blogging andor: A FIRE IN THE MASTER'S HOUSE IS SET

last one until season 2 begins in a few weeks. andor season 1, episode 12, "rix road."

a few days ago, when i said that “one way out” was the best episode of ANDOR, i was kind of forgetting how good “rix road” is. it’s a spectacular episode, and the most explicitly antifascist, revolutionary text of the set. here’s hoping that season 2 goes even harder.

i just want to start by pointing out that toward the start of the episode, we see wilmon (son of the recently executed junk shop owner) slowly building a bomb. a bomb that he later hurls into a crowd of imperial guards, commanders, and bystanders (including luthen) and likely killing dozens (luthen’s fine though). the blast also kills a guy from ferrix who was in the process of ratting out cassian (sic temper snitches). but what’s really amazing, from a storytelling point of view, is what happens next. stormtroopers open fire on the crowd, targeting wilmon specifically. in any other work, the guy who builds the bomb that kills a bunch of people has to die. because we have to show such a deed having consequences, right? instead, brasso pulls wilmon away and he survives to fight another day. his work is rewarded and unquestioned. welcome to ANDOR, baby.

let’s back up. as established last time, everyone is converging on ferrix. cassian, luthen, vel, syril, and dedra are all in town for maarva’s funeral. (the only b-plot we get is sort of a two steps forward, one step back situation with mon mothma; she generates a good cover story for her missing money (accusing her husband of being an inveterate gambler — untrue, but plausible) but then also goes through with introducing her daughter to the money launderer’s kid. is she so nervous about her exposure that she’s looking for double coverage? or is she building herself an exit?)

before the action picks up, we finally get to hear a selection from nemik’s manifesto, worth reproducing here, for your general application to the current era.

There will be times when the struggle seems impossible. I know this already. Alone, unsure, dwarfed by the scale of the enemy.

Remember this: freedom is a pure idea. It occurs spontaneously and without instruction. Random acts of insurrection are occurring constantly throughout the galaxy. There are whole armies, battalions that have no idea that they’ve already enlisted in the cause.

Remember that the frontier of the Rebellion is everywhere. And even the smallest act of insurrection pushes our lines forward.

And remember this: the Imperial need for control is so desperate because it is so unnatural. Tyranny requires constant effort. It breaks, it leaks. Authority is brittle. Oppression is the mask of fear.

Remember that. And know this: the day will come when all these skirmishes and battles, these moments of defiance will have flooded the banks of the Empires’s authority and then there will be one too many. One single thing will break the siege.

the whisper network in ferrix has only gotten stronger and faster in the months cassian’s been away, and before long he’s reunited with brasso, who relays maarva’s final message for him. part of it sums up the entire arc of his character: “tell him… he knows everything he needs to know and feels everything he needs to feel. and when the day comes that those two pull together, he will be an unstoppable force for good.” i’d also forgotten this absolutely beautiful line:

i love him more than anything he could ever do wrong

and then we’re really off to the races. i wanted to flag one surprising moment as everything converges — there is a prominent match cut from dedra to luthen in profile, both facing to the right. could be nothing! but feels very suggestive. both luthen and dedra are in town to capture/kill cassian, and both are surprised when the funeral procession starts several hours early.

a marching band starts up the parade. this section is so stirring and beautiful to me. the music is mournful but determined. there’s an incredible moment where the people of ferrix are all out and aligned in the street, facing down a group of imperial guards costumed to look EXACTLY like the cops in riot gear in ferguson, in LA, in new york, and probably a lot of cities tomorrow in america. and the band picks up speed, and they start marching faster.

when you look at this scene, and you look at all the people of ferrix, you realize: the empire is outnumbered. there are more of us than there are of them and there always will be. remember that. i’m only talking about star wars, of course. and so is tony gilroy. we’re certainly not explicitly suggesting any real life course of action.

the funeral procession reaches the town square. brasso proudly holds maarva’s brick. and B2EMO plays a parting message from maarva. of all the monologues in ANDOR, this might be the best one.

There is a wound that won't heal at the center of the galaxy. There is a darkness reaching like rust into everything around us. We let it grow, and now it's here. It's here and it's not visiting anymore. It wants to stay.

The Empire is a disease that thrives in darkness, it is never more alive than when we asleep. It's easy for the dead to tell you to fight, and maybe it's true, maybe fighting is useless. Perhaps it's too late. But I'll tell you this, if I could do it again, I'd wake up early and be fighting those bastards from the start.

i want to shout out the actor who plays wilmon, muhannad ben amor, who really anchors this sequence. he gazes up at maarva, tears in his eyes but determination on his face. it’s powerful.

naturally, the imperial forces try to stop the projection when maarva starts openly advocating for violence, which kicks off a riot, which includes the absolutely thrilling image of brasso bashing a guard’s head in WITH THE BRICK made from maarva’s ashes. she would be so thrilled. (in my will, where i specify that i want to also be made into a brick, can i also specify that i’d like to be made use of this way?) brasso’s defiant roar after this is also iconic.

the people of ferrix overwhelm the imperial forces. we see a lot of the pricks we’ve been seeing all season long on their knees in the dirt, crawling away, trying not to look terrified. it rules. even dedra gets knocked down, kicked around, and nearly trampled to death, but she’s rescued by syril. of course. “i should say thank you,” she says, but doesn’t. the way that syril tries to look valiant here is truly the stuff of nightmares.

there’s another storytelling trope that is pointedly inverted during this sequence. there’s a guy in the bell tower who is hammering away, which clearly unnerves imperial leadership. they send a solider to kill him. every bone in your body expects to see this bell-tolling hero die. he’s unarmed, playing a symbolic role in the rebellion, and seeing him get shot would be an easy way to make us fear that the tide was turning—make us fear for our heroes. guess what happens instead? the stormtrooper gets booted DIRECTLY out of the tower and and he falls to his death expeditiously. and the bellman goes back to ringing. hell yeah.

cassian observes a lot of this from a tower above the square — including spotting luthen. it’s really compelling and informative that we KNOW luthen to be a superspy, and yet cassian gets the drop on him multiple times in this episode. but first, cassian breaks into the imperial hotel and frees bix, who is deeply traumatized but seems to be on her way back to life by the end of the episode. bix, B2EMO, brasso, wilmon, and a pilot named jezzi all make it to an escape ship, but cassian stays behind and promises to track them down (i mean duh, they are clearly his new team).

at the very end of the episode, cassian confronts luthen and tells him to either kill him or bring him in. it’s kind of an unusual choice of words but it feels spycraft-y. he means “bring me in on this operation.” he doesn’t want to be a hired gun anymore. our man is officially a freedom fighter. he started the fire on ferrix, and now he wants to start some more. luthen—for maybe the first time all season—actually smiles. the end.

for a while, it seemed like this was all the ANDOR we were going to get. and that was kind of OK with me? here is a TV show that says, in no uncertain terms, that the way you fight fascism is by picking up a brick. this show aired on disney plus! and it’s very forcefully telling you that you’re not going to symbolically filibuster your way out of this shit! in the star wars universe, of course!

anyway, if you subscribe to this substack for the podcast and the other, far less frequent posts, the good news is that i’ve got a new podcast coming this week. the bad news is ANDOR returns on april 22nd, so we’ll get back to it here right away. thank you for reading. i love this show.