House of R - ‘Rogue One’ Revisited Through the Lens of ‘Andor’

Episode Date: May 28, 2025

Mal and Jo are joined by Chris Ryan to talk about how ‘Andor’ has changed their perception of ‘Rogue One.’ Then they dive deep into the movie and talk about each moment and character through the lens of ‘Andor.’ (00:00) Intro (07:21) Opening snapshot with Chris Ryan (50:27) Krennic comes for Galen (01:04:01) Cassian meets Tivik on Kafrene (01:10:48) Prison break: Jyn Erso (01:15:23) Taking Jyn to Yavin (01:23:21) Project: Imperial infighting (01:35:23) Converging on Jedha (01:58:07) Saw and Jyn reunite and hear Galen’s message (02:21:05) A change of heart on Eadu (02:38:28) A tense flight back to Yavin (02:42:13) Everyone in a position of power embarrasses themselves (02:56:36) Our rogues get their name (03:00:41) The Battle of Scarif (03:06:48) Cassian and Jyn versus Project Stardust (03:22:02) Vader chases us to 'A New Hope' Hosts: Mallory Rubin and Joanna Robinson Guest: Chris Ryan Producers: Jonathan Frias and Carlos Chiriboga Social: Jomi Adeniran Additional Production Support: Arjuna Ramgopal Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This episode is brought to by Paramount Plus. Beth and Rip are back in a new series, Dutton Ranch. Kelly Riley and Colehouser returned, and this time they're taking on Texas. As Beth and Rip build a future together, peace will have to wait as they face corruption, danger, and a ruthless rival ranch, willing to protect its secrets at all costs. Legacy is a beautiful thing, but only if it survives. Dutton Ranch starring Colehouser, Kelly Riley,

Annette Benning and Ed Harris, now streaming on Paramount Plus. This episode is brought to you by Borris Head. What if we told you the taste of deep fried turkey is now available at your local deli? Well, Borishead just did that. Bursting with flavor, perfectly seasoned with that indulgent taste that usually means pointing your whole day around it, presenting the friars turkey breast only from Borishead. The backyard tradition now available behind the counter. Visit your local deli today.

Discover the craftsmanship behind every bite. Borershead committed to craft since 1905. Greetings. And welcome to House of Art, a ringerverse podcast on the Ringer Podcast Network. I'm Mallory Rubin. She's Joanna Robinson and she finds that answer vague and unconvincing. But that's not all today, folks. He's here to make 10 men feel like 100.

It's Chris fucking Ryan, the crank daddy himself. Hell yes. Here I am in my calcite mine. Looking for calcite alternatives. Calcite. substitutes. What's up, guys? So thank you so much for having me. Oh, my God. Thrilled to have you. Our Manon-Gorman himself, Chris Ryan. I just want to say before we get started, like, a reason why we're having Chris on this podcast, just we love his, like,

presence anytime. But your coverage of Andor on the watch has been so incredible. And it's been so fun to, like, be on the same page with you and Andy and everyone else about like, you know, this cross over of like the watch highbrow skeptics and the House of Our lowbrow lover of content. You know, like I just love that Andor appeals across a lot of different audiences. The predator meme kicked in, you know, we really truly reached across the aisle. No, I don't ever feel that far away from you guys in my heart. And it's great to be here.

Yeah, the Andor, every year about, I think, if I'm lucky, there's two shows, three shows that I'm like, I am so locked in on this. I feel so a part of what is going on. And the fun thing with Andor, I'm sure you guys have had this experience where maybe you like the piece of content you're talking about. You like the show, you like the movie. The discourse. You know? I really enjoyed the Andor discourse.

I thought the Andor discourse was largely pretty thoughtful and helpful and helpful. and the research, like, looking into, like, different things that Tony both grudgingly touched on in the canon was really informative. Yeah. I don't know. Maybe I'm looking at the wrong Reddit pages. I can't tell. If anybody has not yet consumed the multiple outstanding Tony Gilroy interviews that Chris and Andy did on the watch, treat yourself. I booted that up on the 75-inch living room TV.

That was a cinematic. experience for me. The moment where you wiped a tear away from your eye. I wasn't doing that. It was dusty in there. Dusty in the heart, man. Studio 6. Get some old weird. This is wonderful. We teased at the end of our last of us pod that we had moved the Rogue One rewatch. We should say we are doing, Rogue One revisited through the lens of Andor. That is what we are here to do today to revisit this film. Now that we have completed our

two-season Andor journey and we are doing it with one of our dear friends. the talk the throne's crew reconvening. Yeah. Chris is not going to be with us for all 87 hours of today's podcast. True. I expire after 55 minutes. They have to plug me back in. Yeah, you're like B.

You're like sweet B. You need to go back into your charging station. Long before the House of Our runtime has concluded. But we're going to hit some big picture. Where are we with this film after completing this wonderful story beats with you? We can't wait. We can't wait for any excuse to have you here in the house. House of R.

I'm so thrilled to be here. Should I do your programming reminders? Please. Are you going to sneak some of your own in there? No. I don't come here to self-promote. I come here and promote you guys. This is about House of R.

I just want to let everybody know that House of R has already dropped an episode this week. They have their Last of Us finale pod that went up immediately after Last of Us concluded at second season. And I think that if you were looking for a spectrum of thought about that series, you'll find it in the House of Horror and the Watch.

I think me and Andy were pretty skeptical, but I started firing up the Last of Us pod, and I'm going to continue to listen to it on my drive home after I get out of here. But that's not all. A spring mailbag is coming later this week. That's right. So, I mean, the fountain, it's constantly replenishing with the waters of discourse from you guys. And I think that that's what people come to expect.

Here's the question. Are you prepared to tell people where they can email us? Is it Hobbits and Dragons? Look at you. Gmail. com. Look at you. Crush it.

And you can find them on the Ringerverse on YouTube. You can watch them on Spotify where you're hopefully listening to their podcast. And there's a ton of other stuff coming from Ringerverse this week, including Midnight Boys. They're doing an admission impossible reaction pod. ButtonMash on Thursday is doing a Last of Us finale Gamer's Guide, of which I have to admit, I indulged in a lot of gamer, you know, sort of spoilers in the game or in the show. You love a spoiler. You love to boot up a wiki. I do. And as May comes to an end, Ringerverse is doing Ringer Recommends for May. That's coming this weekend on the Ring ofverse Feed.

Chris. Chris, you're a fucking pro. Are you ready to join us full time all the time to do this? There's only one CR. I was just living in your shadow, man. That's true. Anything that you'll be contributing to Ring Reverse Recommends this month? Quiet time with family. That's really what it's all about. You know, no. What would I recommend for Ringervor's Recommend. Are you murder-bodding at all? No, I'm not. I mean, can I pick something? that's not yet out. It's coming out this week, I believe. And also not quite genre fantasy, but genre

watchy, like mystery, crimey, which is Department Q on Netflix with your boy Matthew Good and every Scottish person that's ever been on Game of Thrones. I have no notes after that. Quick snapshot. I love this for me.

Is Matthew Good doing a Scottish accent? No, he's defiantly English and talks about the English national soccer squad with a bunch of Scottish people who are like, you're being Billy Big Balls about this, you know? Okay. All right. Great. Wow.

I can't wait. Scott Frank made it shot in Edinburgh. It's great. Love Edinburgh. Great stuff. Great. All right. You nailed it.

Thanks. Everybody has all of the programming reminders that they need. They have a bonus recommendation from CR himself. Spoiler warning. Why don't we take care of that too while we're here? everything that happened in Rogue One could come up today. If it ever happened in the television series and or could come up today. And listen, if it's ever happened in Star Wars, that's a lot.

It is possible. Yeah. It's at least possible that it could come up today. That's the spoiler warning. Definitely the first 10 minutes of a new hope may come up today. I think so. Possibly. Possibly.

Chris, anything you intend to spoil about like the 2025 Philadelphia Eagles roster? or any other spoiler warnings you want to toss out? No, I don't think. I'm going to try and be good. I'll try not to just casually mention who dies on various other TV shows. I think I think I'll behave myself. Okay. Let's get to the opening snapshot.

All right, guys, let's talk about Rogue One. This film came out, and let me tell you something, this was a harrowing date to confront on Yeald Interwebs. December 16th, 2016. This movie is almost a decade old. I would like to start there. What did it do to you to stay? hear that truth in the face. I felt so old. I felt so old. I feel like ever since COVID,

not to bring the party down by mentioning COVID at the top of spot, but ever since COVID, time doesn't really make any kind of sense to me. I've lost all, like, perspective on passage of time. I do think it speaks to a certain timeless quality of Rogue One and its efforts to connect things that have been documented or shot in the 1970s with things that are shot in the 21st, century that I had no idea it was 2016. I seriously thought it was 2018 or 2019. It, it, it, I have, I remember where I was watching this movie. Same. But I have no recollection of like this being mere weeks after the election or something like that, you know? Yeah. And this was also an era post-election pre-COVID in addition to those, thanks for those cheerful markers, guys.

This was also just a moment in time where Star Wars movies were coming out pretty regularly. Yeah. The Force Awakens came out the year prior. We were in the colon space, a Star Wars story era, a solo, a Star Wars story. Joanna's canonically established on this podcast and others' favorite film ever made. And any chance she gets, she says, hashtag big solo to happen. Slander. Slander.

We were supposed to get that Boba Fett movie in this group. That's right. And that is not where we are, obviously, currently, as we wait for Mandalorian and Grogo to become the next Star Wars movie after Rise of Skywalker, which also feels like it was 100 years ago because it was. The film was directed by Gareth Edwards, Tony Gilroy, patron saint of The Watch, House of Our, the Ringer podcast network, and increasingly the internet, has the co-story by credit with Chris White. But it's one of you, industry Scalers want to give a quick

refresher to folks on Gilroy coming in to basically like fix the film and what his role in the project was? I think it's worth noting that this is a film with many authors and maybe

ended with one. And I can't tell we're going to talk a lot about how Andor has informed our view of Rogue One. Like Joe, do you feel like Rogue One is taken on more Tony Gilroy authorship in the post and or era than you did when you first saw it. Yes.

Yeah. But I can't tell how much of that is like backfilled. Do you know what I mean? Exactly. Yes. I mean, he's, go ahead. Sorry, no, go ahead. Well, I will say this was like sort of a state secret how much they brought Tony Gilroy into this.

When I was, I was at VF Vanity Fair when this came out, and when I was talking to Lucasville about who I should interview, they wanted me an interview, Gareth Edwards. I talked to John Knoll, who was the longtime Lucasfilm employee who had the idea for Rogue One where he said,

hey, what if we did a movie about the people who stole the Death Star plans, not Skywalker focused? His idea was like there would be no force, no Vader, no Jedi, no anything like that. And Lucasfilm's like, well, we won't go that far.

But like, it comes, it originates with John Knoll, a longtime Lucasfilm employee goes through all these phases. Tony Gilroy comes in as a longtime Kathleen Kennedy associate as like a fixer sort of for a production that had gone a bit off the rails. But they were pretending when this movie came out because they're just sort of like Han Solo-esque, we're fine, everything's fine here. How are you on the comms?

Asked me to interview Gareth Edwards. He had to pretend like he had never lost convalued. control of his own movie, which he had. And they sent a babysitter into that interview, like a Disney employee to just sit there and glare at him while he talked to me to make sure that he didn't say anything, which is unusual for this kind of conversation. And so more and more we understand how much Tony Gilroy had to do with Andor. But there is also, I think, Chris, that sense that when you go through Rogue One with the Fine Tooth comb, which Mallory and I did, Mallory, I think, much more diligently than I did, and sort of connect the dots between

lines and Rogue One and lines that happen in Andor. Again, you don't know how much is like Tony Gilroy's son saying, like, hey, are you going to explain rebellions are built on hope to the TV audiences at home where that came from? And how much of that is actually like Gilroy DNA existing in both shows? Do you know what I mean, Chris? Yeah, I was, you know, when I rewatched Rogue One before we talked to Tony for the finale, I went into it looking for classic Gilroyisms, you know, whether it was these amazingly poetic renditions of very bureaucratic negotiations between two parties, whether it was these amazingly articulate descriptions of a character that come from within, you know, like I think obviously there's a line in my

Michael Clayton, which you could easily apply to Tony, which is, I'm not a miracle worker. I'm a janitor. And that was, to some extent, Tony's reputation in Hollywood, right? Like, he gets a lot of credit for the Bourne movies. The Born movies had very many cooks in that kitchen. You know, he directed the Born Legacy. It failed to take off and launch that franchise into a new era of Jeremy Renner or these other spies being in the Bourne universe.

He obviously has a lot of Jose. Stranes throwed on him from Michael Clayton didn't exactly set the world on fire in a box office sense, nor set Tony Gilroy up as like a blank check director to borrow the blank check the idea. So Tony Gilroy is like kind of a gunslinger. And he roves from production to production and does screen doctoring, script doctoring and fixes stuff. And is obviously revered both within Hollywood and by nerds like us. But when he gets to Rogue One and you watch. Rogue One, you're kind of like looking for a signature that almost isn't there.

Yeah. I agree. I think that that's how it always felt. But I feel that much more keenly now in the wake of Andor, where you can sense his influence and his imprint, but not that it was the thing he shaped from start to finish and would have done exactly that way, very clearly, right? And that's like, I think always been apparent, but is undeniable in the wake of Andor. You mentioned the box office, Chris.

This movie made a billion dollars. This bumpy cleared a billion dollars. We had no idea how good we had. We had it fucking great. We had a fucking great, man. I remember, like, opening night going, just being so excited to see it. I remember, though.

I have such, like, vivid memories of the posters, the marketing for this movie is the way that they were, like, incorporating the teals and blues of Scariff and the looming specter of the death star and the death troopers, all of it. I was just like, I can't. I just cannot wait to see this movie and going, but then having to get back to edit like a 4,000-word limber call at like 2 a.m.

Then it had come in off of the movie. We had no idea how bad we had it. I remember being so energized by it too because it was just so fun. I was at D23 when they announced the cast. And this was such like a huge, oh, that's what they're doing with this, you know, like this international cast that they announced here. I'm like, Diego Luna's in a Star War? Okay, let's go.

And the sense that Gareth Edwards coming off of, you know, his like already take on Godzilla, that this was like sort of this, again, Gareth Edwards lost control of this movie, but like that this was like a thinking man's genre, this thinking man's take on Star Wars to a certain degree. Emphasizing the war in Star Wars, yeah. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, and then the trailer came out and we were like, oh, this is a war. war movie. That's what this is. I thought that was, it was just like a really fascinating, especially in this and or conversation we're having right now where we're like, we want more

of and or, and by that we mean a number of things. But one of the things we mean is Star Wars meaning a number of different things. Star Wars can stretch and include a number of things under the tent. And as much as we at House of Ar are excited for Mandalorian and Grogu, like it can't just be mandolarian grogo and it can't just be Skywalker's, or maybe it can, but we would prefer it if it weren't. And like that's when Rogue One comes out sort of in conjunction

with Solo a Star Wars story, and I think of Solo Star Wars story as like the most like we're just going to tread back over a well-trodden path. It was like this nice counter to that, this promise of we're going to do so many different things, which did not ultimately

pay out at least cinematically for them and your mileage may vary sort of on the TV front for them as well. Yeah, I... Sorry, go ahead, Chris. No, I was just going to say, you know, often when I talk about this movie or what I've talked about it in the intervening years, even outside of Andor,

I think the first thing that comes up is the last 10 minutes of it. And everybody has their descriptions of, like, their soul living their body when this happened, like when the end of this movie takes place leading right directly into a new hope and, you know, ethical concerns aside about the CGI ghost people that occupy it, it's still so thrilling to see this thing that was probably maybe

half-baked in your childhood imagination get depicted on screen. But going back and re-watching it, I was struck by how much it feels like, structurally, the Abrams, broadly the Abrams and Ryan Johnson's sequels, where it's a lot of planet hopping

and it's a lot of like, we must go here to find this thing that will unlock this thing that will get us the thing that we want. And that kind of very, almost gamified storytelling that I don't really remember being a factor in like,

certainly the original trilogy, but, you know, is a very, to me, Abramsie and MCU-E kind of storytelling where there's a lot of Mcuffins and kind of watching the movie at that time

and feeling a little bit frustrated, I think, you know, by the speed with which it was moving through all this world that it had built and then immediately we got to get to another planet. I'm like, well, what about Edou? What about Scaref? What about, like, what about these other places? I want to like know what's up with them? And I think for all of us, it's like, Tony Gilroy was like, I know,

I know you want to know about them. What if what if we did 22 hours, 24 hours, in the in-betweens of the jumps, you know, finding the nooks and crannies, finding the other people, finding the background characters, pushing them to foreground. And that's the genius of the show that really then embellishes the film. Because just like the original films taught you how to be creative in some way, depending on when you saw them in your life, and or almost lets you like fill in what's happening in Rogue One, you know, like, you're like, oh yeah, I kind of have a vibe of like what happened

in between these two missions that they go on. Or now that we've been to Yavin or now that I know a little bit about the factions that informed this rebellion, I have all this, like, you know, imagination cooking about Saw or whatever. And I just found it to be such an invigorating rewatch. I think, and that's a lot of, you know,

what we're going to do today is to, like, sort of go through and parse all the sort of echo back that you get from, like, a single line in Rogue One. And you're like, oh, that makes me think of this character. and that character and this step along Cassian's path. I think the downside of it is I think it then highlights some of the shallow shallowness of Rogue One. I was not as high on Rogue One as a lot of other people when it came out.

I've actually grown to like it more. The Tarkin thing really bothered me. The Leia thing really bothered me. And then to your point about the planet hopping, like, when we go to Adu, like, I don't know, there's just some planet hopping that happens and I'm like, did we need to go here? Or is this, could I have, could we have done more here? Yeah.

And so it's like, you know, Chris texted me, I think midway through the season of Andor and he was like, thinking about Rogue One now, can't you see it as like a season of Andor? And if we spent like three episodes on Shedda and three episodes on ADM and stuff like that. But I think the character that's- Are you listening? Yeah, exactly. Big ring of Kaffreen heads here. But I think that, I think, I think. the part of Rogue One that suffers the most because of that is Jin.

And we got a lot of emails about this from either people who had never seen Rogue One and watched it after Andor because they knew we were going to do this podcast. So they watched Rogue One for the first time after Andor and they're like, what do you mean? Cassian isn't the main character to people who really latched on to Jin and care a lot about gin or so and now feel like she's not the main character in her own movie anymore because so many, like there's no profound depth to her arc the way there is. we can now infuse Cassians with. And I thought that was really an interesting,

not an intentional thing that Andor does, but just by nature of giving Andor so much rich backstory and so many other characters connected to him that we care about. And then Jin, we get this like much, much, much more accelerated, shallower version of. And so then she feels like a thinner character. It feels like a thinner character, you know? Yeah.

The Jin Erso piece, to quote Bill Simmons. I mean, it's right there. It's probably the biggest element of this conversation because I could see arguments that her story is very self-contained by it, Rogue One. But there's obviously a huge apprenticeship on her part and an experience that she had as a soldier and as a kind of miscreant that really mirrors Cassians, you know?

Absolutely. And I wonder whether or not, putting aside whether or not Felicity Jones was interested in or up for returning and whether or not that would have worked at all. I think it's hard to see the benefit in telling

the same two stories because I think that they whatever you learn about gin winds up somewhat being true for Cassian. You know, in some ways in terms of their long roundabout trip to get to this point where they're part of this alliance

and they're doing this incredible act of sacrifice for it. Not note for note, obviously, but like there was the criminals. It was the criminal who became the soldier who became the rebel leader. And it was, you know. Absolutely. Right down to the missing parents, right? And the labor camp stance.

