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S02E06B: BONUS Episode! More Andor!
23 Plays1 month ago
WE HAD MORE THOUGHTS! So here's a bonus episode to REALLY wrap up our Andor Season 1 rewatch.
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to Bonus Episode on Andor Finale
00:00:01
Speaker
15 minutes was not enough to contain all our thoughts on the Endor finale, so we're going to wrap it up real quick. Aren't you a little short? Aren't you a little short? Aren't you a little short for a stormtrooper?
00:00:15
Speaker
Welcome to the very first bonus episode of Short for a Stormtrooper. As I was saying, when we got finished talking about the Andor finale, we were sitting in the green room and then we were like, oh, wait, we forgot to talk about this. Oh, wait, we forgot to talk about that.
00:00:30
Speaker
So we said, let's just hit record and do a bonus episode. So here's 15 more minutes of Bob, Ben and Phil on the Andor finale.
The Death Star Reveal and Its Narrative Impact
00:00:38
Speaker
Phil, you specifically had something you wanted to talk about right off the bat. So don't you start there?
00:00:42
Speaker
Sure. i actually had two things, but I'll start with the first one. And ah'll start I'll start with the first one. And that is the post-credits scene. ah I did not expect that by any means. And I wasn't even really thinking about it because we were a few episodes removed.
00:00:59
Speaker
from prison ah series of episodes. yeah And seeing that the parts that they were building were going to be used on the Death Star, I was like, oh, but it makes so much sense, right? Mind blown. But then as soon as you see it, you're like, oh, that's so great.
00:01:16
Speaker
Why didn't I think of that? You know, like it makes it makes so much sense, I think, in the context of the of the first season.
Prison Labor and its Irony in Star Wars
00:01:24
Speaker
And it was great. And it was a perfect way, I think, to close us out and leave us with a jaw-dropping moment as we highly anticipate the second yeah season.
00:01:33
Speaker
Well, and also as you anticipate Rogue One, which is where we see the Death Star's prominence and centrality to that story. Yeah. And, you know, I imagine Cassian will never realize that.
00:01:45
Speaker
That's my guess. Like, he will never realize that he was actually contributing to the building of the Death Star. Yeah. But really, it is just kind of a... a sick justice. It's a, you know, the the universe is a terrible place and the irony of that is is insane.
00:02:01
Speaker
I also, as a um as someone who once ran a online newspaper ah trying to rationalize Star Wars fantasy into the real world with Galaxy's Edge at Disneyland,
00:02:15
Speaker
ah I love the fact that it was addressing how the heck did you actually build a freaking Death Star, which has been something that people have talked about for a while, like what it must have taken in terms of the cost and who did it. And, you know, I think everybody always surmised that it was it was droids who was building it. But prison labor, I mean, a planet full of Wookiees. That was always part of the story, too. Right. You're you're absolutely right, Ben.
00:02:42
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. Wow, interesting. So, okay, what was the second point, Phil?
Mon Mothma's Sacrifices for the Rebellion
00:02:48
Speaker
The second thing was in our first recap, we didn't even talk about Mon Mothma and her, you know, kind of the final like nail in the hammer of her, you know, having to make a sacrifice for what she believes, you know, she essentially sacrifices her daughter.
00:03:04
Speaker
to this patrol betrothal ceremony in exchange for the, for the funds to keep her, you know, funding of the rebellion going. yeah And it's such an interesting like scene, I think, and you can just see like the pain and disgust on her face as she does that.
00:03:20
Speaker
um And it's just really, really interesting. Yeah. You know, another similar thing that I noticed on this watch, which I had never noticed before is her making the decision to throw her husband under the bus to cover her tracks, right?
00:03:37
Speaker
Where she makes sure that they're in the car so that the guy hears, and then she's accusing him of gambling again. it it never clicked with me. i don't know, maybe I was just dense, but it never clicked with me. Like that's an intentional lie that she is telling. She knows darn well that he hasn't, isn't gambling again. He's absolutely right when he says, I'm not doing it. Where are you hearing this?
00:03:55
Speaker
But she is, oh my gosh, she is setting him up for failure. And you can tell she despises him. So I don't think she feels quite as, she probably feels a little bit guilty, but not quite the level of sadness as she does about having to finally realize that her her daughter is not really a part of her life, kind of the same way her husband is.
Arranged Marriages and Cultural Norms in Star Wars
00:04:19
Speaker
Yeah.
00:04:20
Speaker
I kind of wonder when you say she despises him, I'm not yet convinced that she like hates him or something. I think, I think she's in a marriage that was clearly kind of political in nature at some point.
