New episode dropped today and I gave it a watch. Once again, pretty solid, though the pacing appears much better than the previous ones. Most of the ep centers around Andor in the prison that he ended up in following his arrest in the previous one, with the rest centering around ISB LT Deedra interacting/interrogating former corporate security Syril; Mon Mothma as she does political machinations on Coruscant; and some stuff back on Ferrix involving Andor’s mom, Bix, and then later the two surviving members of the Aldhani team; as well as Luthen back on Coruscant.
I was actually surprised the Syril wasn’t officially recruited into Deedra’s team because he is straight up a True Believer and would fit right in at ISB. It would be amusing if this is the last we actually see of him following LT Deedra basically telling him to not pop back up in the ISB radar again. I still think he’ll end up in an Imperial uniform by the end, though.
Something that does occur to me: the actress playing Deedra made a comment in an interview that her character is the only “competent” person in her sphere of influence … but the show seriously contradicts this with her immediate boss actually ensuring that her investigation goes forward a couple of times and his boss is not portrayed as incompetent at all; he’s just upper management and (logically) questions everything that is requested of him. The rest of the Imps really aren’t given adequate spotlight to be considered in that light … though, in retrospect, the comms operator guy in episode 6 who ended up leading the fireteam into the vault was more than competent. I’m guessing this was just an example of the actress high on her own farts?
As noted, the pacing is handled much better. The prison stuff is, to my surprise, actually more interesting than I would have expected since ultimately its more of Andor just reacting, and there’s a very nice bit of payoff between the ISB – Deedra wants (and gets) a full monitoring of the planet including intercepts due to the McGuffin having been discovered on-planet and Andor escaping with an unknown party that she wants – and the stuff on Ferrix – Bix reaching out through comms to Luthen from a contact’s system. That contact would later be arrested and Bix is captured when she’s identified by the Imperials. But man, watching Adria Arjona run in that tight outfit of hers? Rowl. She’s later interrogated by ISB lady, but not before Deedra sees the contact guy, having been badly tortured.
Saw Gerrera makes an appearance in this as well and he’s every bit as crazy as he’s been in the past as Luthen tries to recruit him for something. It’s actually kind of interesting to see various kinds of rebels before they’re fully unified in the Alliance, so that’s interesting. Thus far, we’ve got Mon’s political group that resists direct action because of the inevitable clampdowns; Vel’s direct action team … though that really comes across more as Luthen’s team; Saw’s partisans who, from what I grok, are basically straight up terrorists … when do we get to see the starfighter angle? Somebody needs to bring them in as the Rebels couldn’t have won the war without them…
I was quite surprised to see Andy Serkis in the prison – he’s a prisoner himself, but is close to being released so he’s basically the overseer of the groups assembling whatever it is they are building. And, in another first for Star Wars, we’ve basically got a suicide – the prisoners have tiny cells open to the main area … that is electrified at lights out and one such prisoner jumped out onto it at night…
So again, a solid episode. My biggest gripe remains centered around the titular character, Cassian Andor himself. He’s too reactive and stuff just happens around and to him thus far. I want to see him be proactive. Was expecting the prison thing to show that, with him immediately making plans and figuring a way to escape, but by the end of the episode, it almost seems like he’s just accepted his lot and is going to be there for a while.
Four more episodes to go, so time to ramp things up some more, please…