I mean, I wouldn't ever take a single second away from the Lutheran and Clayah episode, which I love. But if there was like a Saw younger Jin story to tell that could tell us as much about Saw as it does about Jin, saw your favorite character I know, Chris, like that could maybe could have been. been interesting. And like, even if you don't cast Lucy Jones, if you get a younger actress to play Gin or so, we could have some gin time. But like, you know, I don't need it, but I understand why some people who feel so strongly about Jin or so in the first place might want it. What do you think, Mel? Yeah, I, so I've always really loved Rogue One. Andor has, I would say, pretty radically altered my relationship to the film, like, not subtly.

And in some ways, it has heightened my connection to the film. And in other ways, it has, I think, undeniably made Rogue One, like a less impactful movie for me. And I agree with what you guys are saying. Like, certainly everything with Cass. I think if we take the kind of, like, Chris, you've used the word discourse and narrative a few times to there. I have a tendency to do that.

If we think about, you know, there was just a lot out in the ether about, you know, including coming from people who are involved with and or like, yeah, you're going to be able to boot up Rogue One and it's going to feel like the actual finale, right, to the story. And in some ways, I think that's certainly true. And I think that the given what the actual reality and just like mechanics of the task were to reverse engineer from a movie that had already been made to reverse engineer against another film, it's a stock. It's astonishing that it works as well as it does. Like absolutely astonishing. I watch Rogue One now and I long for more Cassian. I just do. And I think that what we get from him, we have through our 24 hours of Andor, I agree with you guys, more than enough to apply to make everything feel full and right.

But like, when we get to the end, I'm just like, I need to know. thinking about Bix? You know, and we can fill in the blanks there, and I think we can actually do that quite effectively. But I don't think there's really, I wouldn't believe anybody who told me. It's like, Vell, let's just mentioning. Any Brunette will do.

Any Brunette in a storm, you know? Yeah, exactly. In a nuclear storm. Yeah, that's, well, I was going to say that's Will, but that would be any blonde. I just, I think undeniably, if the order in which these things were made had been changed. That's a silly thing to say,

because we got Andor because Rogue One exists. So what a gift. And again, Rogue One is a movie I've always really liked. But Rogue One would be a different movie now if it were made after Andor without question. And I think like even characters like Saw Crenic, we just have a lot from Andor that we can put into our read of what happens with those characters in Rogue One that I think is really interesting and rewarding. Gin is, I am now, I feel kind of almost guilty saying this. you, I've, like, always liked Jin. Jin's never been like, oh, my God,

Jin is one of my top three favorite Star Wars characters ever. That's, I won't claim that that's how I've ever felt about Jim, but I've liked Jen and I like the Jin Cassian dynamic. I found myself almost, like, reflexively. Like, it wasn't even something I was consciously in control of, watching the movie and watching everything that happened with Jin and Cassian through the lens of, you're thinking like a thief, I'm thinking like a soldier, think like a leader.

the Cassian evolution and the Cassian arc and the impact that Cassian has on other people. And in some ways, I found that actually incredibly satisfying to see how everything that we watch with Cassian's arc and this place that he got to, the impact that it had on other people. What an amazing thing to get to watch. And I think Rogue One also stitches together quite well with just this larger mission and task that Andor had of like all the people, all the people who Cassian and Val on a small forest hut might toast that the rest of the galaxy never knew about, who are just as consequential in the saving and restoring the fate of the galaxy

as Luke when he fired that bolt into the reactor. That's all kind of like amazing to experience now going back to the film. But there are other parts of it where whether it's, would Gilroy have written this differently and do we know it? Would we have spent more time in this space instead of this space? Would Jin have been deployed a little bit differently? Or would we have understood more about her? That I think do feel altered by 24 episodes of one of the

best TV shows we've ever seen. I want to shout out one thing, you know, because I think he gets kind of dismissed now because of Tony's accomplishments with Andor. And I just want to say that I do think Gareth Edwards is a really accomplished filmmaker. And especially one who's really talented at scope and scale depicting large objects against human beings, depicting the fucking death star appearing in the clouds. The best. You know, at the end over Scariff.

like a scariff or yeah yeah scarab um and just the absolute magnitude of the construction of this thing and feeling like the might of something truly evil is out there hunting these people is really impressive the action sequences to the extent that he directed them i assume are especially the scariff uh battle is just unreal and really electric yeah there's also fair to say you know one of the great teaser trailers of all time is the Rogue One teaser, which famously has, like, other stuff in it that's not in the movie,

including some stuff Saw says, with a different haircut, if I remember correctly, like in the teaser. And Joe, maybe you know a little bit about, like, what got cut and what got kept. But all that, like, what will you become stuff?

And her in the kind of Stormtrooper outfit, which she does wear in Rogue One, but, like, there's other stuff in there. Yeah. So just I'd shout out that there's cool stuff that I doubt is Tony that's in the movie. 100%. And yeah, I didn't mean, I didn't mean to say that Gareth is not on this movie at all. But yeah, I mean, I actually think there are some things in this movie that always felt a little herky jerky to me in terms of like plant hopping or I would say crucially, Jin's change of mind just feels a little like.

Her epiphany is like abrupt. And so like that. And so I think. So I think there's a hallmarks of a movie that's been kind of frank and pasted together a bit from something else. And so it's a miracle that Rogue One is as great as it is given that that, you know, we've seen a number of other projects that are just pasted together from something else. And it's gibberish. And this is definitely not that. This is like, has extreme beauty, extreme poetry inside of it.

And it's just an impressive feat. From the franchise that brought you Anakin going to try. to stop Palpatine to slaying younglings in 11 minutes, if memory serves. Well, Val, you bring up a good point that I really wanted to bounce off you to, which was one of the great achievements I think of Andor is the way it plays with epic scope, but with thriller compression. So jumping across years and years,

but within those years are the three days that matter. And the three thriller days or the three heist days or the three guys or the three Gorman Masker days that you have to be there for, but you get the sense that all this time is unfolding and that there are things happening in between the arcs and that Bix is falling apart or that the Yavin has become together and now it's got all these rules and all this stuff. And it doesn't have to be on screen for you to intuit what's going on. And it's such a stark contrast to watch that and then jump into Rogue One and be like, no, this movie's like two plus hours, but it's over? Like what? You guys went to like eight planets and accomplished five different tasks and blew something up and now, you know, like here we are.

Like this is wild. Like it really did speak to the ingenious construction of how Andor was like, you know, originally thought of as a five-season show that was going to lead up to Rogue One. I think ultimately rightly chose to be two perfect seasons of TV that had a lot of blank spaces that people could. figure it out for themselves about what had been going on. But within those arcs was a perfect 90-minute thing, you know, or a perfect

100-minute thing that we can go back and revisit as pieces or as part of a whole. It was interesting to me, I love that. It was really interesting to me talking to a couple friends this last weekend who had just finished

Andor, and they are Star Wars fans, but not, you know, fanatics. But they are their lifel lifelong Star Wars fans. And one of them was binging, and she was like, she got confused and disoriented by the time jumps because she didn't understand the BBWive at all and stuff like that. And so, you know, I was like, I think it's a little clear

if you're watching it three episodes a week sort of chunk and stuff like that on a binge. And if you're not prewarned that we're jumping through time in this way, I can understand why it might be slightly disorienting. I thought that was, it hadn't occurred to me that people like wouldn't know. that, you know, I'm like, you don't listen to five-hour podcast every week about this show you're watching.

I mean, it's literally just happened to me with Last of Us where I was like, what? Oh, yeah. I was supposed to be reading those things? My favorite new bit on the watch is, how many episodes is the show? There's no way to know. Our soft boycott of Google has not gone well.

How can we possibly know how many episodes are in the season? Who can say? Yeah, I actually, it's so interesting that you had somebody mentioned that to you, Joe, because I had been wondering about that. Like, if you're not watching in real time when it's very clear that these three are being put up at once and kind of ideally meant to be consumed either together

or at least in quick succession, like what is it going to feel like? Now, I think those three episodes would all still be like riveting, mesmerizing television, but then are you going to have those like, wait, what moments? And how long then would it take across the flow of the season to orient to what that paces? So, yeah, I don't know, Chris. I mean, in some ways, this is like, I think your question is a really interesting one in general.

Like, the pace of a movie, the pace of a television show. We have all talked, you know, many times together and on other episodes of our pause about, like, the detriment of the expansion of IP in the streaming wars era, right? Like, it's obviously, it can go quite wrong. It often does. Andor, I really, like, agree with what you said earlier, Joe. I think I'm always worried that the wrong lesson and bad lesson of Andor has tried to make Andor exactly as Andor was.

Like that's just how you lead to, that's just how you get cosplay, pale limitations, nothing that's going to be as good. The thing about Andor was that it was distinct and it had a clear sense of self and intent, mission, purpose, like identity, voice, point of view, all of it, right? And so I think what's then like really, really interesting about your question, Chris, is that element inside of it of like, and you and Andy talked about this a lot across the season. And it was so interesting to listen. Like, when you guys felt pulled back into like, no, actually, it's not, they can tell us.

it's four movies, but it's TV. It's TV. And like, a movie. Love a movie. Let me tell you what was fucking fun. Rewatching all seven Mission Impossible movies and then going to the theater and watching a very confusing eighth film that I have a lot of questions about. But I will always, always pick 12 hours that we can spend with these characters.

Depth of character. Really getting to know them and understanding. why they do the things they do. And that, I think, is ultimately going to be the key distinction between a season of Andor, whether it's structured the way season one was or season two was, and Rogue One, we understand Cassian in a way that is distinct from how we understand characters we have only met in a movie. And, like, how could we not?

My favorite thing, though, is, like, we understand Cassian. There are elements of the ideas that Tony has that I can infuse into other characters that we're not in Rogue One. when we get we talked about this when we were covering and or like we were thinking about churts or blaze you know like we were thinking about these like various people bodie etc um yeah i i i want to i want to hit you c r with the question we got from one of our listeners brian um who asks how would you recommend a rewatch of and or rogue one and a new hope there's always the temptation of going in chronological order where and or feeds directly into rogue one however to me one of

the most fascinating parts of Andor Season 2 was how adeptly it operated its characters, pacing, and chronology within the constraints that were predefined due to Rogue 1. There are many instances in which knowing where the story ends up adds weight to the decisions characters make and also to

other little moments along the way. I don't know if the depth of thinking is the bad baby in me or if a casual Star Wars fan would even care. Just curious to hear your thoughts on the matter are separate from your power rankings. So like, you know, to follow up for what Brian's saying, like, one of our favorite things to think about is, like, yeah, where is Bix, you know,

in Rogue One? Where is Will? Where is Vell? Where is Clea? Where's Luthin? Like, the time is running out on these characters and their role in the rebellion, and we know that because they're not at the center of the story going forward. What's an espionage version of a Force Ghost?

Wethon's Force Ghost energy would be incredible. I feel like it would be like a, it would be. purple instead of blue or something like that. What if he was just like super psyched? Because he's like, it turns out. I did get to see a sunrise. Wait.

It's awesome. Guys, hold on. If Luthan came back as a force ghost, which which wig would he have. But which you can't do. But which in our thought experiment, which haircut would he have, Joanna? Which wig?

Which wig? Do you think he would give himself the really bad buzz cut, brush cut from his first life? I think he does like possible war criminal. Luthan from like his early days. His most useful self, I think is what we found some of these Forst Ghosts wants to do. But what do you think, Chris, in terms of like rewatching, what order would you?

I'm going to break the rule that I have been sort of trumpeting a lot on the watch, which is I hate TV series that start with the most exciting thing and then go two weeks earlier. And then the rest of the series goes. Yeah. But I am going to say, New Hope, end with the parade, blink five years earlier. And it's beginning of Andor. Whoa. And then watch Andor through and then watch Rogue One.

Wow. So it's basically a circle. It's a circle rather than a line. And then would you watch a New Hope again? If you wanted to, sure. You're a visionary. And just keep circling back. You're dangerous, but you're a visionary.

To find out how Palpatine is returned. Somehow. Somehow. Somehow. Somehow. What do you think, I think it's like, I like the idea that Andor, the logo is this like almost completed circle, you know, and so you start on one end of it and you go all the way around, but not quite, you know what I mean?

Like you kind of know where you're going. And it's really interesting, I think, to get to the end with the parade in New Hope or the sort ceremony of medals, which have been much discussed online of like, how the fuck are these guys? They like look themselves in the mirror. Yeah. Enjoyed Bill discovering his takes on that for the first time. Yeah. It seems weird that these guys got dapped up like.

this. But getting to that and be like, oh, that's the story. And it's like, no. It starts here, you know? Damn. Inspiring. It gives me heart palpitation. Five years earlier, these fuckers didn't get any medals.

I've been really into the fan edit piece. Like, I've been watching like, you know, the trailers for fan edits. Yeah. And what if you did pure chronological? So would that be Lutheran discovering Klayah? Oh. And more of a discovering Cassian.

Canari, yeah, exactly. Canari, Cassian. Canari, right, yeah. Yeah. And then also like saw pulling gin out of the... And then you can have my AI made animation of Partagaz and credit at the Naval Academy together.

I got my new cape. Okay, wow. I can't really ever object to starting with a new hope. It's a solid, solid place to start really any cinematic journey in your life. You saw a solo of Star Wars. story. Exactly.

Start with like every tweet behind the hashtag make solo to happen campaign. So it's just you and Lindberg? Got it. Correct. Here's what I would do. I don't know what I would know. Here's what I think I would do.

Yeah. I would watch Rogue One first because I do feel that Andor is a more rewarding experience knowing where Cassians's story concludes. Watch Rogue One Watch and or in order Watch Rogue One again And then watch A New Hope This is the way

There she is It's Rogue One and or Rogue One A New Hope That's my soulmate Okay that makes a lot of sense I was going to say that the thing that hits different after Andor is Cassian

Taking out Tivik Is that Tivik? Yeah And you're like Oh my God you know, the more things change, the more they stay the same. This dude's still putting bullets in people, you know. And it's kind of tragic to get out of Andor and the surging music and his baby on a wheat planet.

He's on his way to, you know, nerfed dude. He's still murking guys for information. Like, thinking about, we were thinking about Tivik a lot when my god Lonnie died on a bench. Like he said died. Like he had a heart attack. Yeah, my guy, Lonnie. That could have been anything. Wait, Mallory, did I tell you that one of our listeners went to Lonnie's bench?

Unbelievable. Because we were at, I said this on the podcast. I was like, we should lay flowers at Lonnie's bench, which is in Valencia in Spain. And one of our listeners went there. And left flowers? Didn't leave anything yet. No. But he was like, if you want to tell me what to put here, I will put something here for Lonnie.

Print out some of the sensitive imperial documents taken using Deadramuro's code cert. Letters, fake letters from Lonnie's wife about their daughter. Oh, man. Great stuff. Okay. Christopher, any other thoughts? However big or however small on Rogue One and or anything at all. What's the Rogue One character, non-Gyn department, non-K2, obviously, who you feel like could have, could have been hanging out on Yavin, could have been in the larger Luthan click, could have been in some meetings, could have been in some situations. I guess Bodey is doing Imperial piloting. Yeah.

I mean, it would only be like more melchie than we got, though I think you already got like a lot of melchie. But is there someone else on the Scariff crew? Blue Leader. I was going to say, I mean, we're big Ben Daniels blue leader fans. Yeah, I mean, I guess in the end of the day, it's really, it's like they got to the end of that movie. And I think he probably, for whatever reasons, like he just was like, it's Diego. It's his story. I have an idea.

And, you know, the gin, gin then gets kind of, like, left to the movie. I don't think it would have worked if in season two there was, like, a gin bottle episode, you know, of, like, what she's doing now. But it is an interesting, like, thought experiment. I think that I still long for Dan Gilroy's scrapped K-2-S-O. Oh, fuck. It's not too late. You know what I'm doing. That sounds incredible.

That's the thing. Give it to us as a holiday special. You know what I deserve it, the holidays? K2SO killing a bunch of people. I look like this in my head because now anything that we get in the holidays is going to be a let down because it's not that. That sounds incredible. I hope they make that one day. I really do.

Yeah. Yeah. I really do wonder. You know, I kind of, I know that he's like, I'm done. I need to go make a real movie. Not a real movie. I need to go make a movie. I need to go learn how to do stuff without blasters and special effects and Luke call building worlds for me.

But I do wonder whether Tony has been very open about, like, this has been the most rewarding, affirming experience of his creative life. And I, you know, does the economic model change so much since pre-COVID that they can't do something like this again? Is there another story to tell? And would you want it? Or do you want to leave perfect alone? Like we used up all the perfect?

I just, like, I don't trust. anyone else's hands on this story is how I feel. So if like the family Gilroy wants to, you know, we've talked about this. We've talked about like a spinoff with like Val and Clea hunting down like hidden Nazis, hidden Imperials. Like I would watch that in a second, but I really only want. What about Val and Claya getting completely radicalized by the metal ceremony in a new hope. Footage of the metal ceremony and we, and we like edit in Val and Clayah in the back.

They're in the window. They're like, incredible. I mean, it's canon. Vell said to Cassian that she would kill anyone she heard saying they were there for Aldani. Yeah. Like, Vell has some takes on the metal ceremony. No question about it.

What are Velin Clayah doing is my number one question? My number one is what's be up to and is he still happy. My number two is that. No, I guess my number two would be like, how's Cassie? Cassian's kid, maybe my number three is that. Do you guys consider, of all the characters who do appear in both, tubes, the most important connective tissue character? Who's tubes?

That's one of Saw's henchmen. Oh, yeah, that's right. That guy's cool. I think what I was really stunned by rewatching Rogue One for this was just how much more I enjoy Crenic, even though I already enjoyed him so much. But what they did with Krenic in season two is really, really flavored. My Rogue One watch in a really fun way.

Yeah, I mean, I strongly agree. Watching him go from, like, finger on the top of Dedra's head to speck a dust under Tarkin's boot is just, like, really delightful. Yeah, there was, I saw a meme as, like, imagine spending your entire life building a thing just to have Tarkin blow you up with it. Yeah. I guess Crenic really is the answer, like, when it comes to, like, the genius of the two.

Like, to take Crenic from the movie and be like, Ben, you got any other ideas? And Ben's like, I got some ideas. I'm going to say Calcite alternatives in the most absolutely fabulous way possible. Incredible. It's so, it is really, that's like, that is an area where I had a lot of fun thinking about what Crenic did with other. members of the empire and how his come up, the shape has come up and takes in Rogue One, very satisfying.

And then just, of course, the thrill of getting to see him, not only in a cape, but in outerwear cape. Yeah. It's special and we're fortunate. It is very special. Like a Cape windbreaker? It's wonderful. Chris, do you want to come clear with our listeners

and tell them the, and or spin-off you really want, which is, let's jail break Dedra? Oh, my God, yeah. Well, why can't Vel and Clea do it? Belenclia, break out Dedra and Dedra, helps them find all of the escapes imperial. Sisters of the Rebellion.

Come on. Rebellion sisterhood. I was going to say the last time we had something with sisterhood in the name, it was great. Quality. Well, thanks for having me on YouTube. It was called Dude Prophecy at the end. Hey, thanks for joining us, ma'am. Yeah, thanks.

Hey, thanks, Chris. I can't wait to listen to this and hear the additional two and a half hours of insight. I'm serious. I am going to do it. And one of my favorite pots. So thanks for having me on. We love you, buddy. We love you, Chris. Thanks.

