Cassian Andor and Mon Mothma have never met before. It seems hard to believe, until you feel the crackle of electricity in the air when they come face to face. You feel it again later, when Cassian takes the terrified senator’s hand after killing her driver right in front of her. For over a season and a half, creator Tony Gilroy kept his powder dry, waiting for the right time for these specific moments. He put these two characters under so much pressure that they practically shine like diamonds from the inside out; now, at last, he put them on screen together. The results, and the chemistry between Diego Luna and Genevieve O’Reilly as performers, are spectacular.
These two lynchpins of the Rebellion have one last job to do together. They have to smuggle two items of precious cargo out of the Imperial Senate to safety. The first is the truth; the second is themselves.
By the start of the episode, word of the Ghorman Massacre has reached the Imperial capital of Coruscant. The Emperor’s propagandists are going full tilt, both on the news and in the Senate chamber, where the alleged horrors of Ghorman arrogance and violence are described in lurid detail. But Dasi Oran, the senator from Ghorman, has already been arrested before he can counter the narrative. As he’s led away, he shouts “It’s my people today and yours tomorrow! This will be you soon enough!” He says this last bit to Bail Organa (Benjamin Bratt, taking over for Jimmy Smits), senator from Alderaan. In a couple of years, we know, there will be no Alderaan.
The slaughter on Ghorman is a point of no return for the Empire, both its proponents and its critics. Mon and Bail, the two secret Rebels in the Senate, know they can be silent no longer. They also know that the moment they openly criticize the Emperor, they’re as good as dead. Reluctantly, Mon agrees to deliver the speech and then flee, leaving Bail as the Rebel in the Senate and placing him under even more pressure and scrutiny. “Next year on Yavin,” he tells her. He’s referring to the Rebel base but paraphrasing the Passover Seder — a refrain for a people without a home, or people don’t feel at home in the one that’s supposedly been made for them.
Then Mon gives her speech.
“I stand this morning with a difficult message. I believe we are in crisis. The distance between what is said and what is known to be true has become an abyss. Of all the things at risk, the loss of an objective reality is perhaps the most dangerous. The death of truth is the ultimate victory of evil. When truth leaves us, when we let it slip away, when it is ripped from our hands, we become vulnerable to the appetite of whatever monster screams the loudest.
“This chamber’s hold on the truth was finally lost on the Ghorman Plaza. What took place yesterday, what happened yesterday on Ghorman, was unprovoked genocide! Yes, genocide! And that truth has been exiled from this chamber. And the monster screaming the loudest, the monster we helped create, the monster who will come for us all soon enough, is — ”
Well. I’m sure a name popped into your head.
When a murderous campaign of wholesale destruction abroad is used to justify widespread repression at home, when few members even of the nominal opposition party will say the things we know to be true, when no one seems willing to use the words we know must be used…I’d like to say it’s heartening, even thrilling, to hear the word “genocide” used by a fictional senator on a television program. But it’s also humiliating that our leaders don’t see fit to talk to us with the honesty of a Star Wars character — and frightening to see how rapidly speaking honestly about what is happening both in Gaza and here at home is being criminalized.
Mon is willing to put it all on the line. She lays the blame for this crime at the always unseen Emperor Palpatine’s feet, just as the frustrated Imperial authorities finally manage to shut down the Senatorial broadcast feed. For them, it’s too little, too late.
Mon flees, but is nearly waylaid by the extraction team sent unwittingly by Bail Organa, who have a spy in their ranks. Warned by Luthen about this treachery, it’s still up to Mon to decide whether or not to trust Cassian over the people sent by her close friend. For all she knows, this stranger was sent to silence her by Luthen himself, to keep her from falling into Imperial hands and revealing the entire architecture of the Rebellion. In fact, as she herself says, she’s more frightened of Luthen than she is of anything else. She’s seen how easily he disposed of her old friend Tay Kolma, and knows he wouldn’t hesitate to do it again.
But she does place her trust in Cassian, even as she loses her innocence. Cassian kills two ISB agents in her presence, leaving her shocked. “You killed that woman!” she exclaims, but even before that almost childlike statement, actor O’Reilly conveys Mon’s shock through her face and body alone. Mon’s never met Cassian before, true, but more to the point, she’s never seen the violent side of the Rebellion up close and personal, until now. It’s an incredible moment to capture.
After the escape, the whole gang meets up in Cassian and Bix’s old crash pad on Coruscant: Cassian, Mon, Luthen, Kleya, and even Wilmon and Vreena, who escaped Ghorman too. Cassian leaves with Wilmon and Vreena to get the young soldier some badly needed medical help right away, but Mon will be getting a hero’s reception on Yavin instead. The moment you see her drop her blue and gold ceremonial shawl, leaving behind only white, you can see her transformation into the emblem of the Rebellion taking place.
The final twist: Cassian’s becoming an emblem of the Rebellion too. Bix thinks so, and in a powerful message delivered right into the unblinking camera by actor Adria Arjona, she explains that she can’t allow herself to be the reason he chooses a comfortable life over the Rebellion that needs him — the Rebellion that is his destiny. Luthen Rael himself seems to think so as well, pointing out that time and time again, Cassian was exactly where Luthen and the cause needed him to be.
But Cassian barely has time to grieve this final loss before he’s needed on duty. Rebel technicians are about to bring that broken Imperial security droid Cassian swiped from the chaos on Ghorman back online, a highly analog process of grinding gears and sparking circuits. Upon reawakening with a new Rebel-friendly persona, the reanimated droid politely asks a cautious Cassian to point his gun someplace else. Some people get a pet after a breakup; Cassian’s getting a giant killer droid.
I like that the episode ends on this relatively low-key, pleasant note, rather than on Mon’s astonishing speech, or Bix’s. Even in crisis, life goes on, and good things happen. You just have to be willing to fight to make sure they keep happening, and happening, and happening. It’s as simple and as difficult as that.
Sean T. Collins (@theseantcollins) writes about TV for Rolling Stone, Vulture, The New York Times, and anyplace that will have him, really. He and his family live on Long Island.