Soap Box Ranters with Margaret Killjoy ("Daughter of Ferrix" Part 3)

0:00 This podcast is brought to you by our partisans, Shelby Von Trapp and Bobby Chudhury. If you want to find out how to join up with Saw's Rebels, or if you want access to our bonus episodes, head over to patreon .com slash andorkspod. Hey everybody, welcome to Andor, the podcast where every week we analyze and recognize the Star Wars series Andor seven minutes at a time. I'm Alex Wallenetz. And I'm Rustin Honordeus. And we have friends everywhere. And today we are joined by our friend, the host of the podcast, Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff, and speculative fiction writer, Margaret Kiljoy. Thanks for coming, Margaret. Yeah, hi, thanks for having me. Welcome to the show, we're so happy to have you. We were

0:52 talking about basically my favorite show, so I had to say yes to come on. And you are a cool person who does cool stuff. Thank you. And this is a show all about cool people who do cool stuff. So why don't we start? Well, some are not cool and some it's not cool stuff, but yeah. Well, so actually what's great about Andor is it's like my podcast is a history podcast. I talk about cool people in history, but the almost theme of the show is that you start with someone who you think is really cool and then you read all about them and you're like, actually, it's complicated people who did complicated stuff.

1:24 And what is a show about that besides Andor? Well, Well, I would love to get into all that. But first, I would love to hear, what is your history with Star Wars? And how did you come to find this show about complicated people who did complicated stuff? I grew up as a nerd. And I wouldn't say I loved Star Wars uniquely. I actually watched probably more Star Trek as a kid. But I grew up in a family where we did both.

1:55 And then even in the... modern era when all of us kids no longer live at home. Every time there's a new Star Wars out, like we like go out and see it in the theater together with my family. I have a lot of siblings. And so I've always had like, like Star Wars is like, it's never been the great love of my life, but it's always been like, cool. I enjoy it. I love good pulp.

2:23 Right. And I love melodrama and I love the willing to, I love a willingness to tell a really grand scale story. And I actually think more than anything else, that's what I would point to the Star Wars universe and say is that they are not afraid to tell a grand story at the like largest scale possible. Right. I always say it's Star Wars that are about wars. They are very big, meaty topics. Yeah, totally. Totally. And, yeah, I love something that just does what it says on the tin. You're like, ah, yeah, this is going to be about some wars in space. And then how do we take that concept and then, like, take a really pulpy concept and then just be like, take it seriously. Then say, okay, but what is

3:06 it actually like? What are these characters' lives actually like? And I like the idea of a larger universe and lots of different media around a topic so you can start doing that. So I've always had to. an interest in that. But I've actually always been a little bit turned off by, I'm not a huge fan of the Jedi. I'm not a huge fan of like really black and white, good and evil. I like a little bit of black and white, good and evil. I love Tolkien, right? But I like, and I wasn't really excited about like the space eugenics globules in your skin that are in your blood that tell you whether or not you're a wizard Harry Potter. And so, When Andor came out, I was like, yeah, I'll give any Star Wars a chance.

3:52 And then you start watching it, and there's no space wizards. Except actually, I think in season two, they do a decent space wizard's job, and they make it really interesting. And then in the first three minutes, he kills two cops. And I'm like, oh, I'm going to watch this show. So I just gave it a chance. You had my attention.

4:13 Now you have my interest. Yeah, totally. It said Star Wars. I'll give it a shot. It's usually good for some entertainment. And then I'm like, oh, no, I'm just crying. This is amazing. Yeah, it's such a statement of intent to open the show with our hero killing two dirtbag cops. It's so amazing. Abusing sex workers. Yeah. Yes, exactly.

4:41 Walking through in the mood for love red light district. Yeah. And also just like Star Wars has always been really good at costuming. And I think that Star Wars is like set stuff has it blows Star Trek out of the water. I know it's the most obvious comparison to the other star show, but like and or really does it because it lets me. Well, actually. Actually, I will say the thing I always liked about Star Wars is that it's grittier. It's more the equivalent of sword and sorcery. It's still epic fantasy.

5:14 But it's got more sword and sorcery elements. It's down in the mud a lot more. And I really like being down in the mud in my fiction. Also, the 70s just had good fashion. And it's been stuck in the 70s for 50 years. Yeah, totally. I was watching some of this and being like... Did Kubrick shoot this? Like when they're all, I don't remember what it's like everything. Oh, in the prison, the prison were all in white.

5:38 And except for the guards who are in black, I was like. This is I'm watching Kubrick. This is great. Yeah. The aesthetics of Star Wars, I think because they're movies and they can kind of condense everything into the most impactful, like two hours possible, really. And Lucas, as like a visual filmmaker, more than anything, really helped make. star wars iconography into something that has stood the test of time whereas star trek always i think as a tv show needed to be replicatable right like they need to have like a standing set that's easy to shoot in and every cave scene is the same cave yeah the same cave out on in like the desert or whatever yeah it's the equivalent for the doctor who uh welsh

6:24 quarry it is it's every time it's the same quarry but no i think We have a big trend of people who are primarily Star Trek people who love Andor. It's a big common thread of the show, which I think it's the Star Wars for Star Trek people. Yeah, because it does the stuff that Star Wars does way better than Star Trek. Because it's not just like, oh, it's as good as Star Trek.

6:45 It's way better than Star Trek, right? No offense to my Deep Space Nine fans, but it's – yeah, anyway. I could talk about Andor all day, but I guess that's what we're going to do. Yeah. uh before we talk about and or though something we've been you know exploring with our guests is you know this is a show that feels like it's really speaking to our political moment and as you know leftists and organizers i think that's part of the reason why we've all gravitated to you know loving this show so much and so i'd love to know you know what was your your journey to the left like yeah well I was a disaffected, bored teenager in the suburbs in the 90s as a white kid. And I was not particularly interested

7:33 in politics, but I was also not particularly interested in being told what to do. And so I had this really brief, I took this online quiz in the 90s that was like, what's your political ideology? But it was created by the Libertarian Party. And so for about a month or so in high school, when I was 15 or 16 years old, I was like, I guess I'm a libertarian. And I had a communist girlfriend. And she was like, corporations just run everything. And I was like, oh, yeah, no, you're right. I don't have a counterpoint.

8:02 You're just right. But I don't want to become a communist, you know, in the capital C way, right? Like a very anti -authoritarian person by nature. And so I was kind of just a... not particularly interested, the equivalent of a democratic socialist. Um, and like it was green party at the time. Right. I was like, and, uh, I went to Finland as a teenager and I was like, honestly, this is so much better. Right. Like I. I saw some of the wealthy people living in a two -bedroom apartment right in downtown. It was really pretty and very small. And then I stayed with some of the poorer people, and they were in a nice studio apartment that was a little bit outside of the center of town. And I was like, yeah, this is a big difference. And I was

8:44 like, I guess this. Right. But yeah, nothing like a trip to Europe to really turn a young kid into a socialist. Totally. And I was like, I guess this. But it didn't really put a fire under me like Nader's campaign. I was like, it's fine, whatever. And not to just date myself. Well, I guess I just said it was in the 90s.

9:02 And then I joined the anti -globalization movement late, after September 11th. So during the downturn of the anti -globalization movement. And the thing, the anti -globalization movement sounds terrible in retrospect, right? Its branding does not work in the modern way. And so often people call it the ultra -globalization movement. This was a movement to try to reverse the economic extraction of the developing world from the developed world, right? This was a movement to try and stop The global north from just stealing the resources from everybody. And I joined this movement.

9:39 And my friend was like, hey, you should go to this thing. And I was like, I don't know. This seems silly. Like all the politics people are kind of silly, you know. And I went and I read up and I read about the anarchists. And the anarchists were wearing masks even though they weren't allowed to in New York City in 2002. And I was like, well, that's cool. And so I went and I found an anarchist who was wearing all black and a mask. And I went up and I said, well, are you an anarchist? And he was like, yeah. And I was like, well, what are you about? Who's asking?

10:08 No, I know. In retrospect, this whole story, I was like, wow, I can't believe this worked. But I was also like a goth kid wearing all black myself. There you go. So all you got to do to trick an anarchist, wear all black to a protest. I went up and I was like, well, what are you all about? And he's like, well, we don't believe in capitalism or the state. We want to create this horizontal society. And I was like, well, what are you doing about it? And he's like, well, we're going to build up alternative institutions while attacking and destroying the institutions that are immiserating the world. And I was like, oh, do you have an extra mask? And he was like, yeah, I do. And he gave me a mask. And on February

10:45 2nd, 2002, I've become an anarchist. And my politics have... nuanced since then but they haven't necessarily fundamentally changed uh so that is that is how i ended up on the left um by stumbling across a person who was actually willing to explain his position to me it's interesting because we actually had a writer for reason .com on the podcast a couple weeks ago speaking of the libertarian side we're like he was the one where i'm uh He was the one where like this is the limit of a person from Reason .com I will accept on the podcast. But like he is like – was willing to engage with it in good faith and had done an interview with Tony Gilroy. So we wanted to have him on. So it was sort of like – it's like the

11:32 show can speak to like – even like a hardcore libertarian, the show speaks to them, which is a very interesting thing. Like we never – we couldn't get to the point of like – so we've agreed on the problems. How do we fix it? Then he kind of shied away. But that was – But I but I do think that we have this moment right now where with Trump, we just saw which libertarians meant it. And I have some respect for the libertarians who meant it, who are still like, no, no, I'm against big government and government overreach, not just when the left does it, you know. And so like the Ron Paul 2008 class. Yeah. Like everyone.

12:09 Everyone. Not Ron Paul himself. Everyone ran to the right. You know, and and the ones who didn't. I've like talked to some of them. I'm like kind of friends with some of them who are like it got real lonely. And most of those that left and became libertarian socialists, you know, but like. But you just you were like, wait, I thought we all believed in this thing. Oh, you just meant you want to keep your stuff like I thought it meant that we should be in charge of ourselves. They had a kind of Cyril Karn moment maybe where they're like, oh, I thought we were in this for, you know, the love of the game.

12:51 You guys are just want to kill people. I didn't realize that. Yeah, actually, it was just funny because Cyril is like the opposite of a libertarian in so many respects. But yeah, his idea of like anything is defensible in defensive order, right, is a position that I do not share. But it is a position that is ideologically consistent.

13:10 And watching him get battered around for being ideologically consistent while trying to, like, because he's not even a bootlicker. He's just a, like, oh, yeah. Anyway, I don't think Cyril's in our episode today. Oh, no, we got Cyril at the end. Oh, okay. Oh, yeah, that's right. That's right. We've got lots of ED talk to get to at the end. Yeah, yeah. My favorite character of the show. Oh, interesting. Wait, what are y 'all's favorite characters? I guess I never really thought of it. I think it is Edie. I don't think I've ever declared that before. I think it might be Edie. I think B2 for me. I love that sick, sad old dog and his unyielding love for his family.

