the 2 seasons where this happens is fine.

  Hide contents

Luthen, another unsung hero of the Rebellion. We know he's gonna die. He knows he's gonna die. But it's all for the cause. Guess that makes him the most dangerous.

Eh, I dunno... taking two episodes to build up to it gave them some time to focus on the other story arcs they've been building in the background.

Sprinking brief segments of Cassian's time in the Imperial labor camp among those other stories allowed them to depict the dehumanizing conditions and sheer soul-crushing monotony of his time there without bogging down in it.

As to Luthen, I'm confused as to how it was Mon Mothma and not Luthen who ended up the leader of the Rebel Alliance.

Spoiler

To me, Luthen Rael seems to be the one doing all of the actual work.  He's the one who's traveling all over the galaxy in secret, setting up Rebel cells, coordinating between all the different factions, managing intelligence assets, coordinating logistics, and now even scaring up financial support for the fledgling Rebellion. 

Mon Mothma just seems to be borderline irrelevant to the movement at this point.  She sits in the Senate and gives dull little speeches nobody listens to, she attends the dull parties at the embassy at which she makes small talk with people she hates, she argues with her husband she also seems to loathe, and she maybe gave the Rebellion some money once.  Now that Luthen's people have stolen a sum 200 times the size of Mon Mothma's contribution from an Imperial base, her subplot feels like it shifted focus from a mission-critical effort to secure funding for the Rebellion to just covering her own arse.

 

[Mog]

You don’t want a guy like Luthen being the face of your Rebellion.  He’s better behind the scenes.

Mon Mothma’s the figurehead.  The one that gives the inspiring speeches and the one you put in front of the troops to remind them of the “greater good” they’re fighting for.

One’s the Saint, and the other is the Sinner.

[azrael]

5 hours ago, Mog said:

I don’t think we can call

  Hide contents

Luthen an “unsung hero.”  

A necessary evil?  The guy that’s not afraid to get his hands filthy dirty.  The guy that will act like the Empire and adopt their unscrupulous tactics to take down that same Empire?

Yes.  

But even he knows he’s no effin’ hero.  He’s done the mental calculus and accepts he has to act “evil” to take the Empire down.  

He’s basically Saw Gerrera but without the external war scars.

Without...

Spoiler

people like Luthen, the Rebellion might not have built up the resources or the boldness to tackle the Empire. He doesn't see himself as a hero and sees himself as a necessary evil but the without people like him who laid the foundation, there might not have been a Rebellion. Yes he stared into the abyss and became the monster but does it may his reasons any less just?

 

4 hours ago, Mog said:

You don’t want a guy like Luthen being the face of your Rebellion.  He’s better behind the scenes.

Mon Mothma’s the figurehead.  The one that gives the inspiring speeches and the one you put in front of the troops to remind them of the “greater good” they’re fighting for.

One’s the Saint, and the other is the Sinner.

Correct.

[Big s]

8 hours ago, Mog said:

You don’t want a guy like Luthen being the face of your Rebellion.  He’s better behind the scenes.

Mon Mothma’s the figurehead.  The one that gives the inspiring speeches and the one you put in front of the troops to remind them of the “greater good” they’re fighting for.

One’s the Saint, and the other is the Sinner.

Definitely agree here.
As far as the next episodes, there’s a possibility that the word gets out about what was going on that may push normal citizens toward forming the rebels.

Spoiler

The guy that escaped with Andor is also in Rogue one. And I sure hope someone helped the shift leader, but I get the feeling he didn’t make it. Be responsible parents and teach your kids how to swim, you never know if they’re gonna need to escape a prison.

as far as the lenders son, I almost get the feeling he either won’t be someone to worry about or a character that has been seen before.

that speech was strong, but sort of felt over written like something out of an anime. But it got the job done.

Overall it was a good episode, hope the next couple episodes don’t lose the momentum.

[Roy Focker]

In the movies the rebels vs the empire is clear battle of good vs evil. It is a world of fantasy. In our actual reality even our so called good governments engage in questionable activities and have policies that are unjust.