Bye, guys. Okay, Joanna. Snoring, gasping during sleep, feeling fatigue, ask your doctor about Zepbound, terse appetite. The first and only FDA-approved prescription medicine for moderate to severe obstructive sleep apnea, OSA, and adults with obesity. Zepbound is a prescription medicine used with a reduced calorie diet and increased physical activity to help adults with moderate to severe obstructive sleep apnea,

OSA, and obesity to improve their OSA. Zepbound. is approved as a 2.5, 5, 7.5, 10, 12.5, or 15 milligram injection. Zepound contains terseptitide and should not be used with other terseptide containing products or any GLP1 receptor agonist medicines. It is not known if Zepound is safe and effective for use in children. Don't share needles or pins or reuse needles. Don't take if allergic to it or if you or someone in your family had medullary thyroid cancer, or if you've had multiple endocrine neoplasia syndrome type 2. Tell your doctor if you get a lump or swelling in your neck. Stop

Zepbound and call your doctor if you have severe stomach pain or a serious allergic reaction. Severe side effects may include inflamed pancreas or gallbladder problems. Tell your doctor if you experience vision changes before scheduled procedures with anesthesia. If you're nursing, pregnant, plan to be, or taking birth control pills. Taking Zep bound with a sulfonel urea or insulin may cause low blood sugar. Side effects include nausea, diarrhea, diarrhea, and vomiting, which can cause dehydration and worsen kidney problems. Talk to your doctor. Call 1-800-545-9-9 or visit Zepbound. Lily.com. This episode is brought to by Whole Foods Market. Spring is here, so celebrate it with fresh,

juicy, seasonal produce and some very tasty limited time flavors. New Whole Foods, Market Peach, Apricot, Rose, Italian soda. Perfect for a picnic or brunch, as is their trending mango, Yuzu, chantilly cake. But if you're on the go, new 365 strawberry pretzels make a great sweet snack. That sounds delicious. Get savings with the yellow sale sign storewide and everyday low prices on 365 brand items. Enjoy the fresh flavors of spring. Save at Whole Foods Market. Snoring, gasping during sleep, feeling fatigued, ask your doctor about Zepbound, terse appetite. The first and only FDA-approved prescription medicine for moderate to severe obstructive sleep apnea.

and adults with obesity. Zepbound is a prescription medicine used with a reduced calorie diet and increased physical activity to help adults with moderate to severe obstructive sleep apnea, OSA, and obesity to improve their OSA. Zetbound is approved as a 2.5, 5, 7.5, 10, 12.5, or 15 milligram injection. Zetbound contains terseptitide and should not be used with other terseptide-containing products or any GLP1 receptor agonist medicines. It is not known if Zetbound is, safe and effective for use in children. Don't share needles or pins or reuse needles. Don't take if allergic to it or if you or someone in your family had medullary thyroid cancer, or if you've had multiple endocrine neoplasia syndrome type 2. Tell your doctor if you get a lump or swelling in

your neck. Stop set bound and call your doctor if you have severe stomach pain or a serious allergic reaction. Severe side effects may include inflamed pancreas or gallbladder problems. Tell your doctor if you experience vision changes before scheduled procedures with anesthesia. if you're nursing, pregnant, plan to be, or taking birth control pills. Taking Zepbound with a sulfonel urea or insulin may cause low blood sugar. Side effects include nausea, diarrhea, and vomiting, which can cause dehydration and worsened kidney problems. Talk to your doctor. Call 1-800-545-9 or visit Zepbound.lily.com.

Chris is gone. He passed the rebellion baton to us. Our turn to carry it. We must save the rebellion. We must save the dream. It is time for the deep dive. All right, Joe. We're going to go through this movie start to finish.

Father is like, should we do it? Just in buckets. And I said, no, let's do the whole thing. This is my fault. So here we are. Oh, man. But I'm excited. People have been clamoring for this episode.

Let's do it. And I get, I'm glad we can start with the credit at the rain. It's appropriate. It's appropriate. Let's begin. with our guy. This is where we say we do not like fascists, our guy, or syncretic. Every episode, you got to make it clear.

I saw, there was a fan, speaking of what Chris was talking about in terms of fan it, I saw Fan it, like, do a sitcom of Cyril and Dedra and, like, co-starring 80, and they did, like, sitcom credits. And I'm like, this is funny. Yeah. But I need you to have a disclaimer at the beginning that says you don't like fascism. I just need it now. before we do a wacky little comedy starring the fascist, Sierra and Dead Dr.

That caveat is ingrained into the experience for us at this point. Fifteen years ago, 15 years before the primary events of this film, Rogue One, Jen and her parents, Galen and Lira are hiding out, and they are preparing, as Orsynchronic arrives, to deal with this. The time frame on the heels of Andor, like everything else on the heels of Andor stood up. out anew because it's like 15 years ago, oh man, Luthyn, I wake up every day to an equation I wrote 15 years ago from which there's only one conclusion. Like, this is that moment for Galen, this decision and the decision he made before to leave and to put his family into hiding, to try to position himself to say, yeah, no, you know, it's the peaceful farmer's life. No, my wife, dead, gone, not here. My child? What child? Didn't work out that way. But it was the equation that he wrote,

and then an equation that he will continue to amend while back in the empire's charge. I think it's really interesting. Something that we'll hit a couple different times is this idea of like, you know, as typified by gin, how much can you look away? Like this idea that Galen was involved

in the creation of this, tried to walk away to have a farmer's life with his family, which is, you know, I guess the Bix Colleen move, right? But it's like, can you sit out a war that's already in progress. You know, this question of like, when is it war? You know, our and our characters have told us it's already war, you know? And when can you look away and when can you not?

And Galen, like, tried to look away. That's not an option to him anymore. So how can he rebel inside of this situation he finds himself in? I love that. Now I'm hearing saw in my head. Call it. But Chris left. So he can't do the impression.

Call it war. That's in my notes. Also, I mentioned my friends that I had dinner with this weekend. One of them does a really good Saw impression, and he kept just going, you're here with me now, boy! With Rydo! Or look at Saw, putting the mask on the same way in Roguewan ever again. Right, he's offing Rino, right?

Has to be. Either that or, like we discussed on that and our pod possibly tried to repair his shattered lungs from all the rhido he had previously left, but I've been. I believe he's Huff and Rino. I think it's like dentists from Little Shop of Horrors. He's just got his like nitrous on his back and feeling him. Wonderful stuff. Saw is called in because he is connected to the Erso family.

And Galen in this opening sequence, he drops the first start-as, so we're acclimated. This is his name, his nickname for his child, for his daughter, this term of endearment and affection. And ask him to tell, ask her to tell him that she understands what is happening, what is acquired, what is unfolding, why, all of it. There is a lot captured in this, tell me that you understand, which makes us think back to this season one moment between Marva and Cassian, and there are going to be a lot of comps as we break down the film today, as we've already teased between Cassian and Marva, Jen and Galen, a lot.

Tell me you understand. And Cassian's response to that in season one was, I don't. And that is one of the great joys of the Cassian Andor experience genuinely. This is also the stretch where Lira gives. gives Jin a chiber crystal pendant and tells her to trust the force. So, I mean, the force is just obviously, like, way more present throughout this movie than it is an Andor. We have a great email later that I'll get to that just, like, talks about when you watch Andor into Road One into a New Hope, it's like... The building, the cresting.

It's like magic coming back into Westeros. You know what I mean? It's just like blooming. Yes, absolutely. these properties. I love the idea that this was a family where some tether to that awareness lingered in the form of that pendant that gin is holding all 15 years a decade and a half later and like holding almost in reverence and prayer. Of course, how can we not think of the chyber crystal pendant that Luton gave Cassian, right? That initial wage to secure not only the work,

but a promise beyond it. Very cool to feel like that little tie. There. Love that. I'd like your comments on Krennick's outerwear here. The way it flaps is very special to me. We talked about this when he shows up with his various capes in Andor that they were like, well, his initial cape was this sort of like more utilitarian rain poncho cape. And we made him like, we gave him sort of finer capewear. But I just like, I love this design.

And I remember this from the trailer. Like, I remember watching them in, you know, and you talked about this, you love this shot in Scariff with the troopers in the water, but watching them on this like verdant green planet and here are these imperial figures here. Cranic's cape looks amazing. I remember seeing it on display at Lucasville like years and years ago, and it's just like still one of my favorite Star Wars costumes. I love this connection between like the sort of the ship-shaped ISB to the dramatic Vader. cape, right? This is sort of like this interstitial moment. I also love, I mean, we get Galen's lie about his wife and his kid, as you already mentioned. When Lira shows up, and he just has this weary, like, troublesome as ever, Lira, oh, Lira. Oh, Lera. The fact that he

doesn't believe Galen for a second in like any of the lies that he's telling here, Bad Mendelso is just so fun in this role. This is the most assured he will be because soon we will see him in the context of Tarkin, in the context of Vader and all that. But this is like his most, the most swagger we will see from him is in this particular circumstance. And we know, you know, because this is him in the past. And he's, when we see him in Rogue One in the present, he's fresh off the anxieties at the end of Andor. You know, his longtime friend, Partagas, just. killed himself because the fist is closing in, you know?

But troublesome as ever, can I just say, and this is my own head canon, but I'm sure it exists on the internet. It would not take a second to find it. Every time I watch Rogue One, I feel more increasingly sure of this, that Krennick has a, like, romantic fixation on Gillen or so. There's just like some, like, it's not just that he wants Gillen or so to design his death machine. That's all true.

but there's just something so like he hates his wife he like watching them like sort of like carouse in the flashback i'm not saying they ever had something but i just feel like but credit wanted to want something with gailen or so this is my own wow this is nothing to do with and or it's just how i feel okay i've never thought about this i had some other shipping center questions for you today elsewhere i don't ship it because i don't ship fascism but well that was in dozens of hours of Andor podcasts about shipping cereal and dead dress. Well, I'll say it this way. I don't ship it because I don't think it goes both ways.

I think it's a one-way street. But I think there's like something about like when he shows up in Adu, too, like as well, like on the platform, there's just like some vibe there that, I don't know. Again, it's not necessary to enjoy Rogue One, but is how I enjoy Rogue One. One more reason to, you know, lament the lack of expanded canon and, you know, instead of glimpsing in Jin's dreams, these little flashes to the past, what if we had been there for some of those parties? I mean, we got to go to some imperial bashes in Andor, and boy, when someone's throwing back a Cali cooler or two, it's memorable television. But we don't

like fascism. Okay, next time. Moving on. I think what you're identifying about Crenic in the past and then this like crumbling descent that we see what Andor gives us to understand everything there. And there are, you know, Crenic is elsewhere in the expanded canon. Like he's a, a key figure in the Thron Treason novel and is, it will be, if anyone has not read that and is interested in more Crenic, it will be quite a familiar place to find him, which is feuding with his fellow Imperial officers and trying to be the one who wins and gets Pelties approval.

Classic. This is like really, yeah, I found the Crenic aspects of Robo and really, really satisfying to revisit. He's like, Gayle and we need you back. Joe has some other reasons for that in the, you know, who might argue. You've given me something new to think about. One more reason. Again, we never run out of new reasons to revisit the tale.

Nothing's anything, as Gassian said. We're on the verge of greatness, he says. We were this close to providing peace and security for the galaxy. To which Galen replies, you're confusing peace with terror. And Krenick says, well, you have to start somewhere. Great villain stuff from Krenick here. And very reminiscent of obviously just a lot of the kind of core essence of what and or explores about how the empire conducts itself.

The kind of casual cruelty at play, you know, the way that Partagas talks about what has to happen on Gorman, right? It's just like, this is like an update in a meeting, and then I move on to the next thing. And made me think of Lutheran and Dedra. Yeah. Debra, their confrontation when Debra is talking about, like, here you're hiding in the peace and security of the empire.

he's like, you're crazy lady. Nuts. I was thinking, that's a great one. I was thinking of the great moment at Davos between Mon and Crenic, the like, they had their own code of conduct. Mon just every word and stare and breath drenched in disdain for this monster who she is forced to share a evening with. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And

Krennick's calm, cheery, ah, my rebel is your terrorist? Something like that. Like this is a guy who is part of a machine that loves to warp and twist perspective

and point of view to try to justify the things that it does. So to get that here was a nice, he's like, you know, from a certain point of view. From a certain point of view.

Yeah. I can't wait to get back to old Ben Kenobi later today. A wonderful part of... We're mostly talking about Rogue One in Andor, but every now and then something else from the wider Star Wars universe will come up

and he served me well in the Clone Wars. It's definitely one of those things. Oh, man. Gin, hiding in the grass, sees her mother. Killed. Lira emerges, blast her in hand, tells Krennick he'll never win. This is a refrain.

that Galen will repeat. It is a refrain that Jin will repeat. It is something that Krennick will just openly mock until the final moment. I've heard that before. Again, classic villain shit. When I killed your wife. Mocking the thing that will ultimately be true and undo you. And Jin hiding in the grass and seeing, witnessing the death of her mother, Cassian and Clem in the square on Farix.

Will and Solomon, his father, taken in. by Dedra and by Dr. Gors, tormented, killed, discarded, on pharix. Thila, our beloved Bellhop from Gorman and his father, the Tarkin Massacre, the Gorman Plaza. The way that consistently, inside of this list of the universe of Star Wars and more broadly, we see how the empire, this is like the other side of the, we usually talk about we create our own demons, like Iron Man 3, Tony Stark opening as like the hero who does something that leads to the villain they have to take down. The other side of it is really palpable here. The way that the empire, through its atrocities, creates, fosters, and foments the people who will then destroy it? Yeah.

Just an incredible thing to witness and horrifying, of course. I think that's really interesting. Two things. Makes you think of two things. One, the tree forgets, but the acts remembers, right? Like, that is what is true of all of these kids as they watch these parental figures be taken from. them. And then also, if you extrapolate that further into like Luke and Leah, like Luke and Leah, though they did not see what happened to their mother and their father, like they are the seeds

of one of the most twisted things that the emperor does, which is, you know, turn Anakin against himself and against the Jedi. And, you know, it takes the children of that. And that, you know, so that is what Star Wars, as much as I say we need to get away from the Skywalker saga, which I think we do. Star Wars is so much about this, like, generational cycles of, of rebellion, resistance, conformity, et cetera. So, yeah. Cassian.

Tivik. Kofreen. As Chris said, this is, like, this is the moment that you're most, like, because I love this, I always loved this as an intro to Cassian. Yeah. This is our, like, male lead of this movie. And we meet him shooting an informant who's injured and scared. Yeah.

And then to think of that, to think of Luton and Lonnie, to think of what got Cassian here. Right. How is this same as he's ever been? And how is this a new shade of same as he's ever been, you know? Yeah, it's like so interesting that both Rogue One and andor start with, from the Cassian slice of it, Cassian killing somebody else. And or obviously it's incredibly different in terms of the particulars. What happens on Morlana, when he is searching for his sister, everything that will bring Cyril into his and more importantly our lives, custom piping and all.

That's self-defense. He is trying to make it out of a perilous situation alive. The fact that things unfold so chaotically and unpredictably is part of the combustible brew that then leads to everything that unfolds after. What happens here? Yeah, Lon, I mean, it's much more Luton, Lonnie, like, when does the person who has served you and helped you and advanced the cause in some way? When does the scale tip and the risks that they pose to you in the cause in a given moment

suddenly outweighs the thing that they can or have provided? And it goes back to that idea, like, you know, the relay race, the message. Yeah. Like, Tivik is, you know, we've been talking about this baton passing of information. Tyvick is passing a baton of information to Cassian, which really just underlines information they already have. But that's okay. We're triangulating information. But Cassian can't keep going on the race, nor can Luthan keep going on the race to pass the baton on further if he doesn't remove this dead weight around his neck here.

And that's tough stuff for Typhic. Yeah. It's like I feel like this is a moment that has always worked really. really well inside of just the Rogue One arc for Cassian as we build. We'll obviously talk about this in more detail later, but when Cassian is talking so passionately about the terrible things, the horrible things that I have all done on behalf of the rebellion, it's like we got to witness it directly already. But now we just have so much more to pour into like the way that Cassian talks about his own history with Luther and the terrible things that Luther did. The way that

Cassian has felt when he's been on the other side of that kind of math and determination, really, really, really heightened on the heels of Andor. In terms of the kind of just like plot particulars of what they had to do at the end of Andor in order to stitch together the course to Rogue 1, I think the most fun part of that is, and we talked about this in our Andor finale pod, the someone named Erso sent him, some old friend of Saw's, Gaylan Erso? Was it? You know, because we had the like, Galen Erso, he's an engineer, there's a research

center, Gaylan Erso, say it, repeat what I've told you. sequence between Clea and Cassian and, like, to feel Clea's presence there, to feel then Lucin for Clea and Lonnie for Luton, and the relay race that we talk about going forward, like to feel how what that was in reverse, like before we got to this point then, really satisfying and cool. Can I say something that I thought about when I was watching the frankly improbable events that happened on A-Du when both Jin and Cassian are able to, like,

cross a massive ravine and go up. And the climb motif, which we talked about throughout and or into Rogue One, the climb, of course, up, you know, a separate tower. But like, what is a relay race, if not a ladder of some kind? You know what I mean? Like these various rungs on the ladder as we go up and up and up to send our message out. I just, we're going to, I mean, we think. think we're watching Rogue One differently after Andor?

Wait till we watch the Summer Olympics. Wait till we actually have a relay race in our lives again after our coverage of these properties. I've never seen relay race so much of my life as I have the last couple weeks. What about, I don't know if this, like, in the grand scheme of things, Cassia is killing Tivik, a source he has cultivated, somebody who is taking a great risk, somebody who is, as you noted, scared. I can't climb out of here with my arm. In particular, like, shoots him in the back.

Sue this tells him it's okay and then shoots them in the back part. Sit with you after Andor. Like, do you watch that any differently now? And like specifically, the thing that I was really thinking on, and this was just like, it's part of the, Andor is, this is a heroic tale and there's a lot of triumph, but it also is deeply tragic and ultimately at the end of the day complex. Yeah. I was thinking of that exchange between Draven and Cassie and when Draven,

We have some questions about some of the stuff he does in Rock One later, based on what he does at the end of Andor. I'm not sure that's the most successful these things could act perfectly. But that exchange they had about Tivik specifically, do you trust him in the way the Cassian said, I try? It's like we see so much of that with Cassian and Jin. It's not easy. Like, this has been one of the things that we've loved watching. The rebellion has the same fissures and fractures inside of it that the empire does. What are the distinctions?

It's like that you're not my competition. You're not the one I have to beat. You're not the one that's stealing glory for me or I have to steal glory from. I try. Like, I'm going to try. And so to see that plasterful to the back, it's like, Luton talks so much about the idea of sacrifice. And this is one of the moments where you feel that Cassian has to sacrifice. I mean, Tivik's the one paying a mortal toll here, but Cassian's soul, exactly.

Soul, yeah. That made me think of lost as things often do. of the classic lost exchange. It's never been easy. Yeah. It's never been easy. None of this is easy. I've been craving a lost rewatch.

Is it time? Let's do it. When you said earlier that COVID is like the COVID time is I, because I'm like, didn't I just rewatch lost? It feels like I did, but also it feels like 500 years ago. Beginning of COVID, that's, that's, have a decade. I can watch lost again. You can.

You sure can. Joanna. Prison break. gin or so. This is, like, radically different to me post-Andor, because we just did not have the comp. For what K2 can do. Well, two things.

Yeah. Yes. Frankly, like with a PTSD of watching K slams somebody into the ground after watching him pre-reprogramming on Gorman, but I was just like, okay, frankly, I used to find this scene. Congratulations, you were being rescued.

Please do not resist. It's very amusing. And I still do because K2SO is the best. Now I'm just like it's amazing that Jin made it out of this without a shattered spine and skull. But with Cassian and Jin, like, you know, we have the Lonnie Lutheran season two finale, the need for hypercrustles, the crackdowns, the public order, the labor camps, Scariff, this idea of the labor camps and the role that they played in this machine. But our glimpse of Cassian's history with prison in Rogue One, just Rogue One is him saying,

we'll talk about this more later. It's new for me. we know his history in in imperial confinement when he was young after everything that happened with Clem on Farrex and of course we watched the Narcina 5 arc right so I just think of this now as like another

rich layer of an experience that they both shared that we never really got to see them discuss but that enriches something about like the parallels across their experiences in their lives. Yeah, absolutely. And I think also, yeah, this idea that they might have both helped build the Death Star to a certain degree, right? Yeah.