00:04:31
Speaker
She probably had the same kind of betrothal ceremony as she's brought her daughter to. Yeah, absolutely. and That's a hundred percent clear. It's absolutely a society of arranged marriage. And yes, correct. Right. Well, and so I'm thinking that like when she sees him though, she doesn't see somebody that she hates. She sees somebody who's useless and who doesn't have any conscience and who's,
00:04:49
Speaker
kind of too taken with the, um, upper crust sensibilities and fripperies and fopperies of, you know, this, uh, Coruscantian elite culture, you know, and she's exactly, that's exactly what I feel like she resents him for yeah though his uselessness and his kind of like, um, Oh, what is the word?
00:05:11
Speaker
his like lack of interest in anything that's helpful or to help the greater good of substance beyond his own like means and gratification. I think that's exactly why I would use the word despise. I think she hates him.
00:05:24
Speaker
Oh, okay. Yeah. So i'm not i maybe i'm maybe I'm fooled by her subtlety and cool poise and exterior. But yeah, no at any rate, the cause is the same. I think we agree on that. So yeah, I i think what's interesting too is that she...
00:05:41
Speaker
as opposed to being somebody who in those elite corners of that society could, you know, do things as someone who had power and privilege and and finances and things like that. She's now in a situation where she, to your point, Phil, has kind of sacrificed that respectability in her own mind. and i think she's now,
00:06:01
Speaker
kind of gone over to this grimy world of, of I'm now financing, you know, these uprisings and, and bombings and, and this rebellion.
00:06:14
Speaker
And I don't know that she's earlier in the series. She hasn't clearly thought about that. She thinks she's just sort of getting money loose for Luthan to, to do something. She knows not what, but she's not too close to it, but it probably needs to get done. And,
00:06:30
Speaker
you know All of the stuff in the series to this point gets her to the point where he's saying, listen, there are no clean hands when this is all done. there this this This thing everybody sacrifices for, and you're going to sacrifice too.
00:06:42
Speaker
And I think this is
Relationships and Ideological Conflicts in the Rebellion
00:06:43
Speaker
where we see her do it. And it's really interesting. Well, you know, I never realized until we're talking about it now, but there's kind of ah theme throughout the whole show of three couples who have...
00:06:59
Speaker
ah yeah who have opinions about the empire and are trying to navigate a relationship, but they kind of are coming at the attitude towards the empire in a different way.
00:07:14
Speaker
So we've got Mon Mothma and her husband. We've also got Vel and Sinta, right? So we've already gotten acquainted with them, but what we really see in these last few episodes is – Cinta is diehard for the cause.
00:07:32
Speaker
And she is very clear. The priority in our relationship is the cause. You are secondary. But for Vel, I think she flip-flops those.
00:07:43
Speaker
her Her love for Cinta is greater than her... devotion to the cause. So just for the people who are trying to keep up with the names, Sinta is the sort of spy character, long, dark hair.
00:07:57
Speaker
She's the one who's. That's right. she was Yeah. So that Vel is, is Mon Mothma's cousin, the one who was leading the the raid on, on Aldani.
00:08:09
Speaker
and And she kind of lives a double life in that way. Right. Cause Vel is in sort of in a, not obviously not quite the same way, as Mon Mothma, but she has kind of one foot in each. She can kind of, she can switch, right?
00:08:21
Speaker
She can switch between kind of the high society and present herself that way. She can also be the grimy rebel, right? And be down in the weeds with everybody. yeah I almost wonder if because she has kind of one foot in both worlds, i maybe that makes her a little bit more romantic.
00:08:35
Speaker
Whereas Cinta, i think we hear a little about her backstory, right? She doesn't have, she doesn't come from that. privilege or has ever been exposed to that. So she is very focused on the rebellion where maybe fells a little more romantic. and Yeah.
00:08:47
Speaker
Yeah. Well, the third couple that I was thinking about, And but we could even unpack like Cassian and Bix. There's probably something there too. But the third couple I was thinking about was Luthen and Clea, even though they're not, I mean, maybe they're, maybe they are married. I don't know. we We don't know. I mean, the only relationship that we see them in is kind of employee employer, but it's Clea who is like Luthen, you're thinking with your heart, you've got to get a little more, you know, a little more,
00:09:20
Speaker
be more of a stickler
Luthen and Clea: Tactical Differences
00:09:22
Speaker
here, right? You got to play by the rules. There's rules for a reason. And Luthen is a little bit more, you know, going with how he feels about things.
00:09:31
Speaker
they They have different approaches. And it's interesting to see how that plays out in their relationship. She is, Clay is really the one who tries to tame him at times, right? Yeah. Luthen is going a little bit off the wall. She's the one who has to sort of bring him back to earth a bit when he's going to do something that in the long run is probably not the best decision to do. So she is really the voice of reason there. Yeah.
