blogging andor: farewell, angelina
the end and the beginning. andor season 2 episode 10.
Today on ANDOR, Luthen Rael’s story comes to a close. We see where he started — an Imperial sergeant, appalled at the horror of it, rescuing a young girl from a genocide in progress. The young girl adopts the name Kleya and her new father figure in turn sheds the identity of Sgt. Lear and becomes our Luthen. We trace their early days through the galaxy as they learn to trade and to fight and develop a code of conduct together, along with a bruised kind of affection.
And in the present tense of ANDOR (which is itself increasingly taking on the air of a doomed flashback), Dedra’s walking in to Luthen’s shop. She gives up the game pretty quickly, confronting him with the space box that started it all, back on Ferrix. Dedra has found her Axis. Couple of problems for her, though: As it turns out, this is an extrajudicial raid and also Luthen attempts to kill himself. When she has to have him quickly medivaced out to a nearby hospital, the chain of command begins to tighten around her throat. Heert, her former assistant, could not be more gleeful. I love that little beast.
The idea that Dedra’s eagerness and disregard for her coworkers would ultimately spell her undoing — at the precise moment she finally finds Luthen — is deliciously perfect. Watching her moment of victory unravel is very satisfying, and a bleak pair with Syril’s tragic fall.
And it gets worse for her! Before Dedra’s fateful trip to the antiques shop, Luthen meets with Lonni, who reveals he’s had the password to Dedra’s Google Drive for a year but hasn’t accessed it — as it would create a digital paper trail back to him. But he’s decided to pull the trigger and needs Luthen to get him and his family out of Dodge. Why has Lonni decided to burn himself? Because he’s heard rumors of an Imperial Super Weapon and now he knows: it’s true. The “energy program” that the Empire has been running is actually a front for the construction of the Death Star. The mining on Ghorman, the prison labor camps, all of it leads back to this thing.
Which we knew, but still, it’s wild to learn it all goes back to Lonni, who we first thought was just some ISB prick. Turns out he’s a hero. But Luthen kills him. Womp womp! Luthen passes the information along to Kleya (watching them all frantically repeat the bullet points to each other — Ghorman, mining, Kyber Crystals, the engineer Galen Erso — is some of my favorite spycraft-y business in the series. They can’t write it down! ) and goes back to his shop to destroy the place. Which is when Dedra shows up. Womp womp!
The second half of the episode is a stunning hospital infiltration, as Kleya bombs and shoots her way up to Luthen’s floor to pull the plug on him. It’s grim business — we understand that the mission is to insure that Luthen does not live to be tortured and interrogated — but it’s also thrilling.
Who knew that Kleya would become such a central character in this show? It is welcome, and very moving, to center this story on her and on Luthen. For the first time ever in an episode of ANDOR, we don’t cut anywhere else or see any other main characters. It’s really the Luthen, Kleya, and Dedra show (my top 3 dinner party guests, naturally). Elizabeth Dulau was a recent acting school grad when ANDOR first started. I’m excited to see what else she gets to do, as she steals the show here.
Kleya is successful in her mission, and we watch Luthen draw his last breath as we cut to the credits. Again, we’re losing a real one today. Stellan Skarsgård’s tortured, brutal, calculated performance as Luthen Rael is true hall of fame business. We’re raising his wig up to the rafters.
God, this is a great show, huh? I am going to miss it so much.