What is it that you hear his collar saying?
In Andor Ep. 7 , the age old conflict between individualism and collectivism rages on.
The Short Take:
There’s so much to love and dig into with Ep. 7, but, for me, sticky ideological conflicts and a striking visual language that adds depth and nuance made the biggest impressions. Mon Mothma is an icon.
Image Credit: TV Line
[SPOILER WARNING: The spoilers will be floating around this review like puffs of cereal in blue milk. Catch up on this delicious show before you continue!]
The Long Take:
As @eyeoncanon explained on the most recent Rebel Base Card Podcast, Tony Gilroy, in an interview with the Empire Film Podcast, described Episode 7 as “a bit of a standalone” episode, as opposed to a part of a three-episode arc like episodes 1-3 and 4-6.
We (I had the privilege of joining the pod as a guest) had all assumed that meant the episode would have a singular focus that was tangential to Cassian Andor’s evolution into a revolutionary — a Mon Mothma only episode, a Saw Gerrera episode, an Imperial Officer/ISB episode, or maybe even a Syril Karn episode. We were, of course, wrong. “Announcement” is a “bit of a standalone” episode because it checks in with nearly every character we’ve met so far, spreading the story across many plot lines. It deals with the aftermath of the Aldhani heist and what each character’s next move might be.
Cassian goes back to Ferrix to try to get his mother, Maarva, to start a new life with his earnings from then heist. Syril Carn bickers with his mother and goes on an interview at the Bureau of Standards, courtesy of his mysterious “Uncle Harlo.” Dedra gets the data she needs and impresses Partagaz, who reassigns Ferrix to her. Mon Mothma and Luthen have a spat over the events on Aldhani. Mon Mothma uses the cover of a Coruscant cocktail party to recruit a childhood friend to the cause. Kleya meets with Vel and orders her to tie up loose ends (a.k.a. kill Cassian).
Though he had much praise for this episode, David Chen of Decoding TV called “Announcement” a transition episode. Others have similarly described it as an “in-between” or a set-up episode, intentionally or unintentionally implying that we’re just biding our time before the next arc. But, for me, this episode is more than a well-crafted interlude. The vast ensemble approach, with more or less equal time for both major and supporting characters, reinforces the ecological structure I observed in my review of the premiere. Everyone is a part of a bigger system and individual actions ricochet off one another so that no one is ever living on a vacuum. In some ways, that’s why Cassian’s dream of taking his credits and running was never going to work. Even as a “tourist” on a wayward beach party planet, he cannot escape Imperial tyranny.
More specifically, the Empire in Andor, as highlighted in this episode, is a mechanized system that devours people and strips them of their individuality. When Syril’s mother hassles him the morning of his interview, for example, she’s not just smothering him with overbearing parenting. She’s worried that her son’s appearance will stand out too much. She says, “Is that what you’re wearing?” in a stereotypically naggy way, but then, immediately afterwards, she makes a much more revealing comment: “What makes you think the Bureau of Standards is in the market for individuals?” When Syril points out that it’s just a “brown suit,” and therefore completely boring and innocuous, she notes how he has changed the suit. It doesn’t matter how unremarkable the suit is; the fact that he customized it in any way is bad.
It’s bad because it goes against Imperial values. His mother thinks the higher collar is a cry for attention and a lack of confidence, and she comes to that conclusion because falling in line and doing your part makes the Empire go round. During this scene, I immediately recalled that in Episode 1, Syril’s boss at Preox-Morlana also notices that he’s altered his uniform. He’s not as critical as Syril’s mother is, but he kind of furrows his brow and acts like it’s a very bizarre choice. Similarly bizarre is Syril’s desire to go against the flow of Imperial bureaucracy, disregard orders and pursue Cassian anyway. We may not agree with what he’s doing or what he believes, but the fact that what he is doing breaks rules makes him more like the Rebels than we’d like to admit. As an aside, the fact that we start and end this episode with Syril makes me suspicious that he will become very important later in the season. That he will somehow be the lynchpin to everything.