00:09:52
Speaker
Yeah. Amazing. What else in, um, now we got five more minutes. What, what else in the last couple of
Saw Gerrera's Extremism and Relationships
00:10:00
Speaker
episodes you want talk about? say, Oh, you go ahead, Ben.
00:10:03
Speaker
Well, I was going to say, and we yet talked about Saw Gerrera? Oh my gosh. yeah Okay. Go for it. Well, here's a character who we meet in the Clone Wars cartoons.
00:10:16
Speaker
We meet in the Rogue One movie. We know that he's ah pretty hardcore as rebels go. ah and he's got this now complex relationship with Luthien where he's aware that Luthien may sacrifice people in the name of the cause at some point. And is that going to be something that changes his perspective and turns him into the Saw Gerrero meet in Rogue One?
00:10:41
Speaker
Don't know. Interesting thoughts. You know, we're still getting to know who he is and what he's up to, but he's definitely passionate about this. So I think there's a ah lot of great stuff to see where he goes. I hope we see more of him in season two.
00:10:53
Speaker
We know we will. He showed up in the
Bix's Torture Scene: Emotional and Thematic Analysis
00:10:56
Speaker
trailer. So speaking of someone else who, showed up in the trailer who I want to talk a little bit is, Bix.
00:11:05
Speaker
And those torture scenes are just horrible. Oh, Oh my God. Totally. And the, you know, the, the noise torture with the, you know, the audio torture is just like, those scenes are horrible. And she is a shell of a person At the end of it, when when Cassian finds her.
00:11:26
Speaker
I was relieved to see her in the trailer and her looking a little bit more, um how shall we say, spry and a little more active. Because what because she is she is really like a shell of a person yeah when when Cassian saves her.
00:11:40
Speaker
And clearly she's some time to like recover and recuperate. But man, those are just like heart-wrenching. Yeah. yeah in the trailer And we saw we saw all of three seconds of her walking. Right. I think that's really all we saw.
00:11:52
Speaker
She did still look a little dead inside. She was a different character. Yeah. So was gonna say what they managed to do off screen. You know, the most effective torture scenes you ever see are the ones where they just tell you something awful is about to happen and the camera moves away.
00:12:06
Speaker
Yeah. And we just let time pass and you go, oh no, that's horrible. Because imagination is the creator of the worst evil. That's right. And that's like, that goes from everything from this to the shark and jaws, right? The less you see, the scarier it is, or the less you hear in this case, the scarier it is.
00:12:24
Speaker
That's right. And they did, I'm sure you noticed, very specific homage to episode four and Leia's torture scene when that torture scene started with the door slamming shut and then the boots walking away down the hallway.
00:12:39
Speaker
that That was amazing. By the way, if you want something very, very uncomfortable to listen to in this topic is the original Star Wars radio dramatization, which I think came out in about 78 79.
00:12:54
Speaker
um, where they're stretching the two hour movie out into, I think 12 part radio show. They, they do the whole Leia torture scene and it is very hard to listen to.
00:13:08
Speaker
It is very well acted by the, the woman who plays Leia, who is not Carrie Fisher. Uh, but it is, it is very hard to listen to. the The other thing that I just thought was, um,
00:13:20
Speaker
i hate to say it but fun about the torture scene in Andor was that idea of what the torture is, is making you listen to the death street screams of an entire society.
00:13:32
Speaker
like it's such like a good hardcore sci-fi concept, right? yeah There's nothing more painful than listening to that. ah It is, die it is diabolical and it works, right? It works for the scene. Like it really leaves you like, Oh my God, like this is insane. and does.
00:13:49
Speaker
Yeah. You know, it's, there's an, there's an interesting thing there is that it's, it's a, the guy takes time to point out that it's the children that you're listening to. They figured out which ones were the children. Right.
00:13:59
Speaker
And you know, the, The thing that is diabolical about torture, torture is not pain. Torture is pain plus suffering, right? it's the It's the cognitive element that goes with this where you're aware of and you're your' subjected to something where you know it's horrible. And so, um you know, that's that's again kind of, if you will, this this kind of capstone or this kind of, you know, summative thing. Like if you want a little picture what the empire is, that's what they are.
00:14:31
Speaker
yeah And yeah the the calmness of the scientist is so off-putting. Yeah. Yeah. yeah
Conclusion and Emotional Reflections
00:14:38
Speaker
It's like he he's he's devoted to the science, right? and He's so excited about it. There's like a little there's like a little like s smile he's a little smirk on his face as he's telling her about it.
00:14:48
Speaker
And it's just, it's so off-putting. That is all we have time for. We'll see you next time on Short for a Stormtrooper. Bye.