What was Gin making and her? What was Jim making? And I choose to think it was like those super big Navy helmets that they wear on the Death Star. But Mel She being here. Mel She being the one to first encounter Jin. And I don't know, just thinking of him as like. the guy that Cassian takes on his missions right around this time. Like,

we talked about this last week when we covered the end of Andor, but like this idea that Cassian taking Malshi to get Clea and then Cassian taking Malshi to get Jen. And the fact that they were all on Narkina, you know, is just like, I love the use of Melshi. I could use more Melshi, but I thought that was a really smart character to sort of like build out.

I agree. Thinking of especially like the parting back in Neimos after Melchian, Cassian escaped Narcina and they go and the handing over of the Morlana, Cyril Blaster from Cassian to Melchie. Vell will pick it up. It's there on Yavin. We're going to chat more about which blaster Cassian is carrying on Scarf later and the connections across these things that you inherit and share. But Melchie being like, especially through this like shared umbrella, this is a

unifying umbrella of the idea of the messenger and the message. Melchie being like the one after Narcina, who's like, people got to know, man. We have to tell them. Melchie's like the conductor. You know? Yes. Yes. So him being a part of this year and the Wobani Imperial Labor Camp Rescue for Gin, all of that connecting together wonderfully. The only thing I felt like I was missing with Melchie in Rogue One after Andor was seeing him constantly, constantly, constantly, guzzling booze. Yeah. Should have had some booze on Scarab.

I was, when Cassian's giving his big speech, which is post and or my favorite part of Rogue One, you know, like with the like group shot behind him and Melchie's just like right over his shoulder. So I was like really watching Melchie's face during it. And then I was like, and I imagine that Will is in the back of the crowd. Like someone who's in soft focus in the background is Will. He's right there. I am boy when Chris talks about a fan in it that's what I need is just like Will

specifically I mean I'd love obviously like Val and Glad let's get them all but I need Will inserted by someone into Rogue One like I need it I the moments for Cassian's back on Yav and I'm just like but certainly he went to have a chat with Will and

gently cradle his head and the neck in his hands and say Stone and Sky So does he eye. Like, please someone put that into the movie. Let's take Jin to Yavin. Let's do it. Cassian's kind of observing.

Later, he will just be kind of puzzlingly absent from a very key scene that after Andrew, he would 100% be in. I know he had to, like, go. Rally the troops, but Cassian was in. Maybe he was like, I have to go see Will. That would be the only except for Foxxville. He was with Will. We have a lot to get to today and a lot of important stuff to focus on,

but obviously the most important thing we've covered so far today is Krennick's cape, and now it's time for the second most important thing we'll be talking about today, and it's how it felt. We talked a lot about the progress on the Monmothma outfit front, sitting down at the end of Antwer,

next to Vell at breakfast, wearing just, like, clothes, and now we're back in the drapery. how are you feeling, how are you coping? What do you need in this trying time? It's tough. They did a really good job in Andor trying to bridge the gap between glammon and dragmon, but now we're back in drabmon.

And let's just say it's been a tough 24 hours. And Mon is stressed about this Death Star news. And she's just like, you know, went to the meeting in her, in her, you know, MoMo essentially. It's fine. Oh, man. Montel's gin, listen, you can help. You can help.

Also, you can make a fresh start. It can be good for you. It can be good for us. Draven's here. Merrick's here. Formal introduction time. Captain Cassie and the Endor, the verbal intelligence. And Cass just launches in.

No pleasantries at all. He's like, when did you last see your father? When did you last see Saw Guerrera? And Jin is firmly in the Cassian at the beginning of Andor position here, right? Mm-hmm. I've never had the luxury of political opinions. That's what Jin says here. She will share similar sentiments in her conversation with Saw on Jetta.

Don't look up. Don't look up. Don't look up. Which we'll talk about this is what Luthan's recruitment of Cassian had to work through. So that's another interesting parallel, as you noted earlier, when Chris was with us. We just have much more time to work through that transition with Cassian than we do with Jin, but we have these key markers of where she is and then where she moves to. They mean Jin to use her childhood connection to Saw.

Thinking of Saw as like a... Thinking of Saw as someone who will say to Jin, people were going to use you as a hostage and use you against me, so I had to like move on and leave you behind that. adult tracked. Yeah. Saw as the like caregiver of this small child is pretty wild to contemplate. I know. I know that Chris was like it would be so bizarre to have a bottle episode, but I'm still,

I'm enamored of a Saw and Gin bottle. Like what was that like for gin or so? Sign me up. Sign me up. Did he teach her how to like take care of her hair and apply eyeliner? I don't know. Who did that? Depending on like the, you know, we don't know.

When did Plutie the cutie make his way? into the partisans. How many of these people interacted, like how present was tubes for Jim, young Jim. All of these things are things that we deserve answers to. We have seen across our tales, Lutheran in Season 1 of Andor,

Mon with Saw in Star Wars Rebels, or as Gilroy would say, quote, the cartoon. The Andor finale, or Saw appears in hollow form has a very memorable exchange with our Yavin Council, our Rebel Alliance Council, if only you could fight as well as you lie.

They're not on good terms and we know that. So Mon is like, saw as an extremist. He's been fighting on his own since he broke with the rebellion. We've got no choice but to try to mend that broken trust. Did this all like track for you, given that basically a few hours before in the canon, they were just like in touch.

Does it feel like fine because he's like, peace out, we're done? And now they're like, well, we got to find a way back. How about this person we used to raise? We need a more productive way. We need an inside person. He's not responding to tax. He's leaving us on red. We need to try something else.

Our Lisa Rodriguez said, why not use Will to get to saw instead of gin? Holy shit. Rodriguez just officially ruined Rogue one for me. Oh, no. Will's right there. He and Saw have a tight, tight, righto huffing bond. Oh, the Rido, kids! Where do you believe that Sall ever taught Jinta off Rido?

Is that a thing? Our listener Michael also asks this. The Andor source for Galen's name is Dedra Talani to Luthin, and Rogue once confirming sources from Saw to Tivik. Given how central Saw is to Jin survival, that he is the critical link to the plans Gailen leaks and the significance of his role in Andor saw himself where someone in his faction would be the obvious choice to source the intel of Jin's existence. When the alliance extractors from the Imperial confinement on Wobani under the alias Leanna Halleck, this intel has already known. We never learned how Draven comes to know of her.

So how did they figure out that Gailen or so had a daughter and where to find her? Right. Great question. Tony, give us that three-episode arc. We'd love to see it. Okay. Great question. Yeah, I mean, it's an interesting... It's an interesting example of the kind of thing that certainly a season of Andor would have explored or led to one of those really satisfying

and-or viewing moments where, like, we get to piece together through crumbs of five Lonnie conversations, what the exact... Yeah. Tapestry of intelligence was. This is a good email. Rodrigo and Michael, we have no answers for you, but we appreciate your question.

Thanks for asking them. Why not use Will to get to Sot instead of Jin? Oh, my God. Jeez. Well, is this like... Is this like, what is it? Which... Oh, yeah.

Raiders the Lost Ark. That it all would have ended up anyway, how it happened if Indy had not been involved. Anyway, it wouldn't have been as fun for Cassian to hop around from planet. it to plan it with Will as it would Jin who's a plutie cutie herself, you know?

Obviously Jin and Saw have a rich history, but yeah, the Will Note is a great one. Okay, Jin's like, what does this have to do with my dad? And they tell her about the weapon, Bodie's claim that Gieland sent him, that they're hoping Saw will then help them find Gailin, the whole thing.

They want Gailen to then go testify in front of the Senate that they've all left. Yeah. But is not yet disbanded. But is not yet disbanded. Well, isn't bail still in the Senate? Incredible moment in Bail's life. I'm so excited to talk about our limited bail later when he's like,

just got to go fill in some folks on Alderon up and back soon. BRB. Bail. Let's talk about some Imperial infighting, one of our favorite things to watch. It was on Gorman that the shuttles to Alderon kept like breaking down or whatever. I'm like, if only Bill shuddle to Alderon and not worked, you know? The person next to Thela is like Alderon again. He's like, again?

Yeah. Again. Stitched between, we're going to get to, we're going to kind of, we're mostly going in chronology throughout the film, but we should say there are going to be a couple stretches where we kind of cluster things that belong in one place. So stitched between interspersed with our early Jeddah sequences, we get some of these great little imperial sequences. We're going to hit those together.

not great inside of the imperial. The bickering, great, not great. CGI Tarkin, wulf, yikes. Hate it. As bad as ever. As terrible as ever. And especially, we talked about this before, especially when they were just like,

just so easily put Benjamin Brat in for Jimmy Smiths and it wasn't a big deal. So find someone with cheekbones and make him, you know, Tarkin. I mean, as you already noted during the Andor run. Here, here's got the cheekbones. He does. Also, like, a guy Henry who, like, performs, you know, did the motion capture and the voice performance for Tarkin. Like, that would have been fine, honestly.

Okay, anyway. Yeah, this would be a great one to have a redo on. Really would be. Tarkin just rose credit. Two passes on Rogue One. The Will edit and now the Tarkin edit. That's it. I would also just love a B update.

Personally. Check in on B. I just love it. I don't know why we can't get a check in on B at the end of everything. It's just be the end of all stories. Have the actress who plays Claire, play Leia, and just like fuel conspiracy theories forever, that that was actually Leia disguised the whole time.

Why not? You've solved it. We have some notes in Sotomay. He's got some notes for Grenick. Lays into him for losing a rather-talking. pilot, all of the delays, all of the setbacks. I really love this as a Thron treason enthusiast because the cost of Project Stardust, the cost of the Death Star is so central to Throns, like, what if we did it this way instead with my Thai program campaign, which is the source of,

one of the sources of the tension between him and Krennick. Everybody who's in a position of power in the empire is trying to do their own thing and dunk on the other person and make sure that Palpatine knows that the other guy fucked up. All of them. in the words of Partiga is humbling, isn't it? Both of us reminded of our place in the chain of command. Coming home to Roos for Tarkin. Also, like, when you think about Tarkin being, like, way over budget, you know, let's talk about, like, the resources that he had to get from Gorman.

And he's like, I'm going to get these resources from Gorman. But first, I need a multi-year infiltration, rot them from the inside espionage plan, and then I'll strip mine their planet. Like, that's... Think of the budget of spent on berets alone, you know? The bray budget was out of control. Two things that determined the time gap between the prequels and the original trilogy, Luke's age and credit's ability to project manage.

Yeah, exactly. Not actually. Tarkin says that if word spreads, they're at the goal line. If people start to find out about this, countless systems will flock to the rebellion. I loved this, confronting this idea after Andor, the idea that the Death Star, which is the biggest threat to the planets that's going to annihilate, to the rebellion, to the people it will hurt, eliminate control, could also be the biggest spark for the rebellion, the biggest catalyst for the rebellion. It's just this very like tangible manifestation of that core Luthan idea and belief and tactic that we've been watching dating back to Aldani when he and Mon talked about what was happening,

what was unfolding the shifted circumstance. And he was kind of like, you always knew it was going to be this. Palpatine won't hesitate now, Maan said. Exactly, Luton said, we need it. We need the fear. We need them to overreact. And then said later, the empire. has been choking us so slowly we're starting not to notice. The time has come to force their

hand. People will suffer. That's the plan. We get like a, what now feels like an echo, even though a new hope came first. When Leah is talking to Tarkin and a new hope and says the more you tighten your grip, Tarkin, the more star systems will slip through your fingers. So this idea is really stitched throughout all of these properties then. I'm going to need you to do that line again in the Carrie Fisher bizarre English accent that she only does for a part of Star Wars

which she used to talk about in her one woman show that she just came out of drama school and she was like, I decided to try it and we did it for like one scene. Do you have an impression? The more you tighten your grip talking,

the more star systems will slip through your fingers. Pretty good. Not really, but neither is Carrie Fisher in that moment. A perfect, individual with an imperfect British accent that they abandoned right away. Okay.

Great stuff. I always love going to Wigwatch TM with Joanna Robinson, TM and Accent Corner with Joanna Robinson. It's always special. Listen, if Carrie, if Carrie can make fun of it, so could we. It's a good rule. I think that's a good rule. I like that. It leaves a wide open field.

Absolutely. Tarkintel's chronic, Palpatine's like, somehow he's going to return, but still he's busy now. he's out of patience, right? We're on a schedule, we're on the clock. No further delays are going to be acceptable. Tell us him, you have made time an ally of the rebellion, which is honestly pretty sick. That's a good. I like that.

Coming off of Andor, going from, I can't protect you, Leo, that moment that we loved, that moment Chris loved between credit and party gas, to credit having to really kind of front what Partik has kind of winked at. Save the sermon for Palpatine. This movie is basically Crenic saved the sermon for Palpatine. I am trying to tread water for one final second until I drown until I'm just sucked under. I love that specific connection with Crenic and just more broadly this pattern, Crenic and Dedra.

Dedra and Here, Dedra and Blevin, all of the cogs in the Imperial machine who are threatened by the person next to them or across from them who align and work together only to tear each other down. Scambling and scrabbling on top of each other to try to get daddy's notice and daddy is the emperor. Scrabbling on top of each other to try to get mommy's notice was part of the serial dedgera. Yes. Turn out the lights, right? That was, yeah, okay.

Just making sure I'm keeping the cannons straight in my head. Just the heel of one shoe in a thigh. That's all Mallory was hoping for, okay? Yeah, our listener Sean sent this email actually a couple weeks ago, right, and said, watching credit scene in Andor versus a scene in Rogue 1, I realized that in the former, he's the most feared and powerful person in every room he enters, and in the latter, he's basically Tedra, which is brutal. And then our listener, Mack, on comparing Argy Party to CGI Tarcan, Max said, having just finished Rogue One after never seeing a single ounce of Star Wars before Andor, I have only one thing to say.

When it comes to posh elderly Imperials with receding hairlines and a tremendous amount of power in highly secretive organizations, Tarkin isn't fit to wipe Partigaz's boots. Give me a kindly yet firm professor who coaches and supports his students slash subordinates instead of trying to steal their glory over whatever Tarkin's deal is any day. even if the professorial discipline is, quote, imperial fascistic order, and the glory is, quote, constructed successful death star. P.S. While I still don't love the aggression with which Krennick booped the top of Dedra's head or smushed her skull. I get it now. Tarkin seems like a real dick. From what I gather, neither Palpatine nor this Vader guy are much better.

This Vader guy! Mac, welcome to start. Wars. Holy shit. Incredible email. Yeah. This Vader guy is an all-timer. Remins reminds me of way back in the day in Ringer Star Wars Slack when a ringer colleague who shall remain nameless. Got spoiled in slack. When By then it's responded with Anna can become Darth Vader, you never know when someone is going to watch Star Wars for the first time. So you're going to tell me later who that was.

I will. You didn't cross paths, but I still will tell you. Andor being now I can't stop thinking about what it would be like if Andor was the first exposure to Star Wars. That's like starting with the best sex of your life and then like, stop. I think if you go from Andor to Road One to a new hope to empire, you're like, you're cooking with gas. You're having a good time. You get to Return the Jedi. I was talking to a friend this weekend about my, my.

My Star Wars friends was speaking about, my friend was like, how old were you when you were first told that you were supposed to hate the Ewox? Because like, you know, the whole generational thing of like the people who thought Ewox were dumb, but those of us who grew up who were kids were like, Ewoks are the best. What do you mean? What are you rules? What are you talking about? And that's how kids younger than, you know, the generation below us talk about like Jar Jar Banks and stuff like that. They're like Jar Jar Jor Rules. I'm like, okay, if you say so.

Anyway, Richard the Jedi, also a great film. I love Star Wars. These are my hot takes. I love Star Wars rules. I love Star Wars. You were never going to hate the EWox.

I mean, we get a musical number. Come on. And they're cat-coded. They're pretty cat-coded, you know? Yeah. This is the thing I'm most looking forward to with Mandalorian and Grogu is

getting to revive our Grogo as a cat, not a dog. discussion. I mean, obviously we're right. We know we're right. I know we know we're right. It's been a little, a little while since we've gotten to tell people that. For a second, there was a little, like, skip on my heart because I thought you were going to say you think there's going to be a musical number in Mandalorian and Grogu, and I got very excited. Why not? Grogo could definitely perform a musical number. Future days, a little, a little song from a din to Groves. All right. Back to Rogue One.

Tarkin says it's time to test the weapon. I'm sure Crenic knows that Palpatine Invader will not be present. To spare Crenic, any potential embarrassment. Great stuff. Savage. Brutal. Tarkin says to only hit the Holy City, Jetta City. We need a statement. We're not doing a planet.

Right. Not a manifesto. Yeah. Save the manifestos for NEMIC. Yeah, don't you dare. Let's converge on Jetta. Holy Sight. Pilgrim Moon, being stripped mind of its Khyber. Saw is here. The Empire is here. Tubes is here. Jen and Cassian and Tubes is here. Everyone's about to be here. Jeroon is here. Let's cluster first just these Saw Bodie scenes. Saw's men, including the icon tubes, take Bodie into custody and Bodie is imploring them. A later implore site is like, they didn't, I defected, I came here. They didn't bring me to you.

you. And to everyone, he's imploring them, we are all on the same side if you just see past the uniform. Now, this obviously connects to like a kind of core focus inside of Andor. Can the people fighting for the same side, either side, yeah, find a way to get along, find a way to coexist, find a way to believe in each other. And you have that will we all be able to like make ourselves stronger if we unite side of it. But then it was hard to not think about the warnings that are also issued throughout Andor like Cassian warning Rylance on Gorman in season two, feeding false information is what they do. Like, Saw is one of the most paranoid characters we ever spent time with in Star Wars. Seeing the way that that seeps into the rest of his crew, like,

feels like a very partisan specific thing, a saga or a specific thing. But this idea of like, can we trust the guy who came from the empire? Iron told us to trust him, you kind of get it. But also, if they can't find a way, then how are they going to move forward? It's this fascinating tension. Once you've been betrayed by Plutie the Cutie, like how do you ever come back from that? You know what I mean? Lingeres. The sting lingers. Are you still sure that Plutie was bad? Are you sure? I like thinking about this, comparing this to like the way they're treating Bodie here versus the way we see Cassian and like Nia talk at the beginning of.

of season two. It's like, how do you use someone who's turned? How do you greet? What's not exactly the hero's welcome, right, that Bodie was hoping for? Like, you know, how do you welcome someone into the resistance? Or how do you torture them with the Borgolet? You know, there's like a couple ways you could go. Deceptions?

Borgalett. Borgalett will know the truth. Yeah, no, that's a, that's, Naya was on my mind in another sequence, actually, though, also involving Bodey when he and Jin have a little bonding moment over Galen and Bodey shares what Galen told him that was a real

like you're coming home to yourself moment of Galen imparting that belief in Bodie that it wasn't too late to try to be better. I loved that. Like our listener Ben had an email about this. Like we get that moment but Ben is like Ben was saying I rewatched Rogue One

prior to the premiere of season two and as I watched it with the eye of knowing there would be a prequel. There seemed to be a backstory with Gaylan or show and Bodey the pilot. Gail-Lerner, so for reasons we don't get, trust Bodey enough to give the message to him, and Bode for reasons we don't get, chooses this risky mission and defects from the empire.

I think there was a lot there that could have been explored in the final arc, and it's something that seemingly clearly set up in the movie. Obviously, I'm glad we spent the time with the characters we love from season one of Andor, but I'm a little disappointed me to give our guy Bode some screen time. So, like, what I have loved to have seen, this is me, Joanna talking. What I have loved to see, see

Riz Ahmed in Andor. Yes. We don't have time for anything, everything. But yeah, like what... It's been great. Why do we rebel? Yeah. You know?