13:50 Okay, I warned you all, the hosts, before we started recording. I have the worst memory for names in the world. Even though I love grand storytelling, I need cheat sheets, or actually usually what I do is keep nerds around. Edie is the Jewish and or Italian mother of Cyril. Oh, great. Then we have both of those in that scene. Yeah, yeah, exactly. But I loved your point about Cyril being perhaps the only ideologically consistent character on this show. I think part of the... the pleasure of the show is that it kind of delves into the ways that people's ideologies change over time. And depending on like the material conditions that they're kind of dealing with in that moment, right? Like Mon Mothma has entered

14:37 into this rebellion with one, you know, perspective on how this rebellion should go but over the course of the show she's constantly tested and forced to you know reckon with where she's actually ended up being yeah when nancy pelosi becomes a revolutionary socialist yeah almost by accident yeah in the same way that cassian goes from you know a dirt bag to a revolutionary without quite realizing it, you know, as opposed to Cyril, who enters the show with such ideological fervor until his last moment is when he finally begins to question it. Yeah. And it's one moment too late. Well, this episode, not just the seven minutes we're going to talk about, but this episode is the episode. And maybe the one before it,

15:28 but I actually don't remember when the speech in the elevator is, but it's the moment where you start seeing like everyone, not necessarily changing their ideology, but having to figure out what fits within their ideology and like being like, oh, do. horrible decisions fit within the ideology. Like right after, to spoil it, I assume everyone listens to the show has already seen the whole episode and isn't watching it seven minutes at a time. I hope so. Watching Saul Guerrero be like, wait, you're just gonna fucking turn this guy in? You're just gonna let this guy die? And being like, yeah. do you want to do something different? And watching Saul, who I actually think is a fairly ideologically

16:10 consistent character, but he's trying to understand the consistency of his own ideology. He's trying to figure out his own moral limits because he is a simpler and more pure revolutionary than Luthan. He's like, I'm just a gorilla in the hills. If I have a problem, I shoot it. Watching him have to be like, oh, fuck. Yeah, no, I guess I would do the same thing as you. shit, I guess we're just going to let this guy die. That's war, baby. He doesn't say baby, but that's what he says. No, speaking of stuff, we'll never get to see it, but God, what I would wish for like three episodes of just the Saw Gerrera partisans arguing over political stuff for like two days.

16:51 Oh, absolutely. Two tubes, the big guy with the two tubes coming out of his face and the big Yeti guy just arguing about just the smallest... The Tyranny of Small Differences of Politics. I would just watch that for hours. Oh, totally. Because it's like, they're basically the Italian partisans where half of them are anarchists and half of them are communists. And they're like, well, we got to fight the Nazis and we're in the hills. I want to see them talk. I want to see what they come up with. Answer our calls, Lucasfilm. Come on. And one of them is arguing and just, and it's in subtitles. Yeah, totally.

17:22 I can't deal with it at a BSA meeting, but I can watch it on Andor for hours. Yeah, absolutely. No, just hire an anarchist, a DSA person, and a revolutionary communist to sit in a room and write the three sides of it. Yeah, and all you have to do is make them go... And people are fascinated. Yeah. But one of them's a droid, one of them's an alien, and one of them is Saw Gerrera. Yeah, totally. You know, on this show, we have a question that we like to ask, which is... in honor of the late, great WTF with Marc Maron. Who are your glup shittos? So, we've already talked about one of them. Can you guess who it is from who we've said? Is it Saul Guerrero?

18:09 No, no, he's a little bit too main character of a glup shitto, I think. I agree. It's Two Tubes. Three -timer. I think a four -timer. Or is this number four? Yeah, Two Tubes. We love Two Tubes. Because, like, There is something simple about being like, I have a problem and I'm going to shoot it. And not only am I going to shoot it, but I have a six -foot rifle with which to shoot it. And, like, there's just a, like, simplicity to Saw Gerrera's gang. And, of course, they're, like, intentionally more anarchist coded, right? You know, I think Luthan says, like, oh, anarchy seems simple or whatever, you know? But, like... So, of course, I'm drawn to those characters in particular. But just the, like, now I'm just doing my thing. Power of the

19:02 Revolution. Got a real long rifle. Hell yeah. I want to know that man's life. One of our favorite jokes on the show is because there are two two tubes. They are brothers. They are twins. That's what the two refers to, actually. When they're separate, they're just tubes. But because there's two of them... Wait, are you telling me the truth or are you lying to me? No, I'm telling the truth.

19:23 No, I think they're both called two tubes. That's what Wikipedia says. No, they are, but before... But Sauce's tubes calls them tubes in this episode. But yes, our joke is always that one is a malice and one is an anarchist and they are constantly... Oh, amazing. Absolutely. Yeah, no, they're like still brothers and they're just like, yeah. Do we need to start making people distinguish between Benthic and Edrio, or do we allow two tubes to qualify for both of them? I guess if you don't know which one it is, you know their names. I do know their names, unfortunately, but I can't tell you, I can't tell the difference between which ones on screen. They should have given, like, one, like, two tubes, like, on one side

20:00 and two tubes on the other side, you know? The thing is, they look identical. It should be, like, Thompson and Thompson in the Tintin comics. Like, one has a slightly curved mustache, and that's how you know which one is which. Oh, yeah, totally. It looks like Benthic has a kind of, like, tooth necklace around. He's got, like, the shark tooth necklace from the 90s, you know?

20:20 Yeah, he's the evil one. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I believe that it is Benthic who we see mostly in Star Wars, or in Andor, so. Okay. But I could be wrong about that. Again, I cannot tell them apart. Okay, well, Edgerio has the Darth Vader pack on his chest. That's the difference. Is it because they can't breathe the atmosphere because they're a certain type of alien or something?

20:45 Exactly, yeah. Which is interesting because, like, Star Wars has the kind of messy thing of, well, like, all science fiction and whatever. Like, Darth Vader's kind of marked as evil because he's disabled, you know? And I really think it's interesting how they did that to Saw Gerrera in Rogue One. Yeah. Right? But it's like... When I say interesting, I'm not quite making a moral statement on this. But it's interesting to then basically intentionally Darth Vader code this revolutionary. But then, yeah, if you're expanding it out to be like, oh, yeah, all these people need breathing apparatus because the world's full of aliens. That's pretty cool. I almost picked, as my glub shido, in episode – You can

21:28 have a second. You can have a second. In episode one, there's a salamander guy who's hired as muscle. But he's just a nice guy. He's like, he's like, he's like leaning over. When one of the people. I know who you're talking about. I'm blanking on his name, but I will find it. Yeah, they say his name. But, you know, Andor owes money to somebody. And so the guy hires a tall salamander to stand behind him. And he's like, what are you doing? Why are you doing this?

21:52 And I was like, oh, he just told me to stand here. Vetch. What is it? Is his name. Vetch. V -E -T -C -H. Yeah, we love Vetch. I almost picked Vetch as my glove showdown. No, you can have two. Okay. I appreciate it. Who's Glob Shitto? Like I said, don't remember things. It is a Tumblr post that has lived in infamy where it's basically like Star Wars fans will basically see the most obscure character and start screaming, oh, my God, it's Glob Shitto. Oh, yeah. This is what's alienated on Star Wars. Yes. I don't want to know. I love the scale of the universe, but it's also intimidating. But I think the reason for the question... Yeah, I kind of have come up with the glup -shiddo test, which is that a glup

22:41 is a character that if Two -Tube shows up in a trailer, you're going to go, hell yeah, it's fucking Two -Tubes. And a shiddo is that the person sitting next to you, your friend, your parent, your partner, is going to turn to you and say, what the fuck are you talking about? And you're going to feel embarrassed that they don't understand. So I think that's a glup -shiddo.

23:06 you know, oh, that's two tubes. And I was like, all right. But it just worked on me. I didn't say what the fuck you're talking about. If you find yourself accidentally soy facing, it's a cool shit out. Yes. Yeah. Cool. Wait, you said I could have a historical one. Yes, yeah. Yeah, so your podcast, you know, is all about digging into the history of the wildest rebels, the most beautiful revolts, and all the people who long to be and fight to be free. And so we would love— Shout out to my friend Caitlin, who made me listen to your podcast. So, hi, Caitlin. Oh, yeah. Thank you, Caitlin. Oh, yeah, who's often on the podcast, Caitlin Durante. No, different Caitlin. The Caitlyn.

23:45 Oh, okay. Or PSA Caitlyn. I'm excited to have more than one Caitlyn listening to my show. That's awesome. Caitlyn's and Caitlyn's love. Caitlyn and Caitlyn. Oh, great. Cool people who did cool stuff. And so, yeah, do you have a glup shiddo from revolutionary history that you would love to talk about right now? And I knew it right away as soon as you were like, oh, you can have one from history. I was like, oh, I know who it is. Because you all brought up the Diggers as an example. But I would argue. The Diggers, a movement that actually barely did anything, actually, but they left a huge mark on history.

24:19 During the anti -enclosure movement and then specifically during the English Civil War, there were these people who were like, we believe. basically in sort of a Christian communism. They were like, we believe in the leveling of society that has been promised to us by the kingdom of heaven. And so the diggers went out and they went to the communal lands where they weren't allowed to be and they just started growing food.

24:40 They're guerrilla gardeners, right? And the enclosure of the commons, of course, is what set almost everything bad in the entire world into being because it happened in England. And then when England does a bad thing in the Middle Ages, that becomes everyone's problem during the colonial era. And when England does bad things in 2026, it becomes everyone's problem. yeah no it's oh god yeah totally see rowling comma uh jk's yeah yeah also do you know that alprs the automatic license plate readers like flock invented by the british At this point, it's either the British or the Israelis. It's which one. Yeah, totally.

25:14 No, absolutely. Which police state. Yeah. And they were invented to stop the IRA, but actually all they ever did was catch car thieves, which maps what Flock is now, where they're like, this is going to solve all crime. And it's just actually about car thieving. It's actually about, in the US, it was done because of... uh repo men were actually the people who instituted the large databases because they wanted to steal back cars from poor people who couldn't afford their loans but anyway okay so the diggers The commons are getting enclosed basically before the current conception of private property. If no one's using land, go graze your sheep there. Go live there, right? That was a common thing across most of

25:52 the world in various places, and that was enclosed during the Middle Ages. And so the diggers were actually a later version. The enclosure had started hundreds of years earlier, right? Robin Hood could be even tied to the enclosure of the commons. Oh, well, this will have come out by the time, but do you know what's going on with the uprising?