Andor presents a more realistic view of things. An Empire that isn't (at first) in your face evil. It is like many of our own totalitarian regimes accepted by their populace even when they all know their regimes are silently suppressing others.  Rebels like Luthen and Saw aren't noble saints. Their actions is pretty much terrorism. Even if it is for a just cause.

Empire and Rebels are all just shades of gray.  The steps they take against eachother causes them to move up and down the shades.  Luthen's heist causes the Empire to suppress even more people. Moving them to a darker shade.

Mon Mothma represents the lightest gray that the Rebels will become by the time of Rogue One. In that movie Saw and the Rebels are at odds because he's still runs his group like a terrorist. While the Rebels act like the "good guys" even though Rebel intelligence is still giving assassination missions to agents like Andor.

Luke's arrival creates a world of absolute good vs evil or Rebellion has gotten even better at hiding the shady things they do. Unlike the Empire who doesn't bother hiding it anymore. I like to think Andor as an alternative universe.  I have a hard time accepting it is actually part of the same family friend fantasy universe of everything else.

[jvmacross]

1 hour ago, Roy Focker said:

I like to think Andor as an alternative universe.  I have a hard time accepting it is actually part of the same family friend fantasy universe of everything else.

It's the same universe, but the pure evil gets washed out by the teddy bears and talking amphibians that take up a lot of the screentime....You still get pure evil in the movies.....the Lars getting burned alive...a populated planet blown to smithereens just to test the firepower of the Death Star....genocide on the levels seen in Star Wars is hardly family friendly....it's just that the films hardly dwell on it...for obvious reasons...

Edited November 11, 2022 by jvmacross

[Seto Kaiba]

19 hours ago, Mog said:

You don’t want a guy like Luthen being the face of your Rebellion.  He’s better behind the scenes.

Mon Mothma’s the figurehead.  The one that gives the inspiring speeches and the one you put in front of the troops to remind them of the “greater good” they’re fighting for.

One’s the Saint, and the other is the Sinner.

Erm... well, I don't mean to sound rude, but I fear you may have missed what I was getting at.

To me, as an outsider to Star Wars fandom watching Andor, it makes no sense for Mon Mothma to somehow be seen as a major leader (if not THE leader) of the Rebellion.  Luthen Rael has been the one shouldering all of the actual risks and burdens of forming, funding, supplying, and coordinating a network of Rebel cells and agents to resist the Empire.  He, not Mon Mothma, is the one doing all of the actual leading.  For her part, Mon Mothma doesn't seem to have actually done anything for the Rebellion except cut them a large check sometime before the series started.  Her idea of rebellion seems to start and end at making pretty but ineffectual speeches to an empty Senate chamber as if that were somehow going to magically lead to a regime change.  When she talks to Luthen, she seems deeply offended by what actually rebelling against the Empire entails.

You say she's a figurehead... and I could agree with that if we were talking about the Senate.  She's a politician with no real power, authority, influence, or support.  In the Rebellion as we see it in Andor, she's not even that.  She's just a naive rich person whose relevance to the cause seemingly never extended any farther than her now-useless checkbook.  It's really bewildering why the Rebellion would want her even as a figurehead given how utterly uninspiring and devoid of support she was in the Senate.  The only way I could see her inspiring Rebel troops would be the way she inspires Luthen... listen to her, then do the opposite of what she says.

 

5 hours ago, Roy Focker said:

In the movies the rebels vs the empire is clear battle of good vs evil. It is a world of fantasy. In our actual reality even our so called good governments engage in questionable activities and have policies that are unjust.

Andor presents a more realistic view of things. An Empire that isn't (at first) in your face evil. It is like many of our own totalitarian regimes accepted by their populace even when they all know their regimes are silently suppressing others.  Rebels like Luthen and Saw aren't noble saints. Their actions is pretty much terrorism. Even if it is for a just cause.

That's the age old dichotomy... in practical terms, the difference between a "terrorist" and a "freedom fighter" often boils down to little more than which side the writer sympathizes with.  If you win, you're a freedom fighter.  If you lose, a terrorist.

