The monster screaming the loudest? The monster we’ve helped create, who will come for us all soon enough, is the heavy spoilers ahead for “Andor” season 2, episode 9.
“Star Wars” has a real Glup Shitto problem. The more the galaxy expands thanks to numerous new animated and live-action shows, video games, comics, books, and much more, so grows the temptation to try and connect it all via nods, Easter eggs, and cameos.
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Take the way Dave Filoni continuously desecrates the medium of animation by bringing every single character he ever touched to the live-action MandoVerse (and even devoting an entire show to a cartoon character whose very existence makes increasingly less sense) via gratuitous cameos that more often than not distract from the main story. Sure, it’s fun to see different parts of the franchise interact and tie into a larger narrative, but when it’s at the expense of the quality of the current narrative, it does a disservice to “Star Wars” at large.
That is not an issue with “Andor,” the best, boldest “Star Wars” experiment in decades. This is not just a timely, poignant show with a whole lot to say about our current sociopolitical climate, but also an exquisitely designed, shot, written, and directed show with one hell of a great cast.
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One aspect of “Andor” that perhaps doesn’t get the praise it deserves is how it ties together different corners of the “Star Wars” universe. Sure, there the many nods to what we see in “Rogue One,” the title that season 2 is directly building toward, but also pieces of the legends canon that are incorporated in ways that don’t feel forced or that contradict what’s come before. Though there have been cameos before, none have felt like a forced Glup Shitto nod to fans, but rather inevitable appearances from people that would naturally come into this story, then leave when their part in it ends. Case in point, how episode 9 ties directly into one of the best episodes of “Star Wars Rebels,” only retconning a tiny amount in order to connect live-action and animation.
Mon Mothma’s speech is playing with canon
In episode 9 of “Andor,” we see Mon Mothma (Genevieve O’Reilly) deliver a powerful speech at the Senate that scathes Emperor Palpatine and directly calls him out while openly talking about the genocide on Ghorman. Immediately after, she escapes Coruscant to become a full-time Rebel leader.
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This is a storyline that already played out in 2017 in the season 3 episode of “Star Wars Rebels” titled “Secret Cargo.” In that episode, the Ghost crew is tasked with escorting Mon Mothma — on the run from the Empire after her speech in the Senate — to a secret rendezvous place where she gives another rousing speech, one that officially announces the formation of the Rebel Alliance to Restore the Republic.
Speaking with Entertainment Weekly about the making of the episode, creator Tony Gilroy said that he and writer Dan Gilroy felt like having the “Secret Cargo” episode looming over season 2 of “Andor” was a restriction. “We are hijacking canon,” Tony Gilroy admitted. “In canon, she’s rescued by the Gold Squadron and the speech that they gave in the cartoon, which was a canonical show, [is on that ship]. And Danny’s like, ‘Do I have to stick to this f***ing speech?'”
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Their solution? Play with the holes in the canon a bit and fill in the gaps to make the episode. You see, the only things we actually see in the “Rebels” episode is an all too brief shot of Mothma delivering her Senate speech, then an unspecified amount of time later, Golden Squadron asks the Ghost crew for help in delivering Mon to a Rebel base where she delivers her big speech that’s broadcast to the galaxy.
Rewriting the story
In “Andor,” Mon gives a different version of the speech. The one big retcon that the show does is a far superior speech, as it actually allows Mon Mothma to be more direct in her accusing the Empire of genocide. Then, the episode focuses specifically on Cassian (Diego Luna) sneaking Mon off the Senate building and past the Imperial guards, rather than delivering her to Yavin. Indeed, Kleya (Elizabeth Dulau) even tells Cassian specifically that he will not be the one escorting the senator to Yavin IV. Instead, Rebel command wants her on a separate ship out of Coruscant. They want to “rewrite the story” and have her make a separate speech and arrive with a Yavin escort to the Rebel base.
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This is both the start of the Rebel Alliance erasing Lurhen (Stellan Skårsgard) and Kleya out of their own history, and also a great opportunity for Tony and Dan Gilroy to slightly recontextualize what we know in order to connect “Andor” to “Rebels” without lessesing either “In a really sneaky way, we’re minimizing what they did in ‘Star Wars Rebels,’ but we’re keeping it consistent,” Gilroy said. “We’re just saying you don’t really know the whole story of what happened.”
Except, they don’t. It both allows “Andor” to not have to adhere to aesthetic choices of “Rebels” — meaning there is still time for Mon to change her haircut on the way out of Coruscant and make it a choice to hide, rather than a bad fashion statement — and it also adds to the “Rebels” episode. The Ghost crew was never the big crew that saved Mon from the Empire on Coruscant, they were simply an aid along the way. They helped when Gold Squadron got overwhelmed with Imperial patrols, then they did their job and left that story.
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Meanwhile, we see Cassian do the hard work of actually protecting Mon at her most vulnerable — in the Senate building — right before Rebel command comes in to take the glory and make it seem like it was all a coordinated effort on their united part, rather than the sum of several individual parts coming together almost serendipitously. This is the start of the Rebel Alliance we know from “Rogue One,” the one that is too much focused on appearances and playing it safe to support Jyn Erso’s plan to save the galaxy from a devastating weapon.