26:10 Oh, the movie? Yeah. So the Andrew Garfield movie that's coming out called The Uprising, which is about the Watt -Tyler Rebellion. Oh, wow. Okay. But they – I trust him to do it. All right. Yeah. It's Paul Greengrass. But for a second, they changed the marketing to The Uprising, The Rise of Robin Hood. Oh, interesting. And then removed it. When they realize that Robin Hood's not a historical figure. I think they're trying to be like – It's the guy who inspired Robin Hood, but it's not actually Robin Hood. He had people to go see the movie. They're just trying to turn the movie into IP. The historical rebellion is not enough. Yeah. Oh, that's interesting.

26:52 Okay, so the diggers. Yeah. They go out. No, this is the way my brain works. I love this. So the diggers, they go out and they're like digging up the ground and planting things or whatever. They actually don't harvest a single potato out of this. Potatoes are... come over by then. Yeah, I think potatoes had come over by then, but I'm not 100 % certain. And they actually don't harvest a single turnip out of all of this, but they write really good, interesting theology about the whole thing, and they've resonated on in history. But there was a lesser -known cult at the same time who was hanging out that there's actually some overlap called the Ranters.

27:27 Have you heard about the Ranters? I have not. Are they the Ur -Podcasters? Yeah. Oh, it's so funny how much the er podcasters are throughout everything. Like the people who would stand on street corners and sit on soapboxes and like that was the entertainment you had, right? Like literally people would – you had to be basically a stand -up comic to be a soapbox ranter. You actually had to know how to engage a crowd because you have competition. Everyone's going out to go watch soapbox ranters. You had to be really good at it. So they really were podcasters. There's so many podcasts you all could be listening to.

27:58 I'm really glad you're listening to us. But so the ranters – They didn't believe there was such thing as sin. They framed a kind of hedonistic, anarchistic idea into theology, into their Christian theology. And they basically had massive orgies. And they were just like... doing their thing. And it was kind of revolutionary, but kind of in that way where if you look at the hippie movement, where everyone's free love, but then some people are like, free love is just kind of a way to have freedom, but we actually need to overthrow the government. And some people are like, I guess overthrowing the government is cool, but really this is about I want to sleep with eight people right now. And the ranchers, I think, were a

28:39 little bit more on that side. But we don't know. And we don't know how big they were. They're presented as a pretty big deal. And they all got hunted down. And they had Their, like, tongues burned off and, like, all of this stuff just for saying, like, hey, do whatever you want, man. You know? And so they're fascinating. But they're always, like, barely referenced. Like, one of their books exists. It's been a minute since I did a podcast episode about them years ago in The Digger. I did Diggers, Levelers, and Ranters all at once. I used to be way more ambitious with my episodes. Now I would separate them out.

29:15 Anyway. Whatever. Anyway, so that's my glubshido of history are the ranters. What I love about Star Wars is you could easily just turn that into an alien planet where they exist. And it's just like that exists within the Star Wars universe. Totally. You could drop the ranters right into Andor. Exactly. Or anywhere in Star Wars. But you could drop it right into Andor. And it would just be like, oh, yeah, these people are also part of the rebellion. They're kind of weird.

29:43 There's the cuddle puddle happening on Yavin 4 where the ranters are hanging out. Well, because that's actually one of the things that Andor does really well. Sorry, I never get to talk about Andor. Thank you for having me on the show. No, that's the point. That's what this is all about, baby. Talk about the ranters and then I'm going to go on this shit. But like the two big climaxes of this season both happen as relates to folk festivals, right? Both happen, they relate to tradition, and they're kind of different traditions.

30:11 One's framed a little bit more religious, like, oh, these backwards Scotsmen are going to come here and have their staring at the most beautiful thing that could ever possibly happen in the world with the eye of whatever showing up. Aldani. Aldani showing up in the sky, right? That's used as the distraction. But then at the final episode, spoiler alert again, it has to do with the rebellion tying into the traditional ways of funeral arrangements.

30:41 I think that's really smart. I think that if you take this really intentionally, really diverse universe, they do a really good job of genuinely being like... I don't know how big the Star Wars universe is. Some people probably know. But there's like thousands of planets in this empire, right? And they're all really different. And they're all – and this is going to get into the actual seven minutes we're supposed to talk about. The power projection of the empire is completely different on all of them. And so the rebels have to be aware of that. And the way that Saw Gerrera is able to hang out in the hills is completely different than how people have to do it on Coruscant.

31:16 Yeah. I will lose all my credit as soon as I actually have to say names. No, but you're totally right. Our listeners respect people who know less about Star Wars than people who know more. Yeah, exactly. But no, in the universe, there is the inner... rim uh the the inner core plant the core planets and then there's the mid rim that exist kind of in this boundary between the the core worlds and then the outer rim which is the the lawless wild west and that's where the corporate police are doing their thing or is that mid rim the mid rim yeah that's that's the kind of gray zone where where the empire and you know even going into the prequels that's where the the boundaries are being fought over

32:07 who controls what. There's first world countries and then there's third world countries and then there's third world planets. Yes. Exactly. There's a space Michael Parenti arguing somewhere about how all the third planet, the outer rims are not poor. They're very rich. They are extracted. But Star Wars shows you that, right? They are being extracted from. That is like, they are resource rich. What alien would space Michael Parenti be? I have to think about this one for a little bit. I will come up with an answer.

32:38 You know, they're too good at actually entertaining people to give us too many of these figures. On that note, should we dive into our seven minutes? Because it sounds like you're champing at the bit to get to talk more Andor. So why don't we dive into it? Yeah, let's do it. Previously on Andor, we hung out with our buddies Dewey and Freedy. Cassian and Melshi found a ride back to Niamos. Vel and Kleia got into a fight. The Time Grappler grappled with time. Brasso indulged B2Emo's request for company, and Lieutenant Kasax dragged Bix into an anonymous room. But now we find Bix, barely recognizable with sallowed eyes and blotchy skin, once again at the mercy of Imperial agents. ISB agent Korv tells Bix that

33:20 he's going to ask her a question and expects an honest answer. If he thinks she's lying, he'll have to call Dr. Gorse back again. Bix doesn't respond, but Korv continues with a Why is the CGI projection of Anto Krieger, Racine? So Krieger is being portrayed by Andor graphic designer Barry Gengel. And so this is a little Easter egg for him to bring him into the Star Wars universe, but just make him look a little different than, you know, he does in real life. But is it like in universe, a like a computer generated image of him? Or is it a... Potentially, yeah. Yeah, they didn't get him into the 3D body scan machine, if that's what you mean. Yeah. He urges Bix to look at his face. Is this the man you've introduced

34:12 to Cassian Andor? Bix's eyes start welling up. She goes through too many emotions to count, but ultimately her head bows down. She couldn't answer the question, even if she wanted to. Real bummer of a scene to start with. I mean, yeah. You should go ahead. I have a lot of thoughts, but I always have a lot of thoughts. No, when we last saw Bix, like, you know, during her torture scene, we talked about, you know, how that's the last time we get to see the Bix that we have known and loved throughout the beginning of the show. And I think that's really clear here in this moment where she's unable to. It seems like she's barely even able to breathe, let alone speak or think. And I think that I have such

35:03 complicated thoughts about Bix's treatment by this show, especially when only season one was available. You have a little bit of like, oh, cool, the love interest girl is being tortured to move the plot along, you know? Although she's not directly a love interest or whatever, but like... And it... It's like a trope I'm not in love with. And that's a little bit what I'm coming in with. But at the same time, I don't believe in plot armor. I don't believe that the way to solve the way that we have bad tropes about how we treat marginalized people is to make those people totally impervious. I do think you can kill trans characters in your fiction. You just kind of need to earn it. Or presenting sexual

35:47 assault in fiction, which I actually don't believe that this showed us much of. It has to be really earned. And it's a little bit plot earned in season one about what's happening. But it's also a little bit like, oh, the princess needs to be rescued. But I think that the way that they handle it by season two is so different than the way that this would have been handled 20 years ago. That it actually represents a development in storytelling that is more realistic and more interesting. Star Wars original is cartoon violence.

36:24 By and large, it's like, pew, pew, you got me. And there's this tendency in modern storytelling to present all action as horror. Actually, the Robin Hood movie is a really good example of this, the recent one, not the one that's going to come out, where it's just like, it's a horror movie when they're fighting. It is gore. It is nasty. It is like, oh, why did someone live their entire beautiful life just to end up stabbing people and getting stabbed? It seems like bad decision -making all around, which is a more accurate way to talk about war because then the stakes are real. Then what the rebels are doing isn't like, ha -ha, we saved the day. Oh, we're going to have a funeral for our one dead friend.

37:08 It's like, no, we are fucking our lives up. We are trashing ourselves to try and do this. And so it becomes all the more beautiful. And specifically with Bix in this scene and then in season two, she kind of doesn't get better, right? There's a before and an after. And like there is like some arc that happens, right? Because it's not like a bad thing happened to you and your life's over. But like when a bad thing, a really traumatic thing happens to you, there's a before and an after. And since... Other people involved in this episode, their before and after is they were alive and now they're dead, right? Well, especially in the next episode. This is why I do think it feels earned to me. But I don't know.

37:56 I think that this show in the torture scene. uses uh uh it draws a direct comparison to leia's torture scene in star wars like with one of the shots that it does and i think the biggest difference is that In that movie, Leia gets tortured and then 15 minutes later when Luke shows up, she's quipping, she looks, you know, like a million bucks. But here, Andor is taking that like deathly seriously. And unlike every other Star Wars thing where like you're saying, you know, they go on the bank heist and then everything is great and they move on to the next adventure. Here in Andor, the consequences of all of these actions stay with the characters throughout. the entirety of their story to the point that like throughout

38:47 season two, Bix is still grappling with this. And you could even argue that like the reason she makes the decision that she does at the end of the show is because of this experience that she had, that she has seen firsthand how evil and monstrous the empire is and what it will do to people. And why it's so important to oppose them, even if it comes at the cost of your own personal, you know, love and fulfillment. Yeah.

39:20 I also think that, like, in so many other worse versions of the show, I think, especially in Hollywood, they would want to just go, okay, let's just do some sexual violence to show that she's traumatized. I think going like, well, we don't want to show that, but we can actually make something that's even more, not more upsetting, but like. Just having these screaming noises be as traumatizing communicates so much more than just sort of the default sexual harassment scene. I think that it's a smart choice to just sort of, let's stay away from that, but do something that is equally traumatizing from a contextual background and not have to necessarily show that.

39:55 No, totally. And like that is a way of saying like, oh, you want to do a sexual assault scene? Well, what are you actually trying to accomplish? Can we do this in a more original way? And it even makes the Empire scarier. Like and actually some of the ways that – because the Empire is not nice to women and not nice to its own women.