What is the thing that tips us over, which is the whole question of Andor and the question here for Gin. Right. Why are you stepping into the circle? Right. When is the moment where it becomes undeniable for you? Yeah. Yeah.

It's a really, really great, really great note from Ben. And obviously something even the first time you watch Rogue One, you're like, oh, I wonder, I wonder what exactly the history is, between Bodey and Galen and how they got to this point. But it had never, I won't lie. It had never actually been top of mine for me in the way that, like, after and or when you have all of these insights about other people, you crave it. You long for that kind of insight into somebody's circumstances.

Also the risk. Like, we see Bodey die at the end of this, you know, movie along with everyone else. But like you think... Wild. But you think about like, you know, Gorman, you know, like, the moments that people stand up knowing that they're going to... to die and like what does it take to you know the the slow role of gorman watching people get slowly radicalized over years into something so you know what were the little

moments for bodie along the way that got him here it's it's just fascinating to think about and you had to have so many of those people right and this is this is this is nemec's whole proposition right it's happening all across the galaxy everywhere everywhere Something else that has happened everywhere is that Saw has just lost chunks of his body. They're gone. All over. They're everywhere. Pieces falling off.

Missing appendages. Boy, it's a harrowing place to find our guy. I love Saw. I don't think anyone can claim to be as big of a Saw enthusiast as Chris Ryan, who... Chris has been radicalized to the Guerrero way. With a Rino! What a fuel. But it is great.

It's just great. to be back with Saw. I really love it. You kind of instantly becomes a classic 2016 lingering now into 2025 meme in this stretch with the lies deceptions. This was just instantly like, I remember people quoting this to each other all the time. We like used to say this on Vigil and Star Wars all the time. It's just fun. Saw is just an absolute

fucking icon, truly. Elsewhere on Chetta. Different vibes. Cassian, Jin, and K2S.O. are packing up. up to leave Yavin and head to Jeddah. And this is one of the places where I was like, I just, I don't know. I guess we just assume that Cassian goes and says goodbye to his friends once more, but I kind of wish we had seen it. Alas. Draven gives Cassian a little bit of a, come here. Got something just for us. Kill Galen or so. Kill him. Kill him dead.

This is our listener, William. Points out that General Draven spent most of Andrews season two lecturing Cassian about protocol and obeying orders. Only a few days later, he countermans the orders given by his civilian bosses and straight up tells Cass to assassinate Erso. Who's the privateer now, Draven? But I heard it wasn't a base for privateers. Great stuff. Yeah, this is fascinating. I think, as mentioned earlier, the Draven stuff is like a little, it mostly holds, it's like a little naughty from Andor to Rogue. I mean, I will say there's like a number of

little like side conversations between Draven and Cassian. Yes. Around, you know, the base. Like that, so that like Draven and Cassie of a side conversation is something we saw right at the end of the subject. But like, yeah.

Yeah. But like, it was more for me. It's more for me later. Like his position in the council, actually because of what he does here, because of this like the privateers joke and email. Sort of like,

why isn't he like saying it with his chest to quote my beloved former colleague, Shea Serrano, when everyone, all the senators are fucking embarrassing themselves at the council. Like, she looked Draven at that point should be like, this is probably the thing we should do. That's the part where I like bump a little bit. Yeah. Him pulling Cassian on the side to be like, we're the spies, like let's do some spy shit. That I think works okay. And I think like the other thing that works more broadly is just that this is yet another glimpse into this really central focus across Andor of like,

let's get our hands dirty too, right? The rebellion is not just the heroes. Like, we're the spies. Let's do some spy shit. Yeah. Because hasn't driven been like, you're a leader, you're a captain, you're a part, we're an army. Yes. We're like, you know, we're an organized army. We're not cloaking daggering around for Luthan anymore. Not sure. And there's that tension there of like, why do you guys run when Luton calls? But at the end of the day, he's, he's, his unit is Alliance intelligence. And so this idea of like working inside of intelligence. and off of intelligence instead of being confined by politics. I feel like there's like a slight driven distinction to some of the other council members who do come from like that senatorial background. But yes, you're absolutely right that he's still like, why do you guys like just the rail the rail rider still? After all this time? Always.

After all this. Always. But yeah, I did like the like, you know, and or so focused on there's a reason that have to joke 20 times on every pot about how we don't like fascists. And it's because these characters become indelible and we become so invested even as we condemn what we watch them do. And then on the other side of it, the heroes, you've got the Maya Payate Brigade. You've got the dipsets. You've got the fuck-ups. You've got the- How dare you? This is not the last time they're not going to come up today. You have the characters. Like, Luton is a guy. You don't know

what they did. You don't know A, who survived and B, what key thing they did on. Onscara for otherwise. Where was this earlier when Chris was like, who from Rogue One do you wish had been in Andor? You could have turned it around and said, who from Andor do we wish it been in Rogue One? Why are we not talking more about the Maya Pay Paragate? Okay. We just have like a few notes. And it's the Will edit, the Target edit, the Target edit, the Maya Paymergate edit.

I love it. I love it. I love it. I also love watching K2 and Jin get to know each other. Great stuff. High comedy always. signature whip on display and a great little explanation here from Cassian about his reprogramming and how everything he just says whatever comes to his mind. I did find it odd after the safe house

rescue on Corrassant that Cassian is not allowing K2SO to carry a blast her. Blaster? Strange? Strange? The Gorman memories run deep. You know what I mean? I suppose. I suppose. Jyn's the one who says here because she wants a blaster to trust works both ways. And I feel like Kay would agree. You know, now we understand, like, Kay's like, did you trust me now? And the answer is apparently no. What am I? Kind of fucked up. Kind of fucked up.

But this is true for Cassian, like broadly. He's got to work up to trusting you. You know, it doesn't come naturally. Yeah, we had some really interesting emails about this that I'm excited to get to. This is where we get the little stretches they travel of gin dreaming, these glimpses, drinks with Krennick, all of these little maggots from the past. Very quick. It would have been cool to get more of that, but we get kind of just a aura, a sense of the passage of time across Jin's life.

And then when they arrive on Jedda, Cassian and Jin tell Kay to stay behind. Yeah. I think he makes a great point here, which is like I'm going to be able to blend in a lot better than you two. We have a number of like a new hope. Get cameos and connections and the level of kind of Star Wars like Easter egg and wink that just does not really happen. Andor we get your favorite. Right? Banda Baba.

Nope. Dr. Cornelius. These are your favorite characters from A New Hope. You've always said it. There they are. Ninja City with their scroodle facial features. I'm a known canteena Easter egg searcher.

That's what I love to do. How can we connect this back to the canteen? Your favorite thing. What did you make here of the way that Cassian, when he's kind of priming gin for infiltrating Saw's layer here? This is kind of odd, casual lie? He's like, yeah, I had a contact. He's just gone missing.

It's going missing. But we'll find a sister. That'll get us in meeting with Saw. I mean, I guess he's not going to be like, I killed him. I killed him. It's very cold. What is he going to say? I don't know.

Horrifying. And then, Joe, this is where we get the, on our little relay race theme. We talked about this a lot when we covered Andor. We continued passing of the torch of rebellions are built on hope. Hope that gets us a meeting with Saw, and Jin stops. Hope? And Cassian turns, yeah, rebellions are built on hope. Over the shoulder. This, like, wrecked us when we saw the origin of this in Andor, saw Thiela on Gorman at the hotel, impart this wisdom to Cassian and to think then

of how Cassian shared it with Jin, and Jin will share it on Yavin, and then Leia will invoke the word hope on and on and on. Really, really, really beautiful. And it was so moving to understand understand where this came from in Andor, and very satisfying then to get to Rogue One and see it here. Really just, I love this. It's great. Yeah, it's interesting because rebellions are built on hope. A trailer line, like a very iconic Rogue One line, obviously. But now it feels just like an iconic Star Wars line.

Yeah. You know. Yeah, it has moved beyond the franchise. Something that people, more people, even more people get tattooed on them somewhere. Yeah. Oh, man. I kind of can't believe I don't have a Star Wars tattoo. It seems yet.

Shocking. Yet, exactly. What would you get? I don't know. I thought about it a lot over the years. A quote is, a quote seems like, likely. Not a little grog? A little grogoo?

No, because if you can't capture the glint in his eye, you know. Yeah. I don't know. Yeah, I'd have to think about it. There's a lot of things from Star Wars that I would like. Would you get the greatest teacher? The greatest teacher failures, which is up on the wall behind me in this video. Would that be your Star Wars title?

Yeah. Yeah. That's a great one. Great one. Joanna, speaking of Grogo and Yoda and the Force, take us through our initial meeting here of our beloved. Cheroot. This is an incredible character introduction to an incredible character who is only with us for a very, very short period of time, but is nonetheless very, very impact. And I'm also like to, before we get to all of this,

it's very important to me to shout at the time at Star Wars Celebration when Donnie Yen was just like, and then my character dies before this movie came out. Yeah. And it was just like, really funny. They were like, tell us about your character. He's like, well, blah, blah, blah. And when he dies and everyone on stage goes like, white is a cheat.

It's so, it's fine, the video. It's one of my favorite things that's ever happened. Remarkable. Little did anyone know at the time that that was like kind of not a spoiler because everyone at Roguyen died. It's just a drop in the death bucket, honestly. Yeah. Saying someone dies in Rogue One is like saying someone lives in another movie. It's just like the baseline.

There's, I love this, you know, here we have the force introduction in this moment, what we know now about Cassian and his feelings about the force. A thing that Cassian will do many times in this movie and some to higher stakes than others is literally haul gin bodily out of a scene. He does it multiple times. And this is a lower stakes version, but he does it here. And I don't know, we just like this.

Chiro does this like force-sensitive, but not a Jedi figure, is such a compelling addition to this universe. And the way in which later he'll talk about, you know, the force moving darkly around someone who has plans to kill.

So this idea of like the force swirling with intention around someone. And so this idea that like the force keeler and Yavin you know, feels the threads gathering around Cassian. Yeah. And the way that like, you know, the threads of destiny might be

gathering around gin and Cassian here and Jetta in a way that would, you know, get shirts notice is so satisfying. I love that. Like, it's always been great and chill-inducing, I think, when he first calls out to Jin from across the square and can, like, sense the Khyber. And in general, just like the guardians of the wills are like really, just a really interesting and precious to George Lucas, you know, aspect of the canon.

Like, it's just fun to have that featured here. I love the Cheroot and Bay's relationship for. so many reasons. I love, like, their dynamic with each other. I love the tenderness. Talk about and I ship it. Totally. Yeah, nice. I think this is a counter example to this question of, like,

is Rogue One shallow? Does it not have enough time to be deep? I feel like I don't need. I'm clamoring for so many backstories. You understand what you need to about them here. I mean, I would love a Trin Bay's like origin story backstory, but also I just feel like I know everything I need to know.

Yeah. Yeah. I don't be a I have you. You know what I mean? It's just like... Yeah. It's there. I love it. And I love the pairing of this devotion.

The history that they have, the devotion to each other with the divide. Like you shared a thing with somebody and then one of you kept believing and one of you stopped. Yeah. But you're still together. Like, I really, really... It's such a rich thing. And I love to, like, the, you know, because we hear like the force litany repeated often across the film.

I love that the first version of it that we get here is may the force of others be with you. Just in a story about like alliance building, that's just such a great little touch. I really, really, really love that every time. Cassian's like, dude, I've got my feelings on the Force Healer and all that still, but also I was on pharynx. I was on Gorman. I've seen this before. This place is about to blow. Like, he can sense the fever pitch.

Yeah. And Saw's forces and the Imperial Forces attack at the same time. Cassian tries to stop Jim from saving a small child, which is arguably the single most shocking thing that happens in the movie. Not a great look. But at the same time, like, thinking about Cassian on Gorman and how Cassian is, like, laser-focused on his mission, which is Dedra, while shit is happening all around him. He's like, that's not my mission.

Yeah, that's not my mission. You're my mission. Kay is really the winter soldier of Star Wars, so. Oh my God. Totally. He's killing troopers. He kills a partisan. Saw's team is going to have some notes.

My note is like that guy had a grenade in his ham. Cassie and did everyone a favor there. Kay is like, I just went to level 27. You can tell me to stay behind all you want. I'm not doing it. And I know that deep down you don't want me to do it and you probably need me and guess what? They do. Once again, Cassia needs K2SO, who arrives just in time.

Did you know that wasn't me? Always gets me. It's really good. Yeah. Yeah. Definitely. We've definitely been together long enough for me to know exactly which like dents and dings you have in your armor. Sure.

And Tarrut immediately comes to their aid. Like just generosity and the compassion and the desire. to help and unite. Wonderful. Tells the troopers, let them pass in peace. They're not going to do that. And so here our guy goes, I fear nothing for all as is as the force wills it. Hey, stop right there. He's blind. Is he also deaf? What does he say about like, watch your foot or whatever as he like jams his stuff and do this? Oh, my God. It just does the full Matt Murdoch here, Joe. I mean, it's just annihilates them. This is one of my favorite pieces of Star Wars choreography full stop. So good.

It's very good. I love later when he's using, you know, he's attuned, as you noted, but also he's like, let me check the weather and check the wind and then uses the crossbow to take down a tie fighter. That's fucking sick. But yeah, this is gorgeous. It's like balletic. Oh, yeah. Absolutely.

This is why you hired Don Yen. So good. Absolutely beautiful. Yeah. Cassian ass Bayes. Is he a Jedi? No Jedi here anymore. Only dreamers like this fool.

The force did protect me. I protected you. I don't need luck, I have you. Like, that's what it is, right? There's no difference necessarily. Like, the force protected me because the force brought you here to be with me to protect me. Would you say it's the energy between all things? I think it connects us all, you know, luminous beings are we?

Not this crude matter. I'm doing that. Back in the day watching Rogue One, I always used to think about this. just, you know, gin as somebody whose mother said, may the Force be with you and who received a Khyber crystal pendant. But now, of course, we think of Cassian and the Force Arrow, like you said, and it just takes on, it does, it takes on extra weight. I really, I like, I like this now through a new lens. That's, that's the thing is like through the lens, I care more about Cassian. I'm focused more in Cassie the moment than I am a gin. And that's, that's, I think it's just a true thing.

It's just a fact. Yeah. Just a true thing. Saw doesn't give a shit about Cassian, though. Nope. Saw did not watch Andor Saw did not watch Andor Neither did Admiral Radis Despite being in it I've got some notes for him later He's like she did it

Disney Plus Hulu Netflix We are the streamers Oh my God Content You know Dude

Hell yeah What streamer is Saw's favorite What do you think Paramount Plus Oh yeah Oh dude Saw's a big yellow stone guy Big Sherry universe guy

Yeah I hate to tell you. Oh, my God, incredible. Cassie and Shrewd Bays all wind up in a cell. This is where our guy, Trude is, like, repeating his refrain, and Bays is just befuddled, like tells Cassie and he's praying if the door is going to open. Shrude says it bothers him because he knows it's possible. This made me thing specifically inside of the four-sealer sequence of Bix going back to their home

and sees Cassie and is like, it's better, isn't it? Must be confusing. Must be confusing. Like when a doubter, a skeptic is confronted. It's like when you use red light therapy and you're like, oh, does work. Does it work? Yeah. Never tried it.

I see a lot of stuff online, though. You should get like a full, you should deck out a full room in your house with red light panels just stand in there for everything. Here's what ails you. Should I, to pass the time? No free ads. This is not sponsored by any specific red light panel list. How should I pass the time while I'm in there, just quoting Saw Guerrero to myself? You can, this is where you can listen to the watch in the bath, or you can listen to the watch while standing in your red room, not to be confused with fidgy shades of gray.

Yeah, it's true. Great. Drake, I'm not welcome. I'm beginning to think the force and I have different priorities, Joe, Cassian says here. We talked about this, we talked about this in Andor. The next thing he says makes no sense at all when he says, when they're in talking. talking about we've been in horse cages than this one, and Cass says, this is a first for me. It just doesn't make sense. Cannon breaking. That's fine. Let's move on. Shattering.

I'm logic pretzling this to myself as like, it's not the time for him to go into this full backstory and life's history with these, in essence, strangers. But I do, the disconnect with an arcina and everything before that aside, I do like when intrude says to him, there's more than one sort of prison captain. I sense that you carry yours wherever you go. Just this idea of what Cassian carries with him and how it shapes him. This idea of wherever you go there, you are. And also this idea of like Marva talking about this place inside of her head that she's created that no one can find her. And this idea that like at this point Cassine has created a prison, which is the opposite of what Marva has created inside of her

own head and is carrying it with him always. Miss Marva. Maybe that's the tattoo I'll get. The little photo of Marva that they had on Mina Rao. That's absolutely not what you're going to get. No? No. You could get a text from Marva's speech, but you're not. You could get a tattoo of B saying Mamma, ma-ma, Marva is I think as close as you would get to getting a portrait of Marva.

I love it. I love it. Okay. It's time for Saanjin to reconnect. You can't believe she's here. She's pretty angry that he left her behind. Again, as we discussed, he's like, yeah, I had a lot of heat on you. It was bad for me.

Got to put the cause before anyone else, whether it's you were. Blutie the cutie. And he kind of channels a little bit of the loose and Lonnie energy here. I think he daily. You know, I told you, I think of you all the time, but I do. But he's also channeling his inner Admiral Akbar because he is pretty sure that this is a trap. That Jid is there to kill him because of the timing of all of the other things unfolding around him. Very tough stuff here to see our guy saw in this state. And yet, he manages, as he always does, to have a very focused political conversation despite the subsuming nature of his swirling paranoia. Yes.

Like, do you care not about the cause? All it's ever brought me is pain, Jen says. You can stand to see the imperial flag ringing across the galaxy. It's not a problem if you don't look up. Here is where I was thinking of our guy, Perrin. I love this. Tell me. Tell me.

Who says... In his speech, trouble and disagreement will arrive without summons. There's no choice in this. There's no effort required. You simply stand still and the galaxy will deliver a basket of fresh anxieties to your door without fail. But parents' counsel is, don't look up. Right. Chase Joy.

Also, your favorite character, Skeen, as played by Emma Sbacker in the Aldani Arc. I am genuinely a huge fan of both Skeen and Baroness, you know. When Skeen, and the fact that, like, Jin is reminding. me of Skeen and Perrin lets you know she's a character on an arc, and we love a character on an arc. Skeen and Perrin never got to arc further than their lowest selves. Skeen, when trying to convince Cassian to split the money with him and take off, right? Yeah.

Says, oh, I'm a rebel. It's just me against everybody else. Where would that put me? 40 million credits is enough for me to forget all about you. Don't play the high mind with me. You're not here to save anybody but yourself. I saw it the first minute you came into camp. You're like me.

We were born in the hole. All we know is climbing over somebody else to get out. And you think about like, Jin literally down in that hole at the beginning of the movie. Like the way in which, yeah, Cassie and Jen and a number of other characters have had, as Cassie will later tell her, like, you're not the only one who lost everything. to some of us did something about it. I would just say, Cassian, it took you a minute to get there.

You're pretty fresh to this doing something about it. Yeah. You know, he says I've been in this fight since I was six, and to a certain degree that's true, and he does stand up and go, but he has this whole stretch where he's just like, a gentleman thief, a gun for hire sort of thing.

You know what I mean? And he's not a rebel until we see him go on that arc inside of Andor and Jin does it in a shorter little span of a movie. but like, I love, love the skiing and parent call us. I was, yeah, Cassian, that aspect of Cassian's arc was on my mind, and specifically that conversation between Cassian and Marva and that great scene between them in season seven of episode one, when she says people are standing up, this is after Aldani,

after Aldani. And he says, yeah, and getting killed for it. But there's work that we'll need doing. Yeah, what is that? whatever it takes. I've been lying down waiting to die long enough. You can't beat them, Marva. Like, this was only a handful of years ago. Yeah. Love a character on an arc. Has it come up before? I don't know. I just keep hearing it from pals, whether it's about like, I don't know, climate change or AI or the current administration or whatever it is, people just being like,

it's inevitable, what are you going to do? And it's like, that's the mentality that like just lets this whole thing wash over you, you know? What would Nemek say? Try. Try. Do. Try. Try.