 

5 hours ago, Roy Focker said:

Luke's arrival creates a world of absolute good vs evil or Rebellion has gotten even better at hiding the shady things they do. Unlike the Empire who doesn't bother hiding it anymore. I like to think Andor as an alternative universe.  I have a hard time accepting it is actually part of the same family friend fantasy universe of everything else.

For the audience, anyway.

There are some hints that there's a much darker side to the Rebellion in a few points like mentions of "Bothan spies" dying in large numbers to extract the information about the second Death Star.  The problem is the audience is seeing the Rebellion through Luke's story and he's pretty naive and innocent himself, and his attention is on his involvement in the cosmological struggle between Good and Evil being driven by the Force.  He's dealing with moral absolutes because his story is driven by a self-enforcing moral absolute that controls destiny itself (AKA "the Force").

[Mog]

56 minutes ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Erm... well, I don't mean to sound rude, but I fear you may have missed what I was getting at.

To me, as an outsider to Star Wars fandom watching Andor, it makes no sense for Mon Mothma to somehow be seen as a major leader (if not THE leader) of the Rebellion.  Luthen Rael has been the one shouldering all of the actual risks and burdens of forming, funding, supplying, and coordinating a network of Rebel cells and agents to resist the Empire.  He, not Mon Mothma, is the one doing all of the actual leading.  For her part, Mon Mothma doesn't seem to have actually done anything for the Rebellion except cut them a large check sometime before the series started.  Her idea of rebellion seems to start and end at making pretty but ineffectual speeches to an empty Senate chamber as if that were somehow going to magically lead to a regime change.  When she talks to Luthen, she seems deeply offended by what actually rebelling against the Empire entails.

You say she's a figurehead... and I could agree with that if we were talking about the Senate.  She's a politician with no real power, authority, influence, or support.  In the Rebellion as we see it in Andor, she's not even that.  She's just a naive rich person whose relevance to the cause seemingly never extended any farther than her now-useless checkbook.  It's really bewildering why the Rebellion would want her even as a figurehead given how utterly uninspiring and devoid of support she was in the Senate.  The only way I could see her inspiring Rebel troops would be the way she inspires Luthen... listen to her, then do the opposite of what she says.

 

Even in Rogue One, we see that the Rebellion’s leadership is scattered and can’t even agree on what to do.  

Mothma is clearly one of the leaders of this group, but not the only one.

I suspect she’ll have some growing from this Andor series to get to where she is even at Rogue One.  

But constantly railing against the Emperor’s policies, standing up in the Senate, and sticking your neck out that way is the type of ish that inspires people.  There’s way too many real life examples I could pull that follow this template.

To bring up another science fiction series, I’m reminded of a scene in DS9 where Kira kinda softly mocks Kai Winn.  Winn accurately calls out that during the Cardassian occupation, Kira and the resistance fighters had weapons to fight back;  all Winn had at her disposal to resist the Cardassians was her faith.

Yeah, the guys who supply the guns and weapons are important.  But those that inspire by their words and their impractical resistance are just as important.

[Big s]

Personally I think that events are going to start showing the dark side of the empire to the public. At that point people will probably see Mon Mothma as the one that has been calling out the injustice since the beginning. That and the fact that she’s forking over her money and willing to give up her posh lifestyle will probably the key to her being a leader. As the audience, we know she’s just a spoiled know nothing, but to the people in universe will see her as something more and she may grow into her role while on the run. Her caring for lower class people is also something that will probably become more genuine after seeing the struggles first hand. Luther may have criminal ad political connections in the background, but Mon Mothma has public political connections that will mean something to those that are supposed to be served by the senate 

[sh9000]

 

[Seto Kaiba]

3 hours ago, Mog said:

Even in Rogue One, we see that the Rebellion’s leadership is scattered and can’t even agree on what to do.  

Mothma is clearly one of the leaders of this group, but not the only one.

I suspect she’ll have some growing from this Andor series to get to where she is even at Rogue One.

True, though the other Rebel leaders at least have opinions.