40:12 And some of the most powerful moments in season two are specifically around one of my favorite characters whose name I forget. Dedra. Dedra. Around her. being, like, she is this strong, powerful woman, right? And then, like, even her meek, shitty fucking husband or boyfriend or whatever, like, kind of does a, like, I'm the real man here scene or in that. And, like, and just, like, the way that, like, I don't know.

40:40 I think they actually play with this stuff kind of intelligently. Okay, and then the other thing, though, I want to say about Bix's interrogation scene that actually has more to do less with how this stuff is represented in fiction and more about how it happens in history. It's an interesting thing that she is accepted back into the revolutionary movement after cooperating.

40:59 And I'm not making a moral statement about this, but it's interesting because Luthan and all these people are so hardcore, right? They are like, we're shooting anyone who might be a leak. That's like our fucking thing, right? And she's cooperating, right? She is, by the strictest definitions, like has cooperated with the state, right? And it's interesting because it presents it as this like, look, it's just actually inevitable. The empire is super torture and super torture you can't do anything about and you're just going to lose. And it's just interesting because revolutionary movements throughout history have dealt with this so differently. And one of my other favorite pieces of revolutionary media, have you ever

41:43 seen The Wind That Shakes the Barley? I need to. It's one of the best movies ever made from my point of view and it's about It takes place after the Easter Rising and during the Irish Revolution. And in it, they shoot someone who cooperated, who they're all friends with, right? But realistically, historically, although that could have happened, that is not an out -of -place scene, the IRA during this period would mostly actually, if it was a loved one who snitched because they had no other choice, they would buy them a one -way ticket. out of Ireland and put them in exile. And it's like this tragic thing. It's like still not the person's fault.

42:27 It's kind of the equivalent of like you got shot and killed, right? Is like, oh, you're now done, right? Your decision has this permanent response. But it's interesting because, again, we have super torture in Star Wars. So it's like Bix doesn't actually have a choice. It's going to work on everyone, which is like a hand -wavy thing I don't like. Um, and I think it undercuts some of the potential tension, but I also do think it's like storytelling useful and like, and it makes it easier to not be mad at picks.

43:01 Right. Um, not that even people should be mad at people who like, cause I don't know, most of us haven't been waterboarded, you know, like. But I mean, to give her, you know, a little a little credit, like she's been I think what this is doing is it's demonstrating how the Empire is so. committed to being evil that it ends up biting itself in the foot in the sense that Bix has been tortured so horribly that she can't give them information. Oh, she doesn't? I thought she does give them information. Well, the information they're trying to get out of her is who is Axis?

43:36 Who is essentially Luthen? And so what they're coming in this scene is what they're coming and they're saying, is this Anto Krieger guy Axis? Is this guy on the screen here, the guy that you've been meeting and the guy who you introduced? and or to, and she's not even able to answer that question. I thought she does answer it implicitly, though. I thought she does say no, even though it's not in the scene, because later they know that Krieger is just some guy, right? Because they want Axis so bad, but when Krieger does his attack, they're like, yeah, fuck that guy.

44:08 Just fucking kill him. It's possible, but I think maybe they take her left. I like your version so much more. Sorry, go ahead. It's so much more true to torture of just like it gets you bad info anyway. I know. No, totally. Exactly. That was why when it was super torture that just is magic and perfect and works, I was really upset with it. I misread this then. I was taking the fact that they seem not concerned about letting Krieger die when he attacks to mean that she had – I thought the scene was implying she did give the info. No, to me that was her crying is that she wants to – tell them no that's not him and she's getting so mad that she can't even like why for the sake of answering that to me

44:49 that's what those tears are of like i want to even tell you what you want to hear and i can't even do that that's what those okay my read of it is just literally she's in such a catatonic state that literally just hearing the name and or puts a memory in her head that is not this horrible torture PTSD. And, and that just memory of Andor and her connection to him is what, you know, allows her to feel an emotion and kind of wakes her up if only for this really brief moment. And it's so exhausting to her that she, she ends up like collapsing in the chair essentially right afterwards. I. I like y 'all's version.

45:33 I'm going to switch mine over. I changed my answer because I prefer, especially what you're saying about Alex, about torture doesn't work. Because that's one of the things that I think is really a problem with, especially Western media during the global war on terror era, is that they're always like, oh, it's morally compromising that I'm going to have to torture this man, but it's the only thing that could possibly work. And it's like trusting AI. It's like, oh, I don't like AI, but it's the only thing that could give me the correct answer. And you're like, no, it's not. The only way I can write this email is if I pull out your toenails. Yeah. Well, it's like both those things don't work. Right. And we're

46:13 like being told like, oh, it's a shame. We got to make these moral compromises. And you're like, man, it just straight up doesn't work. But also to your point of like them accepting traders, this is something that the. A book that we recently read for the podcast, it's The Rise and Fall of the Galactic Empire, which is sort of trying to cohere all the politics of this era into something resembling a history that makes sense when the movies maybe don't. But the argument the book makes is that the rebellion falls apart because they are sort of very amenable to taking in anybody who was in the empire who is willing to switch.

46:51 As long as you're willing to switch, we'll take you into the movement, and there's not necessarily an ideological building of the rebellion. We are against the thing that is currently there, but there is not an ideological thing. So there's not a need to get rid of every squealer, because as long as you're still willing to work with us to do this, we're more amenable to keeping you around. But actually, I think that's the strength of the movement. I haven't read this book, so I don't want to totally argue against it, but that's like the... They have a former stormtrooper in season one, right? And the lieutenant is also a major figure, right? I actually think that's one of the things that I like about what

47:31 Andor says about revolution is it's a big tent revolution. And that causes problems because they create a milquetoast republic at the end that doesn't do whatever. And it collapses immediately. But then again, if it had been like, ah, instead they create... Stalin town, right? You know, or if they, even if they had created like, like a specific single ideology probably shouldn't rule the galaxy. Well, the funny thing is the book can't acknowledge it because it'd be the one thing that Star Wars does not have, which is any representation of democracy. There's no voting anywhere in the Star Wars universe. The Senate doesn't vote? I guess they don't have the power. And they're appointed. they're not

48:12 but then they vote on things yeah but like the idea of like people having any democratic and control over their systems is yeah ignored because that would be the thing that broke the galaxy but they can't introduce that as a concept because that would actually yeah that people can rule themselves and also even mon mothma is like just a rich person from her planet who got appointed at like 13 or 14 or something like that like that's that's probably not a democratic decision you know oh that's interesting Speaking of Mon, should we talk about Mon and Vel? We'll talk about Mon and Vel. I do just want to give a last quick shout out to Barry Gengel who got to play Anto. He was like the resident Star Wars nerd

48:57 in the production design department of Andor. And I found a very cute quote from him on Twitter where he said, For all the fat, bald guys that couldn't find a good Star Wars cosplay, you're welcome. Thank you to Luke Hull and Tony Gilroy for making me an actual Star Wars character. And also, one of the best, just a pure revolutionary has a band of 30 people. Look, everyone dies in the end anyway. Maybe being sacrificed in this way. I love how much One Way Out is the theme of season one. And like – and it's like literally not about whether or not you get out of the jail. Like I feel like that's the most important lesson of Marva's speech and the getting out of the jail. As far as we know, Cassian and

49:48 Milch are the only ones who got out. Yeah, and then Cassian dies. Spoiler alert for before this ever came out. Yeah, no, totally. And it's like – and so it's not about getting out. It's about like you're dead anyway. And I think that gets at – revolution so well like I actually think that that's like a thing that modern society is especially Western society is not good at understanding is that like we all die like and so like the guy you maybe you but not me oh yeah yeah yeah I'm going to drink the blood of my child in order to live forever I'm a billionaire but like We all die, and so being the old guy who jumps on a stormtrooper in episode 12 and just gets shot while trying to choke a man in

50:38 armor. Man, he was going to die eventually anyway. He died well. Yeah. And so you know what? I think Krieger, hats off to Krieger. You don't even have to do any acting, and you get to forever be a Star Wars character who tried to overthrow the Empire. That's the best. Exactly. I think something I really love about your podcast, it's something I think about a lot, is just like, I think there's such a tendency to sort of view people in the past as people who were just like sad, maudlin, depressed people because they lived in the past. But no, no matter what time or era you're in, there are people who are creative and interesting and funny and want to do like interesting things and have interesting thoughts.

51:21 So like, even though they died, they had interesting lives. They were not failures just because they failed. They live their lives as people, and there's something beautiful about that. It's not just one thing or the other. Like, Hieronymus Bosch is my go -to of, like, oh, yeah, there were weird fucked -up freaks always. Yeah, totally.

51:37 It makes me feel better. I'm like, if I got stuck back in time, I'd be okay. There would be other freaks around. And, like, the people in the jail who are just like, all right, let's do it. Like, the guy who's, like, helping plan the whole thing. I don't even know if he gets a name. He probably does because he's part of the crew. Black guy with short hair who's helping figure out how to, like, jump on an elevator. You know, he dies, like, right away. No fanfare. But, like, I think maybe even the first person killed during the prison uprising. Yeah, yeah. And, like, that's something to be. Mm -hmm. I mean, they can't get us all. Yeah. Yeah, totally. And I'd rather, well, in the age of machine gun, there is a dangerous

52:18 thinking to they can't kill us all where you're like, oh, actually, we can look at the 20th century and be like, man, they can come close. You know? But you can't kill an idea, but if you kill all of its practitioners, the idea goes away for a long time. What is the first leftist group that will get a nuke? That's the question. Yeah, totally. Fuck. Well, let's leave Bix behind.

52:44 Yeah, let's talk about politics. Different kind of politics. Let's talk about, yeah. Bix may be unable to speak, but back on Coruscant, Vel can't believe what she's hearing as she walks into the Mothma household and hears Leda leading her fellow Shandrillentines through a ceremonial chant. I have a transcription here. The old ways hold us. safe in the knot, in the binding, the old ways teach us, bound against the wind, tied to the shore, safe in the braid of the old ways.