Nemek's manifesto, Luthan speech, Marvel's speeches. Those are a Hall of Fame. Rogue One has some memorable speeches and stretches. Nothing quite like that.

I will say. Nothing quite like that. But there's a lot to break down, least in the Galen message to Jinn and Saw. Can I just say, I'm so, I do like Rogue One. I'm so annoyed. I understand that Jinn's world is rocked by this hollow. Yeah.

She had so much time. No, this is absurd. To grab this. This is terrible. This is genuinely terrible. I hate that she did not take the hollow with her. It makes me mad every time. Thank you for saying this.

I'm with you. Completely. This is like... This is why did they say it's... Yeah. I don't want to say like you had one job because there's a lot going on, but like, obviously, this is the crucial thing. Grab it. She had so much time. Nothing. A lot of people have embarrassing and tough moments across Star Wars, including an Andoran Rogue One, but nothing tougher than that moment where we cut to Jen and she's just like, no.

Nope. Bruttle. No, I didn't. Brutal. All right, let's hit a couple of the key strands of what Galen says here. So I did the one thing nobody expected. I lied. I made myself indispensable, he adds, and all the while I laid the groundwork of my revenge.

We call it the death star. There is no better name. How can we not be thinking of Lonnie here, Joe? And all the other people who hid and waited and fought in some sort of hidden way, but also specifically who had to be a part of the thing that they hated? for longer than they would have wanted to in order to take it down.

The Lonnie comp is so good. Because there's other people like, you know, we love culling out the two techs who locked the booth so that Mon could give her speech. Like, you know, there's people all over the place. But like, Galen,

having his wife killed in front of him and his daughter, he does not know where. Right. And then for the next, you know, however long is working, 15 years, is working with his team who he then gets killed, unfortunately, on Ado. Like, you know, like, this is the long con of Gailen Erso, of him just sort of like doing his lawny best. It's incredible. 15 years is such a long time. So long.

Such a long time. And imagine all the, like, imagine all the fucking cocktail hours he had to have with. Krennic. All the Kali Coolers. Yeah. You think if you're those other guys who were on Edo and Project Stardust, you can just be like, and I'd rather not go out to the platform? I'm good. Let me know what Krennick had to say.

It's raining. We'll be inside. Oh, man. Yeah, I'm good. I actually don't need any FaceTime. No. I'm getting dead. Yeah, I'm just going to stay here, get a little more work done.

Dalyne shares the weakness, the weakness that he planted. A flaw so small and powerful, he says they will never find it. explains the blast to the reactor, the plans on Scarf, all of that. Over our many years and decades of consuming Star Wars, I think it is fair and true to say that a thing that is iconic, hallowed, sacred, prized, the Death Star, the destruction of the Death Star, Luke destroying the Death Star, is also the source of much mockery, right? The one shot took down the Death Star. Okay, this is like still just a genius bit of, let's show how this was actually one man's, I love like you describing it as a long con,

determined quest to specifically weaponize the empire's hubris, the fact that they don't pay attention and they don't care and they don't look, and specifically that they don't believe they could be beaten that most of all. And so I was thinking a lot about, we talked about this at the end of the and or season going back to this like these formative initial conversations between Cassian and Luthan and like where was the hook really put in to Cass and it was this idea, right? Like in episode three, they're so fat and satisfied. They can't imagine it, Cassian said. Can't imagine what?

That someone like me would ever get inside their house, walk their floors, spit in their food, take their gear. Luton replied, the arrogance is remarkable, isn't it? Like that's what we're watching here. the arrogance to never believe that this great thing could be undone until it's too late. This is the thing I will say about Dejra is not that she wasn't arrogant in a million ways she was, of course, but like that she never under arrest. She was always on the lookout for these, you know, patterns, stuff like that. It's funny, I had part of that quote elsewhere, but I had it like when Cass and Jen

put on the imperial uniforms and Cass says to steal from the empire what do you need a uniform some dirty hands and an imperial toolkit they're so proud of themselves they don't even care

like it doesn't even occur to them that I would walk into their house and steal their shit that's a great spot for it and especially because like K2SO is you know and one of the many never tell me the odd sequences he's like this is how many people

are going to be in our way we're never going to make it it's like we put on the uniforms and also we're going to have Melchie detonate some charges. They're all going to go run to deal with that. Scrammeling. Okay. Another thing that I loved about this, when we hear the single reactor ignition,

order for Jeddah, later for Scariff, hear the description. We've all seen a new hope a million times. We know that they're hitting the reactor. It's causing the chain reaction. But coming out of Andor, what was the... to the calcite four to coat the lenses in the reactor. This is such an enriched aspect of Star Wars to me now that Gorman, the place that was destroyed in order to take this thing to build this heinous machine,

that the gore were there inside of it, helping to take it down. Like, I just love that. Love, love, love, love that. All of the people, all of the people, I love Luke, but all of the people live there were really important. again, that's, it's a different relay race. There's the Lonnie Information relay race. There's the, like, hope, rebellion is built on hope relay race, you know, and this is like the scientific plans relay race,

you know, the like the chink in the armor relay race, yeah. There's a lot of personal stuff in here, too. A lot of words from Galen Forgin, his pride, his longing, how hard it's been, this deep sorrow that he has that, as he says, so much of my life has been wasted. And I was really struck by, again, this parallel for Cassian and Jin, both of whom, first of all, I mean, Galen is still alive here. Gin will get to see him. Marva is dead, but who got to, like, hear these things from their parents who had been absent from their lives in this hollow form, like to get to hear this voice from beyond

the grave or the grave you assumed was a grave, like just what an amazing thing. It would be a boon to hear their wisdom and get to learn from them and feel that encouragement, like one more time. I love that. But just also, like, the substance of it, I was thinking back to that moment, like, that I love and that we both love from the end of season one when Brazo, no stone for Brazo. No stone for Brazo. God damn it, Joanna, no stone for Brazzan. We got an email from a listener who's like, don't you think that Bix put a stone for brazo on mean a row? I hope so. It wouldn't be a ferricks brick, but that's okay. Farak stone and sky. I bet she found a

suitable stone for Brasso. It's not a place. It's a people. I love it. Ask card. What did what did Brasso tell Cassian from Marva? Tell him he knows everything he needs to know and feels everything

he needs to feel. And when the day comes and those two pull together, he will be an unstoppable force for good. Tell him, I love him more than anything he could ever do wrong. Gets me every fucking time. Jesus. This is Jin's version of hearing this from Galen, this message could have gone anywhere.

It could have been intended to anyone, but he is saying to Jin, who just said to Cassian, to Saw, this isn't really for me. You're the one who can do this. And like, you're the message. And I think what's so interesting,

you know, we had listeners email us about this idea of like, again, it's about backfilling. And this idea that like, gin is the message. and Cassie and the messenger and they're like that union is so interesting to me but like also from from like a storytelling point of view we're going to get to Adu shortly and how and or has radically changed my feelings about that sequence which is actually a sequence I've always

kind of been frustrated by um yeah because when you know Galen dies and and It matters to me that he gets to see Jen. It matters to me that Jin gets to see him. Like that matters emotionally. For sure. But he doesn't give her any information because we got a hologram download and that's better. You know, I have so much to tell you then is not about like an information download. It's about like your mother liked her tea this way or like whatever it is.

You know, like there are things that are shared in a family that I want to talk to you about. It's not like I have so much to tell you about the Calcite coated lenses. How the Rift and the Cidop Tower works. But I think that it's so smart to put this here rather than make Mads sort of choke it out on a rain-soaked platform, you know, just to have it come out in polygram form. I agree. While Jada is exploding around them.

Okay. Intercut. With this hollow download, we get these shots of the Death Star firing up, blotting out the sun, striking Jeddah City. The mountain hideout begins to shake. The ground begins to rise. The rock crests like an ocean wave. I love this.

No matter how many times I see this, I'm like, this looks fucking sick. This is so good. There's a problem on the horizon. There is no horizon. No horizon. This is just a really, really great, thrilling, visually stunning sequence.

Our friends flee, Jin, infamously not taking the hollow as previously discussed on this very podcast. Saw refuses to go. He says, save the rebellion, save the dream. He unplugs, it unhooks, unfastens the Rido, spreads his arm wide and is claimed by the blast and the rock around him. It's interesting, given that Cassian was part of Luther's crew and Lutheran and

Saw were always budding heads that, like, even foresaw Cassium was the messenger at the end of the day. That's like a fun little tie there. I also just like this moment for Saw, which always kind of frustrated me. Because you're like, why is he staying, not leaving? Yeah. Which is actually now I'm like, it's sort of similar to Luth and he kind of knows that his time and the rebellion is over. Right.

Like a time for extremism is over and we moved into a different phase of the rebellion. And so he's like, okay, this is it. For me. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I really like that. I think that's spot on.

I like thinking back, I always like thinking back to the Will Saw-Rido scene, but I did like thinking too, because there is, even still there is this just element of like, what is this going to do and why, you know, to anything that we see Saw do. And so I like then thinking back to revolution is not for the same. Look at us on loved, hunted cannon fodder will all be dead before the republic is back. And yet here we are. Which is so similar to what Luthe said, right? Exactly. Right. They're laying us both. Yeah.

Yeah. Sunrise I'll never see. Right? You know, they know they're not going to be there for the world. They hopefully helped save. Right. Krenick and Tarkin are watching this above and they're just like, this is great. Yo, beautiful.

Wild stuff. And Tarkin's like, I'm going to take over. I'm going to take over. Thanks for your work over this past decade and a half. It's mine now. And that goes over really well with Krenick, I would say. He just has a great time with it. It does not at all throw a hissy fit.

Very measured. Very measured and calm in his response. We stand here with my achievement. Incredible scene. There's a few things that are weaponized so well in this movie. One is Mads Mikkelson's inability to say ours with his accent. So, like, Stardust just sounds special coming out of his mouth every time. And then Ben Mendelsohn's spitting habit is just used really well in this movie.

The man loves to expectorate. It's great. this is a great spinning sequence right here. It really is. Just some unbelievable Deidre. Just truly. And Cyril, right? Yes.

It's just, yeah. Like, Cyril wanting to be praised and told he's great. Yeah. But it ruined. After Credik says it's beautiful. Like, yeah, you wouldn't be shocked to ever say, like, would it ruin everything if I said this was the best day of my life? You could totally see it. And like... Or even in like season one, Cyril, who's just like sort of like, I'm useful.

I did this. I solved this. Yeah. I'm smart. I'm a shiny special boy. Put your heel on my thigh. Step on me. Who are you?

Oh, Cyril. Miss them, truly. I find Krenick being repeatedly, as that beautifully email noted, in the DEDRA position throughout this movie, so delicious after the DEDRA. I mean, all of and or but the Dedra, Krenik's. scenes in Andrew in particular, just that idea of glory and the way he's like, you were so fucking proud you went in on your own, you know? Right. They're all just making the same mistake.

The, when he says, when he initially talks about the Gorman project to Partagaz and Dedra inside of that chilling luncheon and he's like, Yalar and Tarkin, all senior commanders will be notified by the Empire of time of his choosing. Now the group in this room

is at this moment, the tightest of closed circles, right? He's tossed a lot of his closest circle away, right? But like this idea that's like, what we're doing, Tarkin doesn't get a piece of it, Yalarin doesn't get a piece of it, this is just me, I'm the number one boy, and alas, no, that's not how it works. Listen, I've got great news for Rorsen Krennick, here it is. Grandma of Tarkin, about to be the latest This character can make the same mistake that the people he's trying to dunk on have just made and not sure how happy he's going to be about being like, I'm going to be the one in the Death Star. We'll see.

We'll see how that works out for you. Stay tuned for her new hope. All right, Joe, let's head to Edie. Cassian on the way sends a code a message to Yavin and Draven reiterates the plan. Kill Galen. It's still on. This is where Bodie realizes who Jin is. They have this great little bonding moment.

Your father, he said I could get ripe of myself. You're coming home to myself, lovely. But Bodie is like, is it too late? A lot of people on the U-Wing here before it crashes are having a little bit of a crisis of faith. And how could they not? They just saw the Death Star strike and annihilate Jeddah City. Bays is quite deflated by what he just witnessed. He thinks it is too late, but not Jen because she has seen what the Death Star can do.

This is her. This is undeniable moment. But also she has heard from her father. She has heard this message and she has seen the shape of his sacrifice, seen how hard. he tried and what he worked to do. So how could she not to channel Nemek? Try as well. Like, how could she not?

Nemek, so top of mind here in this scene. And she defends her father to Cassian. She says, you're wrong about him, right? And Cass is like, he did build it, which I was really fascinated by on the heel, on the heel, like on the tail of Andor, because one of the moments that I loved so much at the end of Andor was Cassian defending all of Lutheran. to the council, like not just the good shit, but like that whole fucked up mix, right? I know the good and the bad, but none of that can take away from what he did and how hard it was. And he says it's insulting to hear him run down by people who have given a fraction of his sacrifice to this rebellion.

Galen gave quite a sacrifice to the rebellion too. I think it makes sense, though, that you are able to offer that grace to someone you know really well and maybe not to someone else. But also, would we say that technically Cassian also helped build a Death Star? on Arcina 5? Technically. Oh, man. Gin tells Bodie, that's why Galen sent him there to share this. Cassian, our messenger, asks, where the message is.

He's like, I'm not sure you're going to be able to convince the council. And I think that his skepticism here, to me, felt a little bit more like Cassian in the Gorman arc of season two, where he's like, appraising and unsure and is this right and is this the way. and a little less, this is right on the heels of I'm standing with the council members on Yavin telling them this is happening, let's go. This doesn't align like perfectly to me, but I agree with you. So it goes. All right, Joe, take me through the crash, the rapid rock climbing, everything that happens. I mean, they just didn't need to make the ravine as massive as they made it if two of our characters have to scrabble across it and then up a cliff face. It's a completely fair note.

Bizarre, right? So yeah, Cass goes up with Bodey. He's like, show me the way, blah, blah, we're just going to look. No worries. Don't worry about the fact that I've got the sniper configuration going on. Don't worry about it, right? K2SO fucking snitching on the sharks. Wild.

But that was a real, like, I got me underpilled forever moment for me because as soon as he said, sniper configuration, I just flashed to Cassie in opening his case. I'm like, this is just, I can't outfit. It's like Pavlovian for me now. But we talked about this, this idea of like, you know, I was thinking about I have friends, I've raised the face of a friend. Yes. Like this idea of, again, are we all on the same page together inside of this rebellion group? Or do we have counter missions across purposes?

So Andor is on a mission from Draven to Kill, Gail and Arso, which is not. not, of course, would Jin Erso would prefer to have happened. So she runs out. And then Cherit goes after her. And this is when he says, you know, Bez's like, good luck. And he's like, I don't need luck. I have you, which is just maybe my favorite, one of my favorite lines of this movie. And, yeah, it's raining.

It's dark. Genuinely, I think it's hard to see this sequence. I generally think it's hard to see what's happening. Yeah. And to, like, understand the geography. A-Doo and everything that's happening here. But Crenic has shown up to check on his boyfriend, and he's like, there's been a leak, and I have some suspicions. And it's more theater from Crenic.

Theater when he got Gailen on the first place and theater here, because he knows what has happened here. Gailen, like, leaps out to sort of try to save his men. Krenick, of course, shoots them anyway. And this is the moment. this is what makes it matter. And I think I never really felt why it happened. And now I feel like, and again, I'm going to read a couple emails from our listeners, but now I feel like I do.

Cassian has the scope on getting up first. He's behind a pillar. There's people in the way. There's a lot going on. Rain in his eyes. When he gets the clear shot, he doesn't take it. get the finger on the trigger and he does not take the shot after we saw him killed Tivik. After two mouths point in our notes, he killed some of the Maya Pai Brigade.

Yeah, yeah. They were in his way. But Galen, that's the line. He stops himself here. And we got two really interesting emails about Cassian on an arc of his own inside of this movie. And so the first one comes from John, who is identified Cassian as. the antagonist of this movie, which is not to mean the villain of this movie, but in terms of like counter to the actions of the protagonist.

And this is what John says. The A story of this movie is mostly a debate about the credibility of unvetted intelligence based on faith in one man deep in the imperial machine. It's a movie now about the push, like that was like the original what Rogue one was about. He's like, now it's about the push pull of a justifiably weird. fragile rebellion, and what comes from taking something important on faith. The main antagonist is Cassian Andor. Roguan invites us to step out of Cassian's point of view and see him through the eyes of a woman

who has not been in the fight, not for lack of caring, but for depth of wounds. And the man she sees is pretty broken. Cassian has basically become the Lutheran inside the, quote, mainstream rebellion of a stigial limb of the insurgency. He's defensive, distrust. and willing to do anything, including kill allies and defectors to protect the cause. Jin comes in, and her faith in her father, her faith in general, are desperately needed at this stage. It's a new story and a new frame.

We see the blue a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away message for the first time in the Andor viewing sequence, meaning something is different, a larger, more global view. We're watching the events of history now. The Cassie and Ander, we know, hesitating to pull the trigger against Galen Urso, feels seismic, even therapy breakthrough like. Hardening was easy. Soffening is work, but the rebellion desperately needs it. And I just really love that from John. And then Jenny has this great email about Cassian and agency and what he does inside of this moment, right? Because as you mentioned, like, I think on this pod and certainly elsewhere in our notes, Cassian defying orders is something

we've seen before. This isn't the first time he's defied a direct order. This is what Jenny says. Underneath all this action hero main character energy, the real character arc for Cassian in the show might actually be one of striving for agency. We see major moments in his life be decided for him by other. Marva taking him from Canari, Luthan dictating his actions, Bix leaving him. And we also see that in every moment Cassian seems to be taking matters into his own hands, he's actually just reacting, killing the corpos, retaliating against the troopers for Clem, orchestrating a prison revolt, wanting to walk away from the struggle, these decisions are ultimately driven from the top down by the empire's suffocating grip. So to reconcile this Cassian with the one we see in Rogue One,

his big decisions to spare Gail and Erso and take a leap of faith with Jin on a suicide mission represent him finally exercising his agency. Nothing else is driving him to trust Jin like this besides his own instincts and what she reflects back to him. The lines from episode, season two, episode nine, that encapsulates all of this neatly Cassian to Clea, I need to start making my own decisions. And Clea says, I thought that's what we were fighting for. Right.

So this idea that, like, you know, we have seen Cassian defy things, but defy things at various orders or operating as, you know, Luthin's instrument, an instrument for something. And here is Cassian as Cassian

and Jin is Jin meeting each other in this moment. I love this idea that John has about this idea of soft, like we watched Cassian calcify unnecessary ways for certain times in the rebellion

and learn certain lessons from Luton. Right. And then what is needed from Cassian here now is that is that defrosting, that softening and that idea of like opening himself up to concepts like the force that that he was so resistant to and stuff like that. And so opening himself up to the force, taking agency, I like really like Jenny's point about that, but also

again, inside of that leap of faith, that force like leap of faith, giving yourself up. to the cosmic forces. I'm an atheist, so I don't always believe in this sort of stuff, but same, you know. Inside of this world, this idea of like letting the force, use the force, Luke, let the, you know, put your viewfinder away and use the force, let the force guide you is this, you know, key element of this death star arc that are watching across two seasons of television and two movies, you know? Yeah. Oh, man. I love all of that. It feels like the difference between

I don't want this. I asked you not to do this. I'm going home. You can stay if you want with the Force Healer and a little nod. It was only ever a little nod. But like that's all the difference in the world. Yeah.