About all that can be said for Mon Mothma in that scene is that she's physically present.  She contributes nothing to the discussion on either side and in the end refuses to take a position at all until someone else literally makes the decision for her.  In Andor, she doesn't get off the dime until Luthen basically cuts her out of the loop entirely by removing the need for her financial support and in Rogue One she refuses to participate in the debate at all and at the end of it declines to take any position unless the counsel is in unanimous agreement on it.  

That's not leadership.  That's not even being a figurehead.  That's just a refusal to actually make a decision.

 

3 hours ago, Mog said:

But constantly railing against the Emperor’s policies, standing up in the Senate, and sticking your neck out that way is the type of ish that inspires people.  There’s way too many real life examples I could pull that follow this template.

Eh... maybe, but then again maybe not.

As I understand it, at this point in the story the Senate is already a nearly powerless and functionally irrelevant body that has ceded almost all of its authority to the Emperor and his various representatives.  Mon Mothma's counting on her office and her (incorrect) belief that the Emperor needs the Senate in order to govern the galaxy to protect her, but she isn't doing anything particularly brave or useful.  She's not exactly delivering firebrand oratory about the evils of the Emperor here.  She's delivering a politely worded and unbearably dull formal critique of Imperial policy decisions to a handful of deaf ears in a mostly empty chamber.  That's not exactly daring.  You get the distinct impression the Emperor is probably quite happy to allow her to carry on because he knows her rhetoric is pretty much toothless.  She'll make a show of her indignation where nobody will see or care, and then quietly return to her embassy and do nothing.

The Emperor probably has her pegged as one of those classic politicians who's more interested in being seen to be concerned about an issue than actually working on a solution... and if so, he's only very slightly off the mark.

 

3 hours ago, Mog said:

To bring up another science fiction series, I’m reminded of a scene in DS9 where Kira kinda softly mocks Kai Winn.  Winn accurately calls out that during the Cardassian occupation, Kira and the resistance fighters had weapons to fight back;  all Winn had at her disposal to resist the Cardassians was her faith.

Yeah, the guys who supply the guns and weapons are important.  But those that inspire by their words and their impractical resistance are just as important.

You have to actually be engaging in some kind of resistance to inspire resistance.

Based on Andor and Rogue One, Mon Mothma's inspiring little besides Luthen Rael's next migraine.

[pengbuzz]

21 minutes ago, Seto Kaiba said:

You have to actually be engaging in some kind of resistance to inspire resistance.

Based on Andor and Rogue One, Mon Mothma's inspiring little besides Luthen Rael's next migraine.

ROFL!

[Mog]

3 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

You have to actually be engaging in some kind of resistance to inspire resistance.

Based on Andor and Rogue One, Mon Mothma's inspiring little besides Luthen Rael's next migraine.

As you yourself has said with Andor’s journey, give it time.

It’s still early in her journey, so we’ll see where it leads.

[azrael]

1 hour ago, Mog said:

As you yourself has said with Andor’s journey, give it time.

It’s still early in her journey, so we’ll see where it leads.

Judging by the events in Rebels and the events up to now, the full Ghorman massacre hasn't occurred yet nor has she made all the arrangements to speak out against the Emperor.

[Vepariga]

Every episode of Andor just makes me wish the rest of SW got the same level of care poured into it. The quality leap from say Obi Wan is night and day. 

Andor still shows me that sometimes SW can do things right. I'm still baffled that it took Andor of all characters to make this happen.

[Big s]

3 hours ago, Vepariga said:

Every episode of Andor just makes me wish the rest of SW got the same level of care poured into it. The quality leap from say Obi Wan is night and day. 

Andor still shows me that sometimes SW can do things right. I'm still baffled that it took Andor of all characters to make this happen.

The Obi show was the worst of the shows and I think worse than any of the movies. They should be ashamed of it. I think I’d rewatch last Jedi before I’d ever rewatch Obi 

[Mog]

I could probably watch the first two eps of Obi again.  But I’d leave by that first Poe stalling scene of TLJ.

Both are bad, but TLJ killed that whole trilogy.