53:21 And Vel had thought society had moved beyond these archaic customs, but Mon informs her that she's clearly not keeping up with all the hot new trends with the kids these days. The trad cats. Yeah, the trad cats, exactly. It's weird. It's stronger here than it is at home. and and vel tells mon that she doesn't need to pretend to follow these old traditions and mon corrects her that it's not even parents doing he's strangely open -minded on this topic it's her it's lita she loves it and her friends it's the only thing she shows up on time for it's mad and so yeah we get this great little This Star Wars trad cath moment of Leta leading all her fellow teens through this, like, bizarre ancient ritual. There's

54:17 an old Patton Oswalt bit where he's just like, the cooler I am, I know that my kid's going to suck the exact opposite. Like, kids are always rebelling against their parents. So as cool as you are, your kid's going to suck. And it's just a cycle that goes back and forth. But I like that, like. Star Wars and or is going to show tradition in positive and negative lights. And it's not even necessarily showing this in a negative light. Clearly, Vel's not excited about mandatory heterosexual marriage at 14 for very understandable reasons. And also, clearly, Mon Mothma, who's presumably heterosexual, also doesn't like this for the same reasons as married to a real mediocre man is the nicest way I can think of putting

54:55 it. Yes. But it's interesting because it's not necessarily being like, this is a bad tradition. It is a little bit like we're not into this. But tradition is also being used to anchor a lot of the really positive moments of this show. And so I like that it's not just like a knee jerk lefty anti -religion thing, right? Or like only the new future best world is to come. But like, which actually speaks, I think, more to 21st century leftism than 20th century leftism because 20th century leftism was like... very anti -clerical by and large obviously there's leftists who are religious of various types throughout the 20th century but like by and large you're looking at people who are like we are in an age

55:36 of enlightenment and materialism materialism is all that matters you know and this show is kind of saying like Actually, we kind of like tradition too, which is good because then it actually does a better job of understanding anti colonial revolution, which by and large is rooted in tradition as compared to a lot of purely Western revolutionary ideologies are only about a break with tradition. So I find this interesting. And one of the themes of the show is that everybody has their own rebellion. And the way that some of the characters are rebelling is by going against the established order. But for Leda, whose mom is going against the established order, for her, rebellion is going against her mother in a classic

56:30 aggressive teenager way. But you could see a version where I would watch a show where nothing else happens that... makes the show do what it actually does or the timeline do what it actually does. Where, what's the, what's the name of the planet that all these people are from? Shandrilla. If all the Shandrilla and like nationalists are like trad cath revolutionaries against the empire, right? Cause they're like, stay out of our banking.

56:55 We like having our Irish mobster run things, you know, like, uh, we like our child marriage and do whatever. And like, There's actually – some of it's Tradcath, but I wonder if some of it's – They might be the Space Vatican. We don't know. Totally. Totally. No, that actually – that's a perfect example, right? Because the Vatican isn't even quite a stopped clock. It's more of a very consistent ideological position that is sometimes aligned with bad things and sometimes opposed to bad things. Like the most powerful force in the world right now fighting against the genocide in Palestine, like the Vatican.

57:33 You know, like the people who think that I'm like kind of shouldn't exist. So it's very funny. My dad for a long time worked at Catholic Charities of Brooklyn and Queens, which is very funny because we are very Jewish. Oh, yeah. And their joke was always like, yeah, they're like the CEO was like atheist. My dad was a financial director, was Jewish. And then the tech guy was Arab. And then like everybody else was like a nun. Yeah, that rules. But the perfect way he described to me once was that when John Paul II died, they forgot to take the photos down. And then when Francis got appointed, they were like, oh, yeah, we should replace the photos. They just like skipped anybody in between who they did not like.

58:20 Yeah, totally. I think for someone who was raised in the like Bush era, like, oh. you know like oh let's give more federal funding to religious entities which was bad but then i realized like oh for so long the church in new york city was really the only place that was like doing affordable old age homes or after school programs like there's a lot of stuff tied up in that but there was some element of like we are still have to provide for the public good minus the capitalist system and and just to draw a direct line to this you know modern trad cath movement, right? Like, these are people who, I don't know, I guess, see liberalism as the predominant ideology and are therefore rebelling against it by embracing,

59:07 you know, the most archaic Catholic traditions. I admit to being not super familiar with what they're doing. I think it's because we're all unhappy under capitalism. Totally. Like, I think people were going like, okay, we tried liberalism and we tried, you know, free love and that didn't make anybody happy. So maybe this thing will make me happy and it will also not make you happy, but it's, it's people just have this sort of like something is wrong. I want to fix it and nothing seems to be working. So why not just try this thing as well? We've done the same road, but everyone's sort of just trying to find some meaning or community. Yeah. I will say though, I love as someone who was born Catholic and I

59:43 could see myself as like culturally Catholic or sort of folk Catholic currently. I love watching the trad cats who were Protestant, who were like, Catholicism is like right wing plus because it's draped in tradition and we're fascists and we love tradition. And then they all like go out on social media and are like, why is the service in Spanish? You know, like, man, I got I got news for you about the Catholic Church. It does not map to your understanding of politics in either direction. I have the same thing with Israel stuff where it's just like everybody who was just like, oh, yeah, the Judeo -Christian values. I'm like, excuse me? Like the idea that we have like sacrosanct values of the religion

1:00:27 that's really about kicking God's ass behind like an Arby's parking lot. That's religion. That's the one that we're so sure about things and we can't argue with each other. We all have to agree on this one thing. That does not sound right to me. My favorite part of the Hebrew Bible is when God shows Moses his ass. And I'm like, I don't think the part of that. People who understand that are really the ones who are arguing for Israel the most. They'd be like, God showed ass.

1:00:53 Yeah, totally. This is the one Jewish line on things, and you're like, I thought the whole point of this culturally was that we discussed things. I thought that was kind of the whole thing. If you distill Catholicism theoretically, theoretically it would be like, be nice to strangers. That's kind of one of the most consistent lessons.

1:01:18 None of this is remembered. People just like power structures. People like structuring power and then using that power. I'm misquoting it, but there was a great post somewhere. It was just like, you know, modern Catholic, you know, going through some obscure thing and then, you know, regular Catholics, like, I don't know, be nice to people? Like, it was just that, yeah.

1:01:38 Yeah, I think, yeah, it's the... Catholic converts like, ah, the fourth council of Nicaea says that women shouldn't – like, oh, man, I think we should give food to people. Anyway, so it's like I don't feel like I know which one – is Lita the daughter? Yeah. I don't – I know that she is acting in a way that her liberal mom doesn't like, right?

1:02:02 But I actually – I don't feel like – Maybe it comes up more in the second season. I actually think it does, but I don't remember because I didn't remember season one when I watched season two because I have a bad memory. But it's like with the amount of information we have available in this particular scene, I'm like, she's doing some weird shit. And it's conservative. It's culturally conservative, but that doesn't necessarily align it to Empire. But it's so weird how they then use that as the way to make her moral compromise that she's going to talk about in the next part of the scene. okay right because she's gonna kind of sell her daughter to the revolution right for the revolution but it's but her daughter

1:02:44 wants that in a way that she doesn't her daughter is less compromised about this kind of decision of like fuck yeah I'm gonna meet a rich boy my age and get married because that's the way you're supposed to do it you know whereas like the good liberal progressive momothma is like oh oh fuck oh my god I would also be remiss to not bring this up, which is that the ceremonial chant is, the old ways hold us, safe in the knot in the binding the old ways teach us, bound against the wind, tied to the shore, safe in the braid of the old ways. What people in Star Wars also have braids? The Jedi. Oh, shit. And you see that all the girls in there have their hair tied up into braids. Oh, I was afraid that was Jewish

1:03:25 coding because they're kind of on the side. Oh, no, they're not payas. They're not payas. In some ways, like, this could be a chant about the Jedi. There's really no functional difference of, like, we are safe in our traditions, and that is what binds us as the Force. Like, it's the exact same sort of mantra. Because Jedi are kind of Catholic Knight in all of the good and bad ways. Oh, interesting. They sure are. Yeah.

1:03:49 What if the Vatican was the UN? Is that sort of the best I can figure them out? Yeah. But through this lens, you know, Mon is going like, oh God, what has my daughter got into? But for most people watching the show, they want to be a Jedi. Yeah, totally. Oh, interesting. All different kinds of braids. But yeah, getting back into the scene now. Brimming with anger, Vel steps in front of Mon and demands to know if she's now taking proposals for Leda's hand in marriage.

1:04:26 And all Mon can say in response is that she's in trouble. so much trouble and they go and find a quiet place to talk as the rain pours on the window and we get a long sequence where mon lays out all of her troubles saying last year i was pulling a hundred thousand credits from the family trust without a trace It was so easy, I did it myself. I set up a stream of accounts, and it was like water running downhill. It would just flow, none the wiser. But then a few months ago, she received a warning that Imperial inspectors are checking all the Shandrillan accounts, and her audit would be coming soon. So Mon started pulling all her money back, but there was one empty ledger that remained that even her friend

1:05:18 Tay Colma could not fix. And then Aldani happened and everything's been frozen. And hearing those words, Vel shrinks down as Mon continues that this 400 ,000 missing credits and an audit that, you know, is going to commence any day now are going to be the end of her if she's unlucky. And I want not to go backwards, but I just want to call out again for the 800th time Genevieve O 'Reilly's performance because. We hear that speech. I think the face she makes in the earlier scene, just watching later, communicated all of that without having to say any of it. Just the look on her face tells you exactly that.

1:05:58 Could have told you that without that scene. I think this scene in some ways is like, and I appreciate it. I think it's catching the audience up in case they miss things. Like when I write fiction, I sometimes am like all the characters at Downing say. all right, now what's the plan again? You're like, all right, the plan is this again. These are the stakes and these are the enemies. You're like, great, all right, let's get back to it. It's not the Netflix version where you have to say it every four minutes, but once in a while it doesn't hurt. Right, because this is an incredibly rich and complicated world.

1:06:27 Especially my first watch through, I needed this scene, right? And the second time through, I'm like, yeah, yeah, yeah, I got it. I was paying attention. But I do think it's also continuing just to show her stakes. in a very dramatic way of like, but it, but it also reveals what's probably not a plot hole, but you know, he's like easy to patch most plot holes by being like, Oh, it could be this. They just stole 80 to a hundred million credits. Like, and I know that it, there's not perfect communication between Luthan and Mon Mothma or Val. Right. But it like, Oh man, just like knock 400 of those back over. Like, there we go. We're good. I think it's a little bit more than just the fact that the money is

1:07:18 missing, but rather accounting for where it went to. I think that she was able to like, what she's saying is that she was able to like doctor the records to account for where all the other money went. But there was one ledger that she was unable to do that for before everything froze. But earlier, I don't know if it was this episode or previous one, she basically, someone says the only solution is to put $400 ,000 dollars, space dollars back into your space account. I, yeah, yeah. There's that. And then the way, Davo talks about it in the scene with him. It makes it sound like he can basically provide her cover, uh, in some way of being like, we'll make it look like that money, you know, came to me and you were just

1:08:04 trying to pocket it for yourself, you know? Yeah. When it's another change drill and doing it, it's one thing when it's not, when it's the, it's much harder to make it look like a clean thing when it's coming from Luthan. Marked bills. Yeah, no, that, that makes some sense. And also like, Especially since she's going to frame her husband up as the embezzler by being like, oh, you sure are gambling again. Which is like, I'm mostly on her side and not her husband's side because he's just like a fucking wants to be a rich playboy. But it is like, oh, she did that man dirty. exactly that's like another little betrayal like we're seeing the ways in which mon is having to compromise her values yeah you

1:08:48 know for the rebellion and so that's like as much as this scene like you're saying is there to recap the audience on what is you know her story especially because it's definitely the least like visually you know thrilling out of all the like stories that we're kind of following throughout season one like you kind of need it spelled out for you one more time as we get to the end of the season yeah totally but then it also doubles as a way to to show us just what she is wrestling with here it also reminds me i don't remember the exact percentage but the aldani heist is at least partially based off of the time Stalin robbed a bank in 1907. I went deep on this in earlier episodes. Oh, that makes sense. But a lot of the money they ended up stealing

1:09:32 was useless anyway. A lot of it burned up with the explosions they were doing to steal the money. And a lot of it was marked bills that they couldn't use anyway. So whatever amount of money they got, a lot of it was useless. I can imagine that probably happened with Aldani as well. No, and it's so funny because there's a couple different things during these scenes where I'm like...