I really love that. That's fascinating. So why did we come? What better thing then for like, then a parent, right? Yeah. Why did we come here to this planet inside the plot of this movie.

We don't get anything plot-wise that helps us. We literally had to crash the U-W-W-Wing to steal the Imperial Cargo Shuttle. But there could have been a shuttle depot elsewhere. I mean, so like I just... Yeah. The fact that it is such a key character moment that already existed inside the movie

but is just now laden with all of this history. and other characters. What's, you know, I think the greatest gift for Rogue One after Andor is the final moment of Cassian's life. No question.

What is Cassian thinking about at the final moment of this movie for him? B. Bix. The Force Healer, Marva, you know, Nemek. Like, what is he thinking about? All of those things.

Well, the whole thing. Maybe all of Andor flashes before his eyes, right? What is he thinking out when he pulls his finger off the trigger here. That's another just like really, really important key Cassian moment that is so enriched by the hours and hours and hours we spent with him. Yeah.

Boy, great emails. Give a lords from you. The bad babies, they fucking rule. Jesus. Our little Rebel Alliance, the bad babies, they're the best. Yeah. I love that. Yeah, Luton is so present here for me with Cassian.

Like, Cassian can simultaneously be in a place. at the end of Andor and this movie, which is the same moment in time, saying, I saw it all, I saw the good and the bad, but also deciding that there's a limit he has that maybe Luthin wouldn't have. Lutthin pulls that trigger. There is no question. No question at all. No question. And so for Cassian, Luton would have killed all the people who were standing in the way of Gailen or so, just to get to Gailen or so, you know? Luton knocks Bode over the end. Yeah. Luton uses those like little bombs that. that he had, you know, and just blows up the platform entirely. Also, why isn't Cassian trying to kill Krenic? You know what? That is a fucking great question, and I'm going to now think that the line in Andor

where they leave that are like, Krennick is kind of a little wink to this. Krennick is right there, and he never is like, well, I'll get this guy while I'm at it. It's a really good point. This guy who sucks. Oh, man. I really love that this is where cast finds his limit and that this is how and with whom.

What is it about? I was always like, watching Rogue One, I was always like, what is it about Jin? Yeah. I felt, I feel, I felt like there were holes in the story of like, what is it about Jin that turns, other than like, she's awfully hot, which she is. Like, what is it about Jin that turns things around for Cassian?

And now I feel like it works for me. Yeah. Yeah. He didn't get to hear Luthan say like the sunless space of midma minus sunless baseline, but I feel like he knows he shares his streams with ghosts. He's like, I got to have a limit. It's there. It's this.

It's that. Yeah. I'm with you. This is a much richer sequence now after Andar, much. K2, the U-Wings toast, but he fixed the comms. He radios in and he's like, uh, a lion's squadron on the way. Bad news.

Cassie has spotted Jan. He's like, call him off. It's too late. It's too late. They're engaged. I guess. I don't understand. I know.

Just not fire? Can't they turn the ships? Very odd. Yeah. Because Draven's like called them back. And the guy on the comms is like, they're engaged. And I'm like, but they're not firing yet. Call them on the radio.

Is reception bad on a-d-day? Maybe. Yeah. Like in an imperial, and an imperial frequency zone. Could be that. Sure. Could be like, well,

Cassie can reach them, but don't worry about it. It's fine. We're here. They've spotted us, so we might as well try to kill them. Could be that.

Yeah. It's a series of great notes from you today. Sorry, I mean, I do like this movie and I don't mean to nitpick it to death because there's a lot of great in it. We love to pick nits.

Proudry Roachable's tradition here. True. I think that Cassie, refusing to imperil gin here is like some real like I won't leave you Cassie and Clayah Corrason Energy right she's like Typhick I'll shoot in the back but yeah clay I'm not leaving you gin I'm not going to let them shoot you I'm not going to leave you no um Jin after the the platform takes all of these hits and Krennick kind of skis skis skulks away um I'm really Sorry for anyone who isn't watching this on video, didn't enjoy that performance for you.

Credits on the clock. He's got to go interrupt Vaders back. Gin and Galen have the moment. They have this moment. And I was, like, so interested in this now through the lens of Cassian not having his family reunion. Not finding his sister. Yeah. Not ever getting that.

It's just like, yeah, not everybody has this. moment. Not everybody has the chance to... He doesn't see... He doesn't get to say goodbye to Bix. He doesn't get to say goodbye to Bix. He doesn't get to say goodbye to Marva in a more meaningful way than he did. His dad, his sister. Like, who does Cass get to say goodbye to? No one, gin, holding gin tight on the beach, right? Like... I guess he and Kay got to share a quick radio message, but on here with Cassian being like, K, K, K, K, K. So I don't have the third.

It's like total closure there. Oh, man. Joanna. This is one of the stretches where he pulls Gin away, as you know, it is time for a fairly tense flight back. I just want to say, Kay saying to Bodie, you're a rebel now is like, that's good shit. A great. Kay rules. Moment, you know.

I like how proud Bodie looks there. Yeah. Bodhi's great. Sad that everybody had to die. Yeah. Gin confronts Katow. Cassian about clearly going there to kill Galen. And he says, like, I had every chance to pull to trigger, but I didn't do it.

I had orders, orders that I disobeyed. But you wouldn't understand that. Orders? When you know they're wrong, you might as well be a stormtrooper. Great stuff. We've talked about this idea a lot already. But obviously, Cassian, like, he's going to go. We got an explicit just following orders in Andor, which we talked about at the time from

the ice. This is like. Kind of his whole thing. But he is not only not cowed by her judgment here, he is very assured. He says to her, suddenly the rebellion is real for you. Some of us live it. I've been in this fight since I was six years old. I assume that maybe is the time of frame when his parents were killed on Canari.

You're not the only one who lost everything. Some of us just decided to do something about it. you mentioned this line earlier. So we just know now so much more about everything fueling this, right? Like do something about it that it wasn't always true for Cassian, as we've already talked about, that it had to become true, that he had to find people who helped him make it true, the journey that Jen is on now. Seeing Cassian in the Luton role here, he could easily be speaking to himself in the gallery

in season two. And that's what's most important, right? How it goes for you? What's most important is the cause. Kill me or take me in. You're in. Oh, but Gorman looks too big. I give you everything.

This is everything? This is everything? It's just amazing to see Cassie and kind of on the other side of that conversation. And when he says he's lost everything, I mean, what have I sacrificed? Everything. We know what he means. It's all of the people that he and Vell toasted in the finale. And it's all of the people that they didn't, but that we know he has lost and carries.

with him. So it's a very rich thing to watch after Andor. Anything else in that stretch? And Jin is also here in her own movie. Stop. It's tough. Joe, we're back on Yavin in a second, but first we have to go to Mustafa. Is there anything you'd like to say about this critic sequence that we haven't already kind of hit with the imperial politics?

I've just never liked it, but people love it, so that's fine. Yeah. I do like it. I'm a basic bitch and the force joke. I have, none of this feels like Gilroy at all to me. Shoke on your aspiration. Choke on your aspirations gets me every time. It does. It does. I do like on the visual front when Vader comes out and has shadowed dwarfs Krennick,

and we're building to a new hope when we're going to get the ability to destroy a planet is insignificant next to the power of the force. Like that kind of visual scaling for both of them there is great. Yeah, I will say we got some emails that. for the first time of my life, I'm considering changing my view on the Vader appearance at the end of this movie. To me, that isn't uncomplicated. That fucking slaps. Everyone thinks that except for me. But they haven't moved me on Most of our, no.

Okay, fair. Totally fair. Take me to Yavin, where I just think that everybody here should go to Cowards Jail. The council is wilting in the face of Gin's update. And it's just tough for, like, Like, as you pointed out, when we got some of these characters in Andor, Yes. Pomlo and Jebel, like, like, that, that makes it all feel like a part of a whole. I still think Baylon Mon could be showing up a bit better in all of this.

But this line, what I really bumped on this time, not bumped on, that sounds like I have a problem with it. What really caught my attention this time is if it's war you want, you'll fight alone. This idea that their war mongering is coming from the people who are. like, let's not do this. You'll incite a war. And the lines we get again and again in Andor, you already cited the SAW one, of like, war is already

happening, right? Like the... Saw and Lutthin in season one, 30 men plus Krieger Sosses for the greater good. Lutthin says, call it what you will. Saw says, let's call it what's call it.

Fucking great scene. Reason to episode four, Cassian says, look at this place. We're in a war. Not everybody knows it yet, but it's happening. And Bick says quite memorably a little bit later on, if it's a war and you keep saying it is, and I know that you're right. But if it's a war, it's not up to us, what we save, what we lose. So Cassian saying, we're in a war.

Not everybody knows yet, but what's happening is years ago that Cassian said that. So for these chicken shit. members of the having counsel to be like, stop trying to incite a war. Like, how do you think what is, what is the ability going to do? What do you think this is? How did you think you were going to stop the empire? Palpi was just going to be like, I made some mistakes.

Yeah. Thanks for pointing it out. Yeah. What? I heard you have a cool jungle planet. Oh, man. Yeah, like, again, I like, I've always really bumped. I have really bumped on this scene in Rogue One.

And it's a little more palatable to me after Andor because it is, like, okay, this is the disposition, the core disposition of these few people. And I think the interest and or has in exploring, like, who is ready, what is required, who sees that, et cetera. That's all interesting to me. But it is just perplexing. Like, these people left and came here to do this thing. So what do they think this thing is?

What did you lead for? Yeah. Baffling. Tough. Some great lines, though. High comedy. Stretch. Like, these people are. Oh, boy.

Like, tough. Yeah, bail and bond, they're like, well, you know, we can't. We don't really have consensus. Like, guys, they're going to do some whispering in the hallway soon. It's fine. It's fine. Hallway whispers, sounds good. Gin, though.

Gin is ready. Yeah. She's gone from skeptic to evangelizer. She's here to preach. Like, when Pamela asks, what chance do they have? She says, the question is, what choice? One of the, you know, one of the highly quotable moments and lines from the movie. And this is the moment here where Jin then imparts the lesson that Cassian shared that Dila

had shared with him, rebellions are built on hope. You're asking us, Pamelaela says, to invade on nothing but hope, rebellions are built on hope. The thing that I like most about this now, revisiting it is that it doesn't work. It doesn't convince them. Yeah. Like she doesn't, she says rebellions are built on hope and they're like, rebellions are built on hope. Yeah. She's like, no, actually. If everybody is convinced in real time, I actually think it's like less in keeping with what and or is assessing. But also like, sorry, go ahead.

No, no, no, go ahead. Well, hope is so interconnected with faith, right? Yes. And faith is, you know, based on no evidence, right? Believing what you can't see. Yeah. Hope is shreds of evidence, right? And some people need more than others.

And once you've got the Death Star plans, then hope grows because now people have some tangible. They couldn't go on faith alone. But now they've got something tangible, you know, that was stolen and transmitted. And we can go, okay, now we have enough to go. Relay race. Relay race. I like it too because, like, this is the thing that we heard so much about in Andor with the closing of the fist. What are they choking out?

Hope, belief, the belief that you could try to challenge it. So even though these are the people who decided to go and fight, the idea that there are still some people who are like, but how could we possibly? What can we do? It's so big. Yeah. How could we combat this thing at this scale, this level of depravity and evil?

I like that they have to work a little harder. Relatable. To get people to buy it. Truly, truly, truly relatable. We got a little Alhara, Sindala, PA moment here, great stuff for the rebels heads. Or somebody might call it. The cartoon. Not the Asoka heads.

The Asoka heads as well, certainly. You're awesome welcome. Gin finds the gang. Trout, Bay is Bodie. They're in the hangar bay. They want to fight, but they don't have the numbers, but someone does. Joanna, who has the numbers? It's Cassie and Andor.

It's Cassie and Andor. He's like, I've been very important meeting because I was saying this. I don't know the timeline of this, right? Because like, Bodie slips out of the meeting in a way that makes it seem like he's off to report that it's not going well. And so then Cassian has to get people together. I don't know why Cassian wasn't in that meeting. But anyway, he gives a great speech.

He does. And this is the best speech in the movie. Agreed. Take me through it. And as he makes it, I will. And as he makes it, when he says, we've all done. And we talked about this speech a lot

when we covered season one of Andor. It's just been so top of mind for us. Because when Cassine says stuff, like we've all done terrible things on behalf of the rebellion, you're watching Rogue One. You're like, yeah, you shot that guy in the back. But like, now we've got so. much more. What sweet summer children we were. Information.

Spies, saboteurs, assassins, everything I did, I did for the rebellion, kind of. And every time I walked away from something I wanted to forget, I told myself it was for a cause that I believed in, a cause that was worth it. Without that, we're lost. Everything we've done would have been for nothing. I couldn't say, face myself, if I gave up now, none of us could. Right. So, like, Like, all of, you've highlighted here on our notes, like, all the times that Cassian quite quit the Ravala, like, tried to quit, tried to get out in season one and in season two. Yeah. But also this idea of walked away from something I wish I could forget, like, I wanted to forget.

Gorman, just the look we've gotten on Cassian's face in season two a couple of times when he's just, like, left a horror. and we watched him process that and snuff out a little bit more of his innocence as part of this. And so it was like, what was that for? What was me doing that again and again and again and just sort of like calcifying myself into this person that I've become?

It was for this. And like, if we're going to do this, as Bix would say, like, we have to win. Right. Right. I love it. To make it worth it, we have to win. We have to.

Nemick saying try. Marva saying fight. Like all of this is inside of what Cassian says here. It's amazing how many people from the two seasons of Van Doren from his past, we can feel in this speech. Like all of those lessons and the pain and the sorrow and the loss. All of the I'm not coming backs into the We Have to Win. It's just, it is his arc defined and contend.

I mean, the end, obviously, too, but like this is. really. This is where you feel like, oh, we know who Cassian is and we know how he got here. We know what led to this moment. This is, I think, the single most rewarding moment in the movie. I really agree. And I had this marked for later for like Scariff, but I'll just say it now. I was also thinking of Kino Lois. So Kino says, I would rather die trying to take them down than giving them what they want. You need to run, climb, kill. You need to help each other. You see someone who's confused, someone who is lost. You get them moving and you keep them moving until we put this place behind us. Like all of these speeches that we've chewed over and savored and are all rattling around in Cassian's head.

And that other thing that like Cassian, in the keynote moment, Cassian being knowing who needs to be like the voice of this thing, right? Right. It's Keeno who has to get on the radio and Narcina. And it's Jin who's like the person for this moment here. and Cassian's there with them, you know? Yeah, I love that. This is great. Really, really great.

And Melchie's right there. Go Melch. Love him. I assume he's got a hip flask. I bet his hip flask is stored inside of his big hat that he wears sometimes. I would believe it. Yeah. It's like one of those beer helmets, but it's, you know, just booze.

Man, Cassian getting his I burn my teeth. decency for someone else's fuel moment. Very satisfying. Truly. Truly. Leader cast. That's the other thing that was really on my mind here. Yeah. You know? Think like a leader. Man, Luthan's fingerprints are all over Rogue One. They really are now. It's amazing. Is this where we talk for a minute about the Jin Cassium vibes? Because they do like almost mating rituals circling of each other here as they look deep into each other's eyes. with this sultry, sexy expression. I don't mind any interpretation of this, okay? Because there's some people who have decided that Gin is, like, firmly in the, like,

Cassine's long-lost sister spot. Are they Targary? That's not how I was looking at my sister, but, like, siblings look at each other. You do you. But I think even... Are they the rat lifts at the White Lotus? Like, what in the ratliff is this?

Okay, so, like, yeah, the Lockheed-Eye-Eye-Lock. energy aside. I think they're like, there's this moment, but there's like, there's the elevator. Like, they all but kiss in the elevator. The elevator's like, do we have time for like a quick handy before we die? Yeah. Like, can we fuck in this elevator on the way down or not? And I think it's okay to, I don't think it, this is a question I was asking all season, but I don't think it betrays Bix to find connection with someone. Like, I think if they survived this, he would be like, I gotta go check it on.

We were here for each other in this moment, but my wife is somewhere and I have to go find her. I hope so, yeah, I think so. But I think it's okay to take solace in someone else inside of this moment that like... Agreed. Feels like the end of their lives and it is, you know?

I agree. I think to paraphrase Gilroy when he was on the watch for the finale pod and he was talking about how they were each other's, Cass and Bix were like each other's first kiss, you know, that, that relationship that is like your whole life. And again, I'm paraphrasing, but basically it was like, you know, that was strong enough to survive all the Tims along the way. Now, Gin is not a Tim, but like Bix left and told Cassian that this was his purpose and she was choosing for both and doing it for the rebellion. If Cassian attends to some means after that, that's fine.

I know you just said that Gin is not a Tim, but you kind of just put Gin in the Tim bucket and it's very funny. Tim. Let me stay for the record with Chin. It's not Tim. For so many reasons, Jim is not dead. But who lost it? I mean, were there other people in Cassian's life, like sexually, romantically? I think that... A nemo's, you know? That was pre-handmaiding ritual with Bix, but still... Yeah, I mean, that's the thing is, like, the way that Cassian and Bix were together, it does... I think it, I agree, I think it is fine if Cassian and Jin have a spark and feel a pull to each other and explore. and explore that, genuinely. I wish she had told her about Bix. It is a little weird, especially on the heels of the Vell,

the Vell Bixxie in conversation where she's like, you know, you should go, go check it. I don't think Cassie and Everstaff's thinking about Bix, but it's very top of mind. I would like, in my ideal world, in our re-edit of Rogue One, they can still elevator, eye fuck, they can still clutch each other on the beach,

they can still do all these things, but maybe at a certain point when they're on a shuttle to somewhere, Cassine just takes out a photo of Bixen and looks at it. And it's just like, I'm thinking about my wife. Yeah. He just like pulls Steve Rogers. He's got, you know, his peggy photo with him. A little photo. A little World War II fly boy photo.

I love that. I'm just viewing it a little differently now, I think, and that's okay. They have a very meaningful relationship and impact on each other whether or not it is romantic, even though they clearly are. eye-fucking each other in the fucking I see, no doubt. But I think we have the gin saying, amid the eye-fucking and the circling, I'm not used to people sticking around when things go bad and Cass saying, welcome home. I really love that and thinking about their relationship and their impact on each other in that way. Like, the idea for Cassian of home being where the people are that you can count on and trying to share that gift, you know,

Farak Stone and Sky, that gift with Jin, who can then find that in him. and they confided in each other. That's lovely. Did they fucking the elevator, maybe? I mean, Cassie was pretty hurt. It was a long way down. It's a long way down, if you know what I'm saying. Okay, listen.

Oh, boy. Boy, do I. This is something we didn't talk about in our Andor coverage, but there's a Tony Gilroy voice cameo in Andor that's also here in Rogue One. So in Andor, when we hear you've not been authorized to leave the space, You need to stand down. You know, and this is when K is like, I've been counting the orders we've dissipated so far. Would you like to know how many?

No, 17. Right. So that same. That's Tony Gilroy, right? Who's like, you stand down and it's when he says, what's your call sign pilot? Bodey says, Rogue one. And Tony Gilroy's voice says, there is no Rogue one. Great shit.

Incredible. Bode, incredible, brand creator. Unbelievable. Rogue one. Bodie. Genuine no-notes stuff. Yeah. I love it.

Great stuff. This is where Mon and Bail have a little moment. They're like, more probably is inevitable. Bail's like, I'm going to go back to Alderan, got to warn some people. He's about to be dead.