Like most things in Andor, there isn’t an easy answer; in Syril’s case, it’s ambiguous what the suit collar actually says about his own values. Even though he may think outside the box more than most pro-Empire people, the match cut we get from a shot of Syril — his contentious collar prominently displayed — to a shot of a gray ISB suit jacket hanging — collar also prominently displayed — implies that maybe Syril just wants to be more like an Imperial officer. That he’s trying to actualize the career he wants by modifying the clothes he wears.
Image Credit: CNET
Since this next scene quickly reveals Dedra suiting up before a meeting, I would say that the cut also links the two characters in a way that makes it more and more likely that Syril and Dedra’s paths will cross. Even though I think Dedra is way cooler than Syril, I’m still guessing that they will see each other as like-minded individuals, committed to a mission even if it goes against protocol or the status quo. Dedra, after all, takes advantage of the Empire’s equivalent of the Patriot Act to get the information she needs. Her supervisor does reward her for going out of bounds or being more creative, but he also tells her after the meeting to “watch her back,” implying that there may yet be punishment for her flouting. Again, the dynamics here are complex because, on the one hand, Imperial culture frowns upon going rogue and there will likely be blowback; on the other hand, we see Dedra get ahead. Perhaps flouting protocol only flies if you can get results. In the face of failure it is obscene. I’m still thinking through this, obviously, so if you have thoughts about how the series wants us to see these two characters, please share.
We Star Wars fans know, of course, that the Empire’s monolithic hegemony and its valuing of cogs in a wheel will ultimately be its fatal weakness — even more so than its arrogance — because they will not be able to account for individualistic, heroic acts like Luke Skywalker making that impossible shot into a tiny opening on the Death Star. I fear that by the end of the season, regardless of whatever victories they enjoy along the way, the Dedras and the Syrils will eventually be punished rather than rewarded. Notice that I said “fear” just now. I am still flabbergasted by how much I am rooting for these characters who are so clearly on the wrong side of history. The show gives us a window into their interiority and the challenges they face such that we can’t help but want them to succeed, even if that means they are opposed to the good guys. Or perhaps, according to Tony Gilroy, there are no good guys, as we see Andor hurts those he loves even though he will ultimately become a rebel and be one of the “good guys.”
I’ve loved the aesthetic of the entire series to date, but this episode in particular offered a terrifying beauty in illustrating the Empire’s conformity. The final shot of Syril sitting at his octagonal cubicle, staring at a screen, followed by a cut to a much wider shot that reveals hundreds of other identical cubicles so quickly conveys a sense of how the Empire doesn’t care about any individual people and just wants everyone to perform their tasks mindlessly.
This part of the episode reminded me of Dickens’ Bleak House, which is most known for its biting critique of a real-life British legal system called the Court of Chancery. Chancery, like the Galactic Empire, is a sprawling, soul-crushing, unfeeling bureaucracy. Cases get stuck in endless loops. People’s lives slowly destroyed, crushed under the sustained weight of paperwork and proceedings. It’s a system that doesn’t care about the people it allegedly has been designed to serve.
Beyond its critique of the Empire’s drab ministries, this episode is all around beautiful. The composition of shot after shot took my breath away. Every frame in the Mon Mothma party sequence made me want to screen shot it. Even Syril looking out a window with all the brutalist architecture in the background at the beginning of the episode gave me pause. As I mentioned in my review of the premiere, the style (both visual and auditory) is very indebted to Bladerunner. But guess what? That’s one of my favorite movies of all time, so I’m totally fine with that.
Part of me worries that “Kafkaesque” has become a cliche that writers reach for too often, but it’s what I thought of when I witnessed Cassian’s arrest and hearing on what the Internet has lovingly dubbed “space Florida,” Niamos. (Allow me a brief digression to shoutout the music in this episode, especially once we arrive on Niamos. I never knew I needed beach synth in my life, but now I can’t live without it.) It just fits so perfectly. When the Shoretrooper initially approaches Cassian, he asks, “Are you a part of it?” Cassian’s response is, “A part of what?” because he genuinely doesn’t seem to know why those other people were running. The Shoretrooper uses a tautological argument to implicate him; when Cassian says, “Why would I be running?” the trooper simply replies, “Because you’re a part of it.” And he says he’s a part of it because he looks like he’s been running. All Cassian can do is repeat, “A part of what?” The Empire holds him and, if the full courtroom is any indication, countless others accountable for rules that they’ve never been told. Rules that change by the minute, paradoxically in flux. There’s a nightmarish absurdity to it all.