1:09:51 The whole Ferrix thing, I'm like, oh, I wonder if they're drawing from the Algerian revolution, especially with the way the houses are built and things like that. But it's like, well, actually, you can look at a ton of revolutions that are kind of comparable to this. And then the scene at the end where the kid throws a bomb at the cops at the end of season two, right? I had a moment of her, just because of my own bias, I'm like, oh, hey, market, right? Getting everyone killed, but it kind of turns out sort of good in the end, but maybe not. And I'm like, oh, there's a million things he could be drawing from. And bank robbery. It makes sense that they used Stalin during his golden era. But it's just

1:10:32 so interesting because that's what revolutionaries do. They spend most of their time in danger. trying to rob people to raise money for the revolution and then get caught in the trap of then they spend all of that money that they spent trying to break their friends out of prison. And then they don't get any revolution done. I hate to be cynical about this, but like, that's just a pattern you see over and over and over again is they're always like, we need a bunch of money.

1:10:55 Let's rob a bunch of money. And they're actually just like, historically, you're much better off with the Mon Mothma approach. Much, much better off with the Mon Mothma approach. But to paraphrase George Lucas, it's like poetry. It rhymes. Like these things keep reappearing through history. And that's what makes Andorra so great. It can be that. It can also be this other thing. And it's by the time that we finish the show, it will probably happen again. Yeah, no, totally.

1:11:19 Covering this. There will be another very clear metaphor of that scene happening. These things keep reappearing. What are you saying? Are you saying we're in the middle of a very complicated situation that might become a revolution? I'm saying history never ends. That's what I'm saying. Oh, right, right. Yeah, totally, totally. Vel is very rattled. by this, you know, story that Mon is laying out. And she asks if Vel knows, or if, uh, she asks if Luthan knows. And Mon replies, some, no, not really. He warned me.

1:11:51 Who knows what he knows? And then Vel puts on her brave soldier face and tells Mon that this can't be exposed. And Mon spits back that of course she knows that. And, and, you were shouting out Genevieve's acting here. And like, you just see the emotion overwhelming her as her eyes go red and start welling with tears as the doors to, you know, Leda's class open. And Mon says that she has found a solution, but she can't bear to say what it is because then Leda excitedly calls out for her Auntie Vel and gives her a hug, but not before shooting the dirty stank eye at her mom for literally no reason other than her existing. And Mon just has to sit there and watch with her eyes fluttering and a lump

1:12:47 in her throat and her lip quivering and just seeing how broken Mon has become. at this point was really heartbreaking for me. And it got me emotional rewatching this scene again, because we've talked a lot in this show about how Mon never gets to be alone. She never gets to really let her guard down and actually expose her vulnerabilities.

1:13:16 And this scene is maybe the closest that she gets to that for quite some time. And even here. She gets interrupted by her own family. Her own daughter is the person that she has to hide this from. And they do visual storytelling about this in the architecture of their apartment, which they talk about how they don't control the architecture of their apartment. When they're like, don't you love your lovely apartment? She's like, man, I don't know. It's state -owned housing. Sure, whatever. I'm going to smile. I'm a politician.

1:13:46 But those doors that open up that the daughters come out of are filigree, right? You can just see right through them. She has no privacy, even in her own house, even though she has to do her like sneaky talky stuff there. Like, yeah, the fact that it's just like, oh yeah, like you can't, most of the rooms don't have any dividers at all, or they have these like weird sideways dividers that aren't dividers, they're just visual dividers.

1:14:11 I think that's like really clever visual storytelling. The rain on the window is the most cover that they ever have. Yeah, totally. Like the sound of the water droplets are just the only thing that can, you know, prevent someone from looking in and seeing them. No, this is like, they're so smart. I like, it's like almost frustrating how well written some of this is. Yeah, as a writer, I'm so mad at the show because I'm like, I can't fucking do this. What are you talking about? Yeah. Well, taking this like expositional scene, right? Explaining things to the audience that we. should already know by now but turning it into this like really emotional exchange between these two women who are playing roles in this

1:14:51 rebellion that they feel trapped in and compare when i talk about power projection earlier how this and you mentioned you have the inner ring in the middle ring in the outer ring or mid ring or whatever and rim yeah uh the way that they have to have on Coruscant where they're like all smoking daggers, everyone's smiling all the time, right? And you're like, we can only meet in the depths, the bowels of this place, you know, on an elevator or whatever, right? But like, because power is projected there, but then, you know, out where the partisans are just being partisans or literally being called partisans in this, you know, which is like, historically, it's like hills and swamps, right? Where even

1:15:36 in Italy, fascism wasn't as good at projecting power into the hills right um i just think it's interesting this scene where they're all like oh fuck we have to do all of this really careful no one can say what they mean and yeah like this loneliness that they're presenting like luthan is the other character that's presented as just cripplingly lonely you know um and never gets to be who they are although luthan at least has the other character whose name i totally remember playa yeah What is the space version of bowling, Rustin? I don't know. I want to make the bowling alone of Coruscant. Oh, yeah. Bowling alone is not a thing you do. Oh, interesting. Luthan would bowl alone. Yes. Although he's too way upper

1:16:25 class to be bowling at all. But the destruction of third space is of just, yeah. Yeah. I can only find a non -canon Wikipedia article about bowling. So I don't think bowling has ever appeared in canon or legends. Am I misremembering? Do any of the Ewoks use... Don't they do bowling with... Do they have a bowling ball that they knock down the stormtroopers with? Yeah. I don't remember. Don't they have a bunch of helmets together? Is this a false memory of them having a bunch of helmets piled up? Do they like...

1:16:59 Yeah, that's a false memory. I don't think that that happened. Wait, I can imagine a false memory of that. But that's the thing about false memories. But you might be thinking of like a robot chicken or like a family guy bit. Maybe. You do know about the Ursula Le Guin inventing the Ewoks thing, right? No. Okay. Read the book. The word for world is forest. And it has – it is about – it's a parable about the Vietnam War where the Earth Empire is colonizing a place where like kind of monkey people live. And Le Guin is a pacifist, but she's writing about a violent revolution in all of this way that like I think an Andor reader lover would really love, the like complicated moral thing about doing anti

1:17:42 colonial violence to someone who doesn't believe in violence as a way to fix structural problems. The fucking name of the town that they lead the attack from is Endor. Wow. It's actually lifted from Le Guin. I think there is no... As soon as I read the whole thing, I'm like, oh, this is kind of Ewoki. And then I was like, oh, they're in Endor. Oh. Star Wars is a pastiche. I'm not even specifically mad, but I was just like, oh, they stole that from Le Guin. Cool. I mean, that's what Lucas did. He's stealing from everything that he has ever read or watched or heard about.

1:18:22 We can't afford to do Kashyyyk, so what else can we do? It was supposed to be Wookiees, and they didn't have the money to do it. Oh, interesting. Wait, it cost more money to do Wookiees? Half the costume. Oh, yeah, totally. Oh, that was definitely my favorite as a kid, but that's just because I like the Ewoks and the... We all do.

1:18:43 We all did. Hijinks. Not a lot of hijinks in Andor. We'll get to some hijinks in a little bit. Yeah, we get some of your space ball scene. Yeah. Do we want to talk any more about this? I think we can. I'm looking forward to this because, like I said, this scene with Mon made me cry. And, you know, a minute later, I am just laughing jollily. So would love to talk about this next scene. A sleeping Cyril is woken up in the middle of the night by another concerned mother, Edie.

1:19:20 Her hair is a mess and she tells her son, there's a call for you. And thank God, Edie didn't see anything else weird happening opening her son's door at this time. Cyril gets out of bed in his little gamut. Wait, is he jerking it? No, I'm joking. In the past, he has been jerking it. I can only imagine he's been jerking it, and she's opening the door. I didn't know how to describe this writing down the notes, but her hair in that moment is just perfect. She kind of undid it at night. I'm like, that's what my grandmother looked like. If you ever ran into her in the middle of the night. That's the perfect hair. Do you think they considered putting her hair into rollers? I'm sure. Space rollers? They'd

1:20:01 be like little alien creatures, right? Yeah. Cyril gets out of bed in his little jammies. I also like that he's sockless. He's got little feet. We get feedback before seeing a blurry image of Sergeant Linus Musk. mosque we have not seen on our schedule since since episode four which one was that oh my god i'm looking up now we have the last time we saw mosque was in october of last year You're really flying through this show, I see. Yeah. It's literally been basically a year since we last saw Mosk, and boy, is he a sight for sore eyes. I love this little guy. Yeah. As Edie watches from the back of the room, Cyril answers the call. Mosk apologizes to Cyril and to the family. Embarrassed, Cyril waves Edie to leave the room. She takes

1:20:59 a few steps out of sight, but continues to listen in the hallway. It's an Edie -related scene question, but we like to ask it. So obviously, we never see him, but Uncle Harlow is Edie's brother who got Cyril his new job. And she talks about Uncle Harlow a lot as this sort of incredible figure offscreen who we never get to see. What actor would you like to have played Uncle Harlow? I am bad at actor names. Richard Kind is a very common answer. Martin Short. See, on my own show, guests and my producer, whenever they start talking about actors, they just watch me stare blankly.

1:21:41 But I actually often know, I just don't know names. I act like I live under a rock, but I actually watch a lot of TV and movies. If you could think of somebody, we might be able to figure out the name. But if you can't, it's okay. If you can't, it's okay. Yeah, yeah. But this family, it's such a choice. I guess we're going to talk about this as we continue with this scene.

1:22:06 Yeah, it'll end with a great bit, for sure. Of all the transcriptions and summaries of the episode, the next scene was the hardest thing for me to summarize. Because they keep answering questions that are off the previous question, and it was hard to make sense written down. But yeah, the call from Mosk is choppy, and Cyril and him are struggling to communicate. We learn that Mosk is still on Orlando One, working the night shift.