Very sad. Mon suggests enlisting his Jedi pal. Served him well during the Clone Wars at a very recent Disney Plus spinoff. He calls for Tilly's he's alluding to Leah. This is a real just like, this conversation is here

to bridge us to New Hope, period. You guys, that Obi-Wan show, the more I think about it, the more frustrated I am by it, okay. I'll be curious to re-watch that one day and see how it,

yeah, see how it sits with a little distance. Remember the slicing of the space fish, though, under the, Oh, I do. Under the Dettween suns. I promise I do. Rogue one arrives above Scariff,

beautiful Scariff. God, I love the way Scarf looks. It's gorgeous. The beaches, the jungles, the Citadel Tower, the gorgeous water, the way that the troopers and the at-ats look charging through this tropical paradise. It's just visually stunning, really gorgeous. Love it. Our rogues make their way down to landing pad nine. Some classic clearance code, shuttle code business here.

It's an old code. Check out. Gin has an address of her own to make to the squad as they are landing. And I would say it is much better than Cyril's address to the Molot-Corpos. Aerox. Yeah. Can it measure up to Mosque's address? I don't know.

It's not for me to say. Joanna, what do we hear from Jin here? Saul Guerrera used to say what, no, one fighter with a sharp stick and nothing left to lose can take the day. They have no idea we're coming. They have no reason to expect us. If we can make it to the ground, we'll take the next chance. And the next and on and on until we win or the chances are spent. So again, this is the ladder.

This is the relay race. This is just sort of like one thing on top of another. One leg at a time. And this is great. This is good. It's just Jin does not get this best speech of her own movie. But it's good. It's, you know, it's good.

Cassus is like a fucking banger even here. He's got a bar. Make 10 men feel like 100 rules. That's like the real Aldani spirit, you know? Yeah. How are we going to do it with just this group of people? Like, they found a fucking way. I love it.

I love it. They assign jobs. But he's like, what do I do? Cassian tells him to stay and keep the engine running so then they have a way out, but nobody's going to get out. No way out. No way out. No way out, maybe.

Oh, man. Pain. Painful. Remember at the time how just absolutely revelatory it was that everybody died in a Star Wars movie? What do you mean? Everyone dies at the end of real one. Yeah, exactly. Unbelievable. They punked the inspection team. They take all the unis. Cranic is arriving at the same time. You know, we heard he was due on Scarf, and here he is. Battle of Scarf time. We don't need to go through the beats of this, beat by beat, but any highlights that you want to hit, we've got the space battle.

Yeah. Radis. Our beloved blue leader, Merrick. Blue Squadron, not everybody, but Blue Leader some make it down. So we have the beach battle with aid from the air. And then, of course, we have our Tower Ascent with Cass, Jin, and Kay. We have these kinds of like three fronts of the battle, very classic Star Wars fair there. We got an email from a listener, Andrew, just sort of, again, talking about like, Rogue One feeling a little flatter than Andor, given the time concerns and stuff like that.

And so this idea that, like, we are heavily invested in the ground. battle because I personally, and hopefully everyone else, is heavily invested in Bodie and Bayes and Cherut and how they do. We are heavily invested in Cassie and Jin and Kay, what they're doing. Sky! You and I are very invested in Blue Leader, but is, you know, does anyone else, like, we don't have a character in the sky that we're, like, deeply invested in, so. Yeah. It's, that's true. Like the, I think the, um, I think the, um, use of the Hammerhead Corvette to push the destroyer into the other destroyer and then pierce the Oh, it's deeply sick.

Great fit of battle choreography, but yeah. Andrew was citing our critique of, or Mike Achique, I guess, of the Battle of Jackson. Yeah. To sort of like give us someone to, you know, give us a hold-o. If you're going to do a hold-o maneuver, give us a hold-o to care about, you know. Our listener, John, this is a war movie. This is what we get here. And this is like sort of, again, as we talked about at the top with Chris, like this big

promise and revelation of Rogue One. Yes. And our listener John was talking about the amount of, like, romance that is injected here, which acts as a bridge between the gritty reality of Andor into sort of the fantasy of a new hope. So, like, John says, Rogue One, the Rogue One crew, they don't die like the insurgents on Andor. They die as romantic heroes, eulogized by Radis, engulfed in a deathly, beautiful bloom of a

sunrise. Rogue One is already a genre shift from the realistic spy thrill of and or to the classical war picture slash tragedy. Romance cruised back in, and he doesn't mean romance like as necessarily. Romance. He doesn't mean fucking in the elevator. That's what we're here. That's what we're here

for folks. Romance creased back in with the emotional component Jim brings with her and this gives the space for guys like Luke and Han to become leaders and heroes to it. And from there, it only gets more romantic as the plans. The tiny thread that's been in one hand at a time from Lonnie Young onward

are chased by some menacing operatic horror we could not even have imagined in the Andor days. The hot potato ends up reuniting Anakin with his daughter. His droids find Obi-Wan? The children reunite on the secret weapon? The coincidences feel electrified. Fateful. The simple dialogue, hardened romance for a hard-fought war, now a clear struggle of good and evil. Lonnie's hot potato never drops until the moment Luke, actively parted.

participating in the force, releases his breath, and flies away. Andor's power was giving realism to a history behind an epic. And the byproduct is the epic becomes even more so because it feels like now we're participants, we live the history, and are a part of telling the story. Love it. Great stuff. Beautiful. Almost as beautiful as Blue Leader's mustache. Captain Handsome mustache. Great looking. Ben Daniels. Remember when Ben Daniels shaved on this season of Rings of Power? Boy, do I? Boy do I.

What's better? Getting the mustache or the carabass for the Zebheads from the cartoon? It's all memorable. I'm always thinking about the Zebheads. You know me. Anything about the grounds, the crew on the beach that we want to say that we haven't hit, we lose so many of our pals here. This is a real relay sequence with the comms and the master switch and getting the, word up that you need to open the gate so that we can transmit. This is just like the idea of an alliance in miniature. They literally cannot do it without each other. It's so cool to see that come to fruition here and the bravery and courage. And just from like a visual us a frame that is the only time of it would make me very like the way that they have to like muster their strength

to go do all of these things. I have to say be it Jurassic Park or anything else, I love when a chord doesn't reach and you need to like. Yeah. Figure out what to do. Like, I just, I think this is excellent. It's emotional. It's upsetting. They just did a really good job with Bayes and shirt and Bodie as, like, characters I'm invested in and feel the loss of.

And Melchie, you too now. You too, Melchie too. On the Melchie front, like, on the cousin to the idea of a cord not reaching is like, I love when Melchie's like, master's a switch, please describe. I just love that I should remember me like, what am I looking for? For us, what are you talking about? Please describe. Please describe. Great stuff.

The tower. Let's head to the tower with Cassie and Jin and K2. Let's head for another climb here, Joe. Kay has to get the map info from another KX unit's data brain seen there. Port-line cannibalistic rough. I like the mix of emotions when Cassian and Jin learn that the Fleet did show. Radis came.

Merrick came. They're here. That smile from Mon. The joy in their hearts that they're, they have friends everywhere. Like they came. They're here. But also that moment where they're like,

we're not getting out of here. And all of those things happening in tandem. Really good. Really potent. Gin realizing finding the right file because it is her. It is stardust. Gets me every time. She is the message.

It's a beautiful. absolutely beautiful. What a wonderful little thing. Even after the hollow and after that moment with her father, here it is the ultimate proof that he never stopped thinking about her for a second, that he did this for her, that she was the fuel. We're the rider. She was that. Like, stard us, incredible. I just love that. Luminous beings are we. We are starst, you know? So good. K2SO's death gets me every time. This is like an incredible final stand for him, just really. unbelievable in that message, climb,

climb, Joe, you have done a beautiful job throughout our andor pods of connecting this thread, the climb.

Nemek. Kino. Fuck. Clime. Just hits so hard now after Andor. It really, really,

really does. Even, like, going up to level 27 to get Klaa, like all of it. Oh, my God. Krenick goes

to the data vault. Now, I don't want to accuse him of a full dead truck because he takes two people with them, too. He then does. after they're eliminated follow on his own instead of calling for reinforcements.

So I do think there is some Dedra stuff happening with Krenich. Krenick lands a shot on Cassian in Cass Fals. Takes a real hit here. Jim, Jen climbs on her own. She reaches the transmitter. She needs to go adjust the antenna. The bridge is hit. She's hanging on.

Yeah. It's boy. And then there he is Krenick. And he hits her with the old Cassian Cyril. Who are you? but she's the victor in this moment. It's like the exact inversion of how that line functions with Cassian and Cyril. This was really fun on the heels of having seen the Gorman sequence.

For Cyril, when he hears that, it's like every single thing that he thought mattered, the way he lived his life unravels, right? It's like, I meant nothing to the person who was the center of my universe. For Jin, it's like an edge, right? what my parents told you, they were right. You can't win, but I fucking can. You don't even know who I am. You don't know how I'm about to beat you. I'm going to tell you in short order. But you didn't know. And that's what counts. And the fact that like no one is there with Krennick when Jin says all these things, because of this hubris, that he had to be there to try to like hang on that last little effort to grab his reputation and hold on to his life's work before to not. violates him. I think it's great. I think also this idea that, like, you thought you had my father.

You didn't? You thought you were important to him. I was the one who was important to him the whole time. Incredible. Hate to bust your ship. Tough way to go for credit. Some painful stuff to hear and then see at the end. Cassing emerges, wounded, but.

Full of conviction still and fires a shot into Krenick. Joanna, anything you'd like to note about the blaster? Bix's blaster. Bix is here. He doesn't have a portrait, but he's got her gun. So, you know. Absolutely wonderful. I love it.

And we've already, yeah, we've already talked about how Melchie has Cass's blaster, which made a whole journey from Cyril. Yeah, okay. Another relay race. The destroyer pierces the shield. Jinn transmits the plans. she wants to run back and finish off Kranek, but Cassian stops her. Nice little soul-preserving moment there from Cass for Gin, beautiful stuff.

And Radis is like, she did it. Radis did not watch Andor, so he is not doing this podcast just talking about Cassian instead of Jin. He's here and he's like, she did it, damn it. They did it. They all did it. It's all about all the little heroes. Nope, it's just about you, Jen or so. Okay.

I really love the moment. that we get next. They're injured. They're propping each other up. They're walking. And Cassian says, do you think anybody's listening? And Jen replies, I do. Someone's out there. And Cass was the guy on Narcina who said, nobody's listening. And then when they got to Gorman Will was like, we're always here. And what was the refrain that they repeated? The code, the shorthand inside of their spy unit, that ultimately contained this substance and heart. It's what Vell will say to Claya to make her feel like she's at home. I have friends everywhere.

This idea that at the end and the moment where he needed it to be true, like they could trust in the fact that someone would be there to receive the message from our message and our messenger, what a perfect little bow on this and or experience. This is the kind of thing where I'm just like, man, this actually, there's a way for this stuff to read. really not fit together, but this is just so rich after Randor. What are, like, fun puzzle for Tony Gilroy and his team of writers, Dan and Bo and all of them,

to, like, get to parse every single line in Rogue One, and they're like, how come we make it hit? And so you can sort of backfill then and say, like, let's give Cassie a nobody's listening moment so that later when he says, like, yeah, it's a character on an arc. Yeah. I love it. And I really loved thinking about Bix talking about his purpose and his moment with the four sealer and that moment with Luthin where he's like, just sort of always there that like Cassian is the messenger who is always at the center of the consequential thing and to be here then in this crucial moment. Yeah. And to express these things.

Perfect. Really, really, really, really hits. Tarkin is receiving the reports that the rebels are attacking Scarf. And he's like, where's Krennik. Oh, he's there. Okay, I know where we're going. orders a jump to hyperspace, calls for Vader. And just like when they sent those green boys out to the plaza on Gorman,

not a moment of hesitation for the empire when it comes to sacrificing their own. Not a moment. They need to blast the Citadel Tower. Yeah. Krennick's there? Who cares? When can we leave? Yeah.

When can we leave and when do we arrive? For me, actually. Efficient. Wow. Loving when a plan comes together. That visual of the death start. emerging above Scarf is just always give me a chill.

It's so fucking good. So good. Single reactor shot. Leaving the fleet to Vader. We get that really wonderful moment of Krennick looking up, injured, wounded, left alone abandoned at the top of the tower to look up

and see his obis by his own perturred. Really was. Really, really was. What do you think was like the last thing he thought? Leo. Leo was. Oh, man.

He's like, maybe I saved this sermon for pout beef like a little too long. Oh, man. Jen and Cassie and fucking the elevator is canonically established on this podcast. And they head Joe to the water's edge. This has always been beautiful and devastating. It continues to be beautiful and devastating. It is more anguish-inducing than ever as we watch this plume. And they know, they know their fate.

They're not leaving. this is the what do I sacrifice everything consummation here and Cassian gives this gift to Jin of telling her that her father would be proud and I had a moment watching it

where I was like man I wish Cassian had gotten to hear the same thing like from somebody who knew him but then I was able to like find the piece of like I really believe that he knows that I believe that he knows that everyone he cares about would be proud of him here and like that felt so good That he got that from Brasso about Marva earlier, that Bix's message to him is essentially that, like, you know, he is doing exactly what she said he should do. Yeah.

He's going to win. They're going to win. They're going to win. He gathered as he went. And here he is. This is great. The tight embrace on the beach. Yes.

Her eyes are open the whole time. His eyes are closed until they're open right at the end. We got an interesting email from Marva. our listener, Deborah, which made me go back and look at the way in which Cassian's eyes open right at the very end. She says, they're about to be consumed by the blast when the Death Star. Cassian opens his eyes and then opens them more, very wide. Then there's a flash and they're gone. The expression he makes when he does this is like nothing I've seen before, and I don't have words for it. It's childlike and may be fearful.

But there's this other thing. It's almost like wonder or taking a deep breath as his eyes widened. that final moment. And at the time, it felt like such a deliberate and unexpected choice by the filmmaker. And I've always wondered why they decided on it. And now, you know, again, we get to replay all of Andor and all of the things that matter to Cassian as he goes. And then on this sort of like reason to celebrate the unsung heroes of the rebellion, which is the whole project of what we're talking about here. Daniel our listener and Daniel sent this interesting Noam Chomsky quote from understanding power, the indispensable Chomsky, in which Noam Chomsky said,

look, part of the whole technique of disempowering people is to make sure that the real agents of change fall out of history and are never recognized in the culture for what they are. So it's necessary to distort history and make it look as if capital G great, capital M, men did everything. That's part of how you teach people that they can't do anything. They're helpless. They just have to wait for some capital G, capital M, great man to come along and do it for them. I love that because we've been talking about this a lot about like sort of what can I do in the face of something so big and that great email we got from a listener about the

baton pass of rebellions are built on hope that like just saying something to someone can do something. This has really been like I got absolutely roasted on Twitter for saying this and that's okay. We all need to get roasted on Twitter. or sometimes. But like, I genuinely have, like, changed the way in which I have, like, been interacting with my community in terms of, like, community service and joining programs and, like, you know, being engaged on a very, very local level because of thinking about what can, what is this one little rung on the ladder? What is this one baton pass? And how can it

grow and grow and grow from here? Because I have been feeling incapacitated. And so, what are the small things we can do? And they might not write space operas about us, but they might make a Disney Plus show about us. You know, they won't do that either. But that's okay. You know, like, it's all, we might show up for one line in a Disney Plus show,

or not at all, but it's all part of it. So, um... Oh, I love you. You're the best. It's just stories matter, man. They really do. I really agree. I love those.

emails and we talk a lot about the sunrise. I'll never see Luthan idea, but like the show is about making sure we saw those people, you know? And that's a cool and important and worthwhile thing. Like they didn't get to see the sunrise, but we saw them and we understood the power of their work and the import of their work. And like, we've talked a lot about the Luton-Cassian moments, the sense of the inevitable place they were marching toward and giving themselves over to that. in order to then give everything to sacrifice everything. But I really liked thinking, I'm not surprised that Narcina has come up today

as much as it has because it's such a crucial thing for Cassian and a shaping and defining experience. And I was thinking a lot of the moment where he said to Taga, don't die until you put up a fight. It's not about the fact that Cassian dies. That is not what the story is about. It's about the fact that he chose to put up a fight. Same for Jen.

Same for Luthin. Same for all of them. and like, what a cool and important thing to show us and for us to get to see. Is it devastating? He and Biggs didn't get to find each other again? Yes. After when it's over and we've won, we'll do all the things we ever wanted. Yes, it is hard-hitting and I will cry about it forever.

But this is the choice that both of them would have made if they knew the outcome. It is. We got a great email about like sort of Bix's baby because we talked about in the, in the finale pot about how, like, a lot of people had some issues with it. And, oh, I lost the listener's name somewhere in my copying basing. But this idea that, like, Cassian's kid, hopefully, and again, this is exactly, we've been talking about this with, like, Luthen and like, we're fighting for the next generation. We're fighting for the next generation doesn't have to. So this idea that Cassian's kid grows up, for the most part, in Starpiece and gets to be a kid and doesn't have happen to him.

The same thing that happens to Cassian and to Jin and to all the other, like to Clea to Leda, to all the other kids who have like grown up and had their childhood and their innocence taken from them by this imperial. you know, event, I don't know, what word I want there. But like that, that's the dream for Bix and for Cassian's kid that they, that they, and I really understand and I do feel this idea of like Bix was so in the fight to watch her step away from the fight is tough. But also just like, you know, if this is an image, even though Cassie didn't get to see it, we got to see it and we, and it has to. flash like this is what he's fighting for.

No question. What are we, we're fighting for the shire. We may not for us. The shire, we say the shire, but not for us, right? You know, so, yeah. Great movie. That baby gets to grow up now and live in a galaxy where we get Force Awakens and the gift that is the last Jedi and then, you know, nothing lasts. So, as a Skywalker and then you got to fight again.

Yeah, I know. I was like that relative piece for a bit. And then here comes the first order. But, you know. Vader. I mean, the movie for our purposes today ends with Cassian and Gin on the beach. But anything you want to say about the final, because this is really connected to our relay race theme

that we've been tracking since the beautiful email on the handing of the passing of the plans. This is a literal relay race. And again, to like the various emails we got about the genre difference, this like, yeah, this like, monster supernatural monster chasing down these very ordinary people this is not something you would see inside of

and or but it is something because this epic is growing into a new sort of sphere and a new sort of genre and also like the what is it they've sent us hope I hate this moment for a bunch of reasons the fucking CGI Laya hate and I think what is it they've sent us hope

is quite hokey when like the movie after it is called a new hope all of it is very hokey But, like, you know, when you think about Cassian and all the people that we've already mentioned that try, fight, you know, all these things, these things that he's been gathering along the way, as you've been reiterating that the, you know, the Force Healer talked about, like, this is the message is hope that Cassian has been just sort of piecemeal picking up from all these people that he is encountered along the way. And so I still don't love it, but I don't hate it as much as I used to, thanks to Andor. But I hate CGI.I. Layle a lot. Yeah, the CGI targeted the CGIA. We'd love a do over there. We would.

We truly would. Oh, Joe, this was great. Remember that the frontier of the rebellion is everywhere. As Nemek would say, what a great 24 episodes and two hour and 16 minute movie to remember that. I know. Truly a great part of Star Wars. I love it. I really love it.

I can't wait to see if I follow through on my pledge to rewatch Andor next May. We should. I would like to. And I believe actually now we're committed to watching Rogue One and then Andor and then Rogue One and then a new hope. That's right. We've established the order. Anything else? No.

I don't really want to be done talking about Andor. So maybe we get like one mailbag question. Yeah. I've got a couple. I've got a couple. I'm not like totally right. Stop. We'll be.

We'll smuggle some more in the spring mail bag. Beautiful. All right. It's time for our thank yous. Thank you to CR. Chris Ryan's swinging by for 50 minutes. Fucking treat. A prince.

Oh, my God. A prince among men, truly. And thank you to our Rebel Alliance today. Carlos Chiroboga. Carlos. For producing this episode. Jonathan Frias here with us today. Helping with the production.

Thank you, Jonathan. Arjuna Ram Capel. Production supervision, as always, and Jomiya Deneron. his work on the social. Joanna? There's a great many things to attend to.