[Big s]

1 hour ago, Mog said:

I could probably watch the first two eps of Obi again.  But I’d leave by that first Poe stalling scene of TLJ.

Both are bad, but TLJ killed that whole trilogy.

I don’t think I could stand those first two obi episodes. Those episodes ruined obi for me

[Seto Kaiba]

14 hours ago, Mog said:

As you yourself has said with Andor’s journey, give it time.

It’s still early in her journey, so we’ll see where it leads.

Fair enough, though the reason Mon Mothma's subplot stands out from the others in Andor is that it just feels directionless.

Luthen's raid on Aldhani essentially invalidated Mon Mothma's relevance to the story and her entire subplot thus far.  She started out a critical player in the story because Luthen's rebel network needed funding badly and she needed to bypass Imperial scrutiny of her finances in order to provide it.  The big win on Aldhani erased any need for Mon Mothma in the rebel big picture and left her subplot cartwheeling off towards irrelevance to the rest of the series as her focus drifts to covering up her previous involvement and then to that shady banker she dislikes.

Mon Mothma's subplot needs a good kick back in the direction of the main series before it becomes a Canto Bight level plot tumor.

[sh9000]

 

[MikeRoz]

11 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Fair enough, though the reason Mon Mothma's subplot stands out from the others in Andor is that it just feels directionless.

Luthen's raid on Aldhani essentially invalidated Mon Mothma's relevance to the story and her entire subplot thus far.  She started out a critical player in the story because Luthen's rebel network needed funding badly and she needed to bypass Imperial scrutiny of her finances in order to provide it.  The big win on Aldhani erased any need for Mon Mothma in the rebel big picture and left her subplot cartwheeling off towards irrelevance to the rest of the series as her focus drifts to covering up her previous involvement and then to that shady banker she dislikes.

Mon Mothma's subplot needs a good kick back in the direction of the main series before it becomes a Canto Bight level plot tumor.

It's not hard to imagine how we get from where we are now to her being the leader of the Rebellion. If you are some regular, non-psychotic Joe off the street that wants to join a galactic insurgency, are you going to join the one led by a terrorist shopkeep who wants you to be miserable (so you'll join his rebellion), or the Senator who very vocally opposed the Emperor's excesses? A political leader for a political movement. 

This could even be a feature rather than a bug. Imagine for a moment, one or two big happenings from now, Luthen finds that more and more of the network he painstakingly built over years prefers to answer to Mon rather than him. Is that not the sort of situation drama is made from?

Even if none of what I've suggested comes to fruition, she's still less of a waste of time than the rent-a-cop loser.

[Roy Focker]

5 hours ago, MikeRoz said:

If you are some regular, non-psychotic Joe off the street that wants to join a galactic insurgency, are you going to join the one led by a terrorist shopkeep who wants you to be miserable (so you'll join his rebellion), or the Senator who very vocally opposed the Emperor's excesses? A political leader for a political movement. 

Exactly. Mon Mothma brings a legitimacy to the cause. She represents the senate that Palpatine disbanded. 

[TehPW]

34 minutes ago, Roy Focker said:

Exactly. Mon Mothma brings a legitimacy to the cause. She represents the senate that Palpatine eventually disbands. 

Fixed it for you

[Seto Kaiba]

10 hours ago, MikeRoz said:

It's not hard to imagine how we get from where we are now to her being the leader of the Rebellion. If you are some regular, non-psychotic Joe off the street that wants to join a galactic insurgency, are you going to join the one led by a terrorist shopkeep who wants you to be miserable (so you'll join his rebellion), or the Senator who very vocally opposed the Emperor's excesses? A political leader for a political movement. 

When it comes to successful, or at least well-publicized, revolutions, rebellions, and general insurrections the journalists and the early historians tend to whitewash or overlook the character flaws in the rebel leadership in order to make them into larger-than-life heroic figures.  People don't join armed rebellions and revolutionary armies because they're full of noble, high-minded principles like Mon Mothma.  People take up arms against the government because they're afraid, they're angry, they want change, the politicians aren't getting the job done, and the people are done asking.  Revolutions happen because there's one or more agitators like Luthen Rael out there whipping that anger into outrage and directing that outrage to specific targets. 