1:22:34 Cyril asks him to speak clearly, which Mosk, of course, responds with, Indeed! Been a bit rugged for me lately, but you know, we're marching onward. But more importantly, he's calling Cyril with information about Cassian Andor, and Cyril's eyes widen. Cutting in and out, Mosk tells Cyril that there are still a few Primor holdouts working in the office, helping with the Imperial transition.

1:22:54 And somebody working on the night desk found Mosk and told him that... white square behind mosque weird noise filter in and again they're having technical difficulties because because he's working like in a smelter and he says at the beginning of this that like there's a long line to use the payphone and so he needs to talk briefly but then at the same time no he's like working on like a factory line yeah and and they have one payphone yeah it's a long distance call yeah But I mean, it's a nice little reminder of what we talked about when we first talked to show of like, what is the point of Morlana?

1:23:31 And it's like, oh, the the empire can only expand into capital for so long. And now we know that like after this happened, the empire is going to start shutting down these various capital separations. The goal is eventually to liquidate them and bring them into the state. But they are they need to use capitalism for one last gasp for the outer reaches of the empire to keep these systems going. Which is interesting because like the I'm almost. The use of the corporate police in the beginning feels very historical, right? Like that feels more like what the British Empire would do. And you see a more British coded empire when it's more corporate and it becomes more Nazi coded. Like even just in terms of the

1:24:14 outfits. Which of course Cyril modified his to make it even more fashy. Yeah, yeah, no, totally. Which is, like, both more fashy and less fashy of a thing to do, as his mom likes to point out, you know? Yes. Like, oh, oh, they really want to see an independent person. That's what they want to see at the Department of Standards. Yes, after they're able to reconnect and have some vaguely conversation, Mosk is able to explain that Marva has passed away, and Coruscant is very aware of it. So Cyril asks if Cassian is there. And he goes, no, no, I'm in Morlana. And then Cyril starts to yell, where is Andor? And he goes, yes, that's it. He might show up at the funeral. And this is really turning into

1:24:58 – I know, Rustin, you've still not seen Spaceballs. But this is the – I've seen Spaceballs. I just haven't seen it in a long – you saw it when you were a child, like a normal person? Yeah. Instead of an adult, like a strange person. Where they get the VHS of Spaceballs, the movie they're making. And, like, when will then be now? Soon.

1:25:13 Like, they're just, it's all. It's a little, like, who's on first bit, where they just keep talking past each other. Cyril turns the knobs and dials, but Mosk's message only gets more confusing. Cyril tells Mosk, we need to speak further. And in response, Mosk smiles wildly. I knew you'd want to. He says, before the feed freezes and cuts off. And I remembered, oh, right.

1:25:39 They were producing this during COVID. This was also sort of a COVID joke of how much Zoom sucks. Oh, shit. Yeah, totally. Yeah, definitely. And Cyril sighs. Edie, back watching him, scoffs and tells him, the mystery of your former triumphs have been vanquished. I can sleep peacefully now. I laughed so fucking hard rewatching this scene. Just that perfect dagger to the heart.

1:26:07 Yeah, she's, like, blaming him for the bad connection of the phone call. Is that what she— She's saying, like— No, I think she's saying that, like, anything that he— Whatever he presented himself as doing a good job on Moana, now seeing him work with her coworkers, like, oh, no, you were bad at your job. I can now see that. I was confused why I thought you were good at your job. Yeah, yeah. It's very obvious now that you were also bad there, too. And seeing who you're working with, that this putz is the guy who's helping you out. She just 360 no -scopes him with this one -liner, knocking him down. I thought you were capable of more, and that was upsetting me, because I thought you had a higher ceiling.

1:26:47 But no, it's clear you're not capable of more, and that makes my life easier. And also just reminding him that, don't worry, I was listening to all of that, even if you pushed me away. Go have some blue milk and Twix. No, not Twix. Trix. Yeah. So she goes to bed. As we watch Cyril consider a thought, but we don't know what that thought is because that's the end of our time. Let's discuss the scene before we wrap up. Yeah, any thoughts on Cyril and his quest to go after Andor?

1:27:24 I mean, like, one of the things I like about Andor is the humanization of the people who are on the other side of it. Again, I think that they do this spectacularly in season two, where, like, you can see how, I think it was a conscious choice where they... try not to put people in stormtrooper outfits as much as possible because they want you to know that your enemy has a face and that your enemy has like motivation and that most of your enemy is like some guy looking for a paycheck who's like probably not a bad person at heart well the empire doesn't want their enemies to know that they want you to think that they're a faceless being that you cannot defeat right totally but like i think that the makers of andor

1:28:04 were like we want to not put as many people in stormtrooper outfits we want to have more of the like especially the season on um the main planet about where all the shit happens in season two barracks yeah you haven't you haven't four yeah yeah okay um but it but i really like The humanization of the drones in this. The whole thing feels very... Have you seen Brazil? Yeah.

1:28:31 It feels Brazil, everything that's happening to this man, because it's about this bureaucracy. And I'm really fascinated with it, partly because when you think about... Again, I don't know how many people live in the Star Wars empire, but it has to be in the trillions, right? It's a lot, yeah. Because you're like a bunch of planets and... I know a lot of them are sparsely populated because they want to have only one ecosystem per planet because that's the biggest problem with most space franchises is that they're like, and this is the desert planet, and this is the paradise planet. You're like, man, can't they have like Vegas and New York? Anyway, whatever.

1:29:08 The population of Coruscant alone is 2 trillion people. Great. So you're talking about this like the bureaucracy involved. of sorting that much information. It's cool to see it personified. Like the cubicle scenes that he goes through are amazing. And so watching him try to be a good drone, but he can't be a good drone because he actually is trying to like do more than he's allowed to do as a drone is like, he's such a fascinating, complicated character. There's obviously like, it's not my. It's not the like least misogynistic trope in the world is like his mother. Right.

1:29:47 But it's also like real for some people, you know, and like, it's like also bad to pretend like that doesn't exist. And I don't think that the show is like particularly misogynistic. So I don't think that it's like bad that they're using one particularly misogynistic trope, which is also to point earlier about whether the scene of Bix was misogynist. I'm like, or, you know, if they're, you know, if they're essentially, you know, fridging Bix at the end of season one.

1:30:14 Right. If the show did not also have Dedra and Mon and all these other incredible female characters and Vel. Totally. Fucking Marva. Yeah. Who might be my favorite character on the show. Yeah, no, totally. Totally. And so you can have... God, but compare Marva and Edie. Eddie? Yeah. You know, and like... They're just such completely different. Anyway, whatever. Well, and what we can do is we can compare Mon to Edie. Because here we have two ungrateful children who resent their mothers. And, like, I was trying to think about, like, why do we have this really emotional scene with Mon and then cut to this funny scene with Cyril? And I think that's, like, the thematic connection that's happening here in the sense

1:31:12 that Cyril is rebelling against his mom just as much as Leda is rebelling against Mon. That that here we get to see, you know, two sides of the same coin, one scene in which we resonate with the mother and the other in which we kind of empathize with the child. But the fact that we're coming from the different perspectives tells us so much, right? Because if we reshot.

1:31:39 And Lita, like if we shot that scene from Lita's point of view, maybe mom is just a fucking boring ass politician who's like milquetoast, like trying to be like, oh, what if it was a little bit better? I'm going to give a really good speech today at the powerless institution that I work for. And then I'm going to go and drink fancy worms dropped into a glass or refuse to drink them while everyone else drinks them. And like, so it's like. I don't know, man. I don't know what Edie's up to. Like, Edie could be actually, like, the power behind Axis, you know? Like, I don't think that that's what's implied or what's happening, but we don't get... She is a more one -dimensional character than the average character, but you

1:32:17 can also... They do show her motivation, that she's, like, genuinely trying to be, like, what do I do with my kind of, like, son, my failed son, you know? Exactly. On Space 4chan. Yeah. Yeah, because like Mon, you know, was supposed to be there for Leda's soccer game and couldn't make it because she had a really important vote.

1:32:41 Right. Whereas Edie was definitely there for every one of Cyril's. you know, extracurricular activities and gave him many, many notes about all the ways in which he fucked it up and could have done things better afterwards. Which there's so many, like, early 20th century, I'm not going to be able to come up with any of them off the top of my head. Like, early 20th century writers whose, like, whole thing was, like, blaming everything on overprotective moms in a way that's, like, kind of garbage. But, like... Portnoy's complaint is Cyril Carlin's complaint. What did you say?

1:33:14 Portnoy's complaint. Portnoy's complaint. It's sort of the Jewish young man complaining about his Jewish mother. Oh, yeah. Well, OK. So is that I really if I'm completely off, please cut this out. Is this Jewish coded? To me, we debated it. It's either Italian or Jewish. That's what people. It's very New York coded. I saw it and I was like, this feels like New York. And I don't know whether it's. And Italian and Jewish were the two things that I was like, I wonder what's happening. And if it's Jewish coded, it's a little, obviously it'd be very messy, but comparing like, and maybe I'm using my own biases. Marva kind of looks like my Irish grandmother, like just kind of looks like her and has like a, well,

1:34:01 I haven't gotten to see her in like 20 years. She's been dead for a long time. So I was like, oh, is this like a good grandma, bad mom thing? I don't like what's happening here with how it seems to be coded. I think for me, at least the Jewish mom, I think also the Italian mom, it is like the immigrant narrative of I'm coming into a culture where I've been downgraded a couple of classes or whatever it is, but I'm going to invest all of my social cachet into my child.

1:34:26 My child will be the representation of my life's work. Him moving up a couple of steps will be the, that's my life's goal. So for him to fail to meet the level that she expected of him. is especially heartbreaking. And maybe that is... That makes sense. That's how I read it. In which case, actually, in some ways, Marva kind of...

1:34:47 Because Andor's a fuck -up, right? Andor has been to jail, destined for jail. If he doesn't have the revolution, he's just... He's... he's gonna end badly or whatever right so in a weird way because like because you get the impression that marva's like i don't know man i'm a space bandit myself do whatever the fuck you want you know like versus like edie who's very controlling i i'm really interested in the comparison of these two moms i don't have anything to say philosophically about it but it's just interesting to me they are both traumatized by the lack of their father figure. I think for Andor, you know, he sees Clem get hanged in the square by stormtroopers.

1:35:34 for nothing other than being in the wrong place at the wrong time. And that seems to set Cassian on a path where he thinks nothing really matters. All we can do is just get by and take care of ourselves. Whereas Cyril... you know, his father abandons the family at some point early in his life. And he is kind of left behind with this mother who is so overbearing on him. And he then looks to the state, the empire, the stories of, you know, the grand Republic and the, he has his little clone trooper toys, you know, in his bedroom. And I think that ends up taking the authority role. for him like they both have this absence of a father figure in their life and Cassian essentially runs away from it and Cyril

1:36:33 run runs toward it uh in the state in the the embodiment of the empire is kind of my read yeah that makes sense there's a quote of Kyle Solar who played Cyril talking about this where he said uh he'd come up with his own story about what happened to his father and he started collabing on Catherine Hunter, who played Edie on it together.