Image Credit: Tell-Tale TV
Thankfully, this episode counterbalances all the oppressiveness with Mon Mothma revealing the full extent of her genius. I’d like to now begin my manifesto on why she is an icon; you could even say that I just wanted to get all that other stuff out of the way to clear the runway for my queen. I liked Mon Mothma from the get-go, but this episode affords the Senator everyone (even her own family) underestimates a chance to show us just how deep undercover she is. The idea that she pretends to be a “polite, sometimes indecisive Senator” just so that no one suspects her of funding a rebellion is absolutely riveting. Her saying that she learned from Emperor Palpatine that if “I show you the stone in my hand, you miss the knife at your throat” reveals a cunning that we didn’t know about before.
Smiling is her deadliest weapon here; that’s not only a brilliant concept for a character, but it sets up such a stark contrast to Luthen and the other Rebels, who rely more on brute force and making a commotion. Their whole plan for the Aldhani heist, we learn, was to draw attention to themselves — to make, as Dedra says, an “announcement.” Mon Mothma, on the other hand, fights on a very different front, using her aristocratic, opulent, Empire-adjacent lifestyle — including her immaculate, fierce fits — as a shield as she operates in the shadows. Mothma and Luthen clash over what a rebellion must involve. She hates the idea of innocent people suffering after the Empire tightens its fist in response to the incident on Aldhani, but Luthen thinks it’s necessary for liberation. I can’t wait to see how throwing extremist Saw Gerrera into the mix will affect this dynamic. What it will infuse into the dialectic.
I was captivated, on the edge of my seat during the entire Mon Mothma/Tay scene, and while the writing and acting no doubt contribute to that, I noticed the camerawork in a way I haven’t for any other sequence in the series so far. My earliest memories of studying film, a tiny bit in high school and then a little more in college, are of learning how to spot symbolism in the way filmmakers compose shots; to identify the form and then tie it in some way to the storytelling. Sure, sometimes a window really is just a window and not some metaphor for a character’s realization, but it’s quite fun to try to extrapolate meaning from a visually striking choice.
As I watched Mon Mothma walk and talk to her childhood friend and potential co-conspirator, Tay, I kept thinking about how all of the two-shots of them had to be a part of the subtext. In the conversation leading up to Mon’s broaching of her true nature to Tay, the shots are fairly normal medium shots used when two people have a conversation. The moment she says “I want to tell you something,” the actors walk through these white, spider-web-patterned screens that partially obscure their faces from the camera. Part of this heightens the secrecy of what they are about to discuss, but the blocking of the scene also makes it so that this shot is like a point of no return. They both pass through these screens and emerge on the other side with a completely different relationship; Tay can’t unknow anything Mon Mothma tells him. The camera gets in closer to a shoulder level shot, establishing this newfound intimacy between them.
The rest of the scene is a series of stunning shots that use the architecture of the room as a way to frame Mon and Tay — an octagonal doorway, a dramatic crystal chandelier, a cherry blossom branch, a windowsill. Visually it reflects the chasm between them when Tay fails to catch Mon’s meaning, but also their alliance-forging, as these spaces join them together.
I’ve now bent your ear for too long with my amateur film analysis, but I think this speaks to the attention to detail paid in Andor by all its creators, and to the narrative sophistication that has set it apart from other Star Wars Disney+ series.
Now that this episode has established the varied, intricate mechanisms through which this galactic war might be fought, where will we go from here? Tony Gilroy has promised one last three-episode arc before a two-part finale, so I’d imagine that we would need this next story to build us towards a showdown between the ISB and Luthen’s crew, possibly with a close call for Cassian being found out by the Empire. He’s already been caught on Niamos, though, so he will probably have to escape, encounter Vel again, and then join up with the cause instead of getting assassinated.
Image Credit: The Ringer
Does he serve out his six year sentence before that happens? Or will someone break him out of Imperial prison sooner? Maybe Vel has to before the Empire can get any information from him? Will we get a prison cell manifesto reading scene? That seems like too ripe an opportunity to pass up. Like you having made it all the way to the end of this review, Cassian now has a lot of time on his hands.