When those agitators are people of relatively high social standing who are nevertheless willing to get their hands dirty and lead from the front, they becomes the "heroes" of that revolution and inspire others to join the cause even if their actions are kind of horrific.  People aren't put off by it because they're hurting "the bad guys".  Once the revolution ends and the new regime takes power, people look back at the revolutionary leaders without emotions running high and often realize they were not only not paragons of virtue but also often deeply flawed or even outright terrible people.  People like Luthen Rael or Leia Organa are the kind of people who cause an armed resistance to form around them through that natural charisma and because they lead from the front.

Highly principled but fundamentally passive people like Mon Mothma don't inspire people to join armed revolutions.  When they're charismatic, they inspire people to nonviolent resistance like Mahatma Ghandi, Martin Luther King Jr., Valclav Havel, etc.  When they're not (like Mon Mothma), they tend to either end up against the wall with the members of the ousted government or at best kept as a powerless useful idiot the new government can use to lend itself an air of legitimacy during the transfer of power.

 

10 hours ago, MikeRoz said:

This could even be a feature rather than a bug. Imagine for a moment, one or two big happenings from now, Luthen finds that more and more of the network he painstakingly built over years prefers to answer to Mon rather than him. Is that not the sort of situation drama is made from?

Even if none of what I've suggested comes to fruition, she's still less of a waste of time than the rent-a-cop loser.

That would be less a plot development and more a plot hole, since Mon Mothma has been utterly uninvolved in the actual business of the Rebellion and even in Rogue One the very kindest interpretation is that she's an indeceisive figurehead that nobody answers to or listens to.

[Bolt]

There may yet me a lightbulb moment for Mon Mothma and her lead role in the rebellion, If only to fill the gap when Luthien is eventually dead. His death may force her to step up. 
Andy Serkis was excellent !

[sh9000]

 

 

[Big s]

9 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

When it comes to successful, or at least well-publicized, revolutions, rebellions, and general insurrections the journalists and the early historians tend to whitewash or overlook the character flaws in the rebel leadership in order to make them into larger-than-life heroic figures.  People don't join armed rebellions and revolutionary armies because they're full of noble, high-minded principles like Mon Mothma.  People take up arms against the government because they're afraid, they're angry, they want change, the politicians aren't getting the job done, and the people are done asking.  Revolutions happen because there's one or more agitators like Luthen Rael out there whipping that anger into outrage and directing that outrage to specific targets

Luther may be the main coordinator of the revolution at this point, but he’s not one to get in front of people in a public manner. Even to others involved, he seems to deny his involvement as an attempt to stay more in the shadows.

the show is still young and we may see more of Mothma as things go. She is already the one politician that publicly stands against the empire, and maybe after things change for her story, it will show her more involved in a way that does inspire the rebellion. She’s already starting to get involved financially and soon she may have to get involved in more hands on ways

[hutch]

This show is fantastic.  That last episode.  Wow.  

[sh9000]

5 hours ago, hutch said:

This show is fantastic.  That last episode.  Wow.  

Agreed.

[Mog]

Was it

Spoiler

poo on Rogue One side-characters day?

First Luthen tries to peg loyal Two-Tubes as a mole, and then Cassian only gives Melshi a sidearm (but no credits).  Cheapskate. 

* Nice scene between Saw and Luthen.  Cold as hell.  But if Luthen was ISB, why wouldn’t he just let Saw just fall into the trap too?

* Anyone else catch the 400,000 credits that Mothma is short by?  Since it’s Vel she mentioned this to, I wonder if Vel knows where 400,000 (or double that amount) would be lying around? 😇

* And after all the hell they’ve put Bix through, are they gonna put her in the literal fridge for this last ep?  I mean they’ve been figuratively “fridging” her this whole season.

 

[Roy Focker]

Next episode (last of the season?) seems to be drawing everyone to the same location. I hope that episode ends with Syril arriving comically late when everyone else has left.