1:36:52 We had kind of figured out the same thing, that he had left really early on in a really acrimonious, horrible way. And that was a real launchpad for how Edie then parents Cyril, which is by being wronged. And her anger and grief and disappointment and frustration of him leaving just got filtered into Cyril. And then growing up without a father, there's a whole level of Jungian psychology that we could dive into. But that's another interview.

1:37:15 But yeah, I think it does feel very young in this. I'm not a big philosophy and psychology understander, but like it does feel very like the whole character is a fuck you mom scene. Right. Like, but it's but who does he end up dating besides another woman who maybe hates him? I know. And then he hit her in season two.

1:37:36 He does in the middle of the Gorman Massacre. Yeah. They get into a physical altercation. But I love that the characters with the most chemistry in this whole thing are our two seriously Nazis. Yes. It's so fascinating. I mean, that's the show's credit. Go ahead. It's to make it like Nazis are not genetically evil. Right. They are people who are making choices and to make them so much of media just makes them, you know, mustache twisting evil. Right. Defends them as opposed to people who are making these moral choices, make them so much more horrifying. Absolutely.

1:38:19 You know, looking ahead, you know, at what we have to cover on this show, Margaret, this has been so fun. Is there anything in season two? that you would like to call your shot for and come back to discuss? There's friction in the air. Ah, the Rido speech. That is the most important part of this entire show from my point of view.

1:38:43 Dare to keep kids off Rido. What's that? Dare to keep kids off Rido. Uh -huh. Yeah. In what way? What does it mean to you? I spent my 20s going to every protest I could. I dropped out of college to join the movement. I outlasted – the movement fell apart underneath me because I joined the end of a very large and powerful movement. But I joined it during its downturn after it was sort of shot in the face by 9 -11 is the way that one of my friends put it to me recently. I joined a few months after that. I lived in New York City at the time and the towers disappeared. It was very impactful. But I joined this movement. And it became everything for me, right? Like I finally – I was a very lost teenager.

1:39:36 And then suddenly I found not just my people but my motivation. And it was like what got me up in the morning. I very much considered myself a revolutionary. And the sense of how do you cope with – Like you're not going to succeed and see the end of this thing. And that actually isn't what matters. But these moments, these nights, these amazing moments, like I've seen cops run away from me. Not me alone. Cops don't run away from me alone. They sure searched me a lot, right? But like arrested me a couple times.

1:40:23 But I've seen cops run. And I will never forget that. That was my main takeaway from 2020 is I was like, thank God there's another generation that has seen the cops run away from them. So there's a certain power that isn't even about winning or losing. And I think that Andor's heart and especially Saw Gerrera's arc's heart is around that. And I like how you have all of these different characters who are all exploring the idea that they're not expecting to survive to see the republic they're fighting for. I actually don't know that Saul's fighting for a republic at all. He's fighting for a free galaxy at the very least. Right, exactly.

1:41:12 And he's willing to throw in with these other people, which is something that I identify with in this current moment of rising fascism. You know what? I would be part of social movements to just get rid of fascism. And I think a lot about the Italian anarchists and communist partisans who work together to help rid fascism from Italy, even though these people had been not politically aligned with each other the whole time. And so – My organizing mentality is – When the barricades fall, we'll figure it out. But let's get the barricades falling first. Right. And it took me a long time to reach that point. I was very partisan in my own politics internally. But the actual rise of actual fascism, we used to be

1:41:59 fighting against neoliberal capitalism. And that was really bad. It did really bad things to the world. Right. And now we're like, oh, no, we're just like actually getting fascism again. And not just in the United States, but all over the place. Now I am back to like. Yeah, we can sort this out later. Right now we have a problem that's like really directly in front of us. So yeah, when I saw that speech, I rewound it and watched it like four times because I am shocked by how well... writers can capture things that are not necessarily their direct experience. I believe that the writers of the show have clearly had some protest experience, clearly believe in some things, but I would guess that, you know, um,

1:42:48 the majority of them were not like, uh, lifelong participants in social struggle. But as someone who is, um, on, on some level, I don't mean to self aggrandize a lifelong participant in social struggle. Um, no, there's, there's same people writing Kevin Spacey and house of cards. And the inspiration for that speech Gilroy has cited comes from Bo Willimon, who at least had spoken with anarchist and revolutionary types who had.

1:43:22 inhaled so much tear gas over their lives that they started to crave and enjoy the smell of it. And so I don't think Bo is somebody who could handle getting tear gassed, but he is echoing the stories that he's heard from those people. No, and he does a good job of it in a way that seems honest, and even honest about the limitations of being the people who are like... No, I'm like a frontliner. I chase the tear gas. And actually, what's funny is I knew that, but I didn't know it was public. So I appreciate it because I've talked to some of the people that he talked to during that process. Oh, really? Yeah, that's awesome. But I didn't know that that had ever been said publicly before. So I was just like,

1:44:06 oh, yeah, he just seems to know about some stuff. I don't know. I could go on. And yeah, if it's not already reserved, that would mean the world to me. It's on the spreadsheet now. What I love about that scene also is that the few things where I've been forced to go out into the expanded Star Wars canon is the revelation that Saw had a sister who... He was a partisan with who died before he did. Yeah. It was like even more pure of a revolutionary thing in his mind, right?

1:44:42 Right. So him connecting his sister with the gas. Yeah. And sort of him losing the boundary of what is family and what is this motion. It's such a great portrayal of people on the left where all of this stuff just sort of gets all tied together. Yeah. And the personal and the political become one. And we all live one life and it's going to be really different. And there's like not this like one way to do it. And this is a beautiful and valid way to do it. And I think that in order to make fundamental change, we need people to know. I worry about being like, martyrs are great. We should all go out and get hurt. And I also don't even think that like the solution to the current problems necessarily

1:45:22 means acting like Saul Guerrero in whatever ways. I'm like not calling for any particular thing. But like, but knowing that like massive social change. comes from people who decide that their life is going to have a very different structure than the one they were promised. And I think that America is going through this shift right now where especially people who grew up with like, not even privilege, but even just like stability within America, we're sort of told that like, yeah, you might get kind of a crappy job, but you're like gonna get a job and you're gonna live to be 80 and it's gonna be all right.

1:45:56 And you have a couple of kids and healthcare system sucks, but you're not gonna die real young. And we're all watching, we're like, No, climate change is real. Fascism is back. Fascism is the mini boss between us and climate change. Like we don't get the life that we were promised. And I think we're all trying to figure out how do we fundamentally shift our understanding about what our lives can be to address the fact that we. have to live in the sort of gandalf world of like um well you know the quote about like oh i wish i didn't live to see such times and like ah so do all so does everyone who lives to see such times but we don't get to choose what times we live in we just get to choose what

1:46:35 we uh do with that time to misquote tolkien um my my other favorite trad cath uh anarchist adjacent strange man um He wasn't a Tragcap. He was just actually traditionally Catholic. I mean, the Tragcaps hating George R .R. Martin is such a bizarre – that's a whole other podcast to discuss. There's a very interesting thing happening with their hate of a Game of Thrones. But this is what's so lovely about Andor is Andor shows me that mainstream – not mainstream totally centrist, but like mainstream American society is grappling with these questions, is grappling – with a non cartoonish idea of what revolution looks like.

1:47:16 And it is like so of our times. And this show, and my love for this show, I think I said this before we started recording, is something that has connected me with people who were like, in the past, be like, oh, you're a liberal and I'm an anarchist. We sort of agree about gay rights, but everything beyond that gets messy. And now it's just like, and or, and or. And it asks both of us to make compromises, right? Because like...

1:47:39 Pure anarchism does not have a Lutheran at all, right? It does not have someone saying like, oh, sorry, you can't quit. But the anarchist fight in Franco in Spain had anarchist commanders that they voted for, but they had commanders in war. And if they turned their backs and ran in the middle of the war, they'd get shot by their own side because they made a decision.

1:48:01 And this media just looks at that head on in a way that – I never thought anything Hollywood adjacent would ever be able to do. And so that's the beauty of Andor and why I think it is like the possibly most important piece of media of my lifetime. Well, I can't wait to talk about that scene because I know every time Saw Gerrera shows up, we get very excited on this show. And he's not even like. He's not even my favorite character, you know? Yeah, we established it's Two Tubes. Yeah, well, Two Tubes is my favorite Glob Shido. Marva is my favorite character. But yeah, yeah, totally. But also, he's probably on the show for, what, 15 minutes total? Yeah, totally. Among the two seasons? And in Rogue

1:48:51 One, he's kind of a bad guy because he's fucking insane, you know? Yeah. But he's, like, understandably so. Yeah. Exactly. And I think they got his name from Che Guevara's, like, I don't know. That was one of the last George Lucas things was to come up with that name. Yeah, okay, that makes sense. Slightly better than brawling at naming characters, but still with a very direct, yeah.

1:49:13 Which is because it's not Darth Icky. It could have been a lot worse. Yeah. Anyway, yeah, thank you so much, though. This show is amazing. Oh, this is an honor and a pleasure. Thank you. Yeah, I can't wait to have you back. But until then, where can people find you and what do you got to plug? Oh, yeah. If you want to hear me deep dive historical movements for social change.

1:49:38 All across, ideally all across the world, I have my accidental biases and also what's available to me. But I do a show called Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff. And I try to accessibly, if you're bad at understanding and remembering names and dates, I've got you. I always introduce characters multiple times by who they are and what they're doing. And it's called Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff. I also write fiction. Not my most recent book, but maybe my most recent novel is called The Sapling Cage. It's about a young trans girl who becomes a witch in a fantasy world and has to fight a heavy -handed climate change metaphor, but it is better than that makes it sound. It came out from Feminist Press a few years ago

1:50:15 and is available wherever books are sold. We'll have a link to all that in the show description, so be sure to check that out, everybody. Margaret, thank you so much for being here. Yeah, thank you. Thank you. Thank you all for listening. Be sure to rate and review us on your podcast platform of choice to help spread the word. Yes, all you got to do, five stars, podcast good.

1:50:40 And that's how we'll know that you actually listened to the show. Say two tubes great. Two tubes. Great podcast. Good. Check out our Patreon at patreon .com slash and orcs pod, where for just five credits a month, you'll get our bonus episodes and early access to the show. Follow and orcs on social media at and orcs pod. Send in your questions about the show to and orcs pod at gmail .com. And we'll see you next week for part four.

1:51:14 daughter of bearings. Later, dorks. Bye, dorks.