The Invisible Hand with Jessie Earl ("Daughter of Ferrix" Part 4)

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 scrutinize the Star Wars series Andor seven minutes at a time. I'm Alex Wallenetz. And I'm Rustin Hunter -Dust.

0:38 And we have friends everywhere. And today we are joined by our friend, filmmaker and YouTuber, Jesse Earle, aka Jesse Gender. Hello. Hi, Jesse. Thank you for having me. I'm so excited. Welcome. Welcome to the show. Yeah, it should be a lot of fun. I'm excited to talk about Andor. I get to talk about Star Trek a lot and not a lot about Andor, so I'm very pumped. It is the Star Wars crossover that unites us all, I feel like. The Star Wars fan and the Star Trek fans can come together, thanks to Andor. They can agree on Star. Yeah, Andor, I feel like, it's got enough conference rooms to please the Star Trek fan.

1:15 Is there an equivalent Star Trek property, you think, that works for the Star Wars fans? Is it like the J .J. Abrams movies? Yeah. I feel like those, those are the, I mean, that's a complaint that a lot of people have is that those are very Star Wars. I mean, I enjoy those movies, but they are much more bombastic spectacle than, than the rest of the Star Trek movies, which like the movies are always kind of more spectacle, but they are a bit more nautical themed than they are like big space stuff. It's a little more submarine than it is Starfighter. Yeah, more Hunt for the Red October. Exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So then Pulp Sci -Fi.

1:51 But yeah, no, Andor, like I always say, I love my Star Trek where it's just conference room after conference room. And that is what Andor has in space. Oh, season two, especially season two. Yeah, so many conference rooms. One conference room after another. Oh, God, that's the true, like, spinoff instead of one battle after another, one conference room after another. I'd watch it. I'd be in. I guess, yeah. In the Star Trek utopia, have they gotten rid of McKenzie consultants?

2:18 Because Star Wars does not. Sadly, it's not that utopian. Oh, God. Yeah. Jesse, you know, you've touched on it now, but I would love to hear what is your history with Star Wars and how did you come to find the show Andor? Yeah, so I didn't actually realize you're going to ask that question before I came on because I get asked, how did I get into Star Trek? A whole bunch, but never Star Wars. And I'm like, wait, how did I get into Star Wars? And I think the way that I did is my dad had an old, not an old, they were like the VHS versions of the remaster or like the George Lucas sort of re -edits. The special editions.

2:59 Yeah, special editions. I'm like, what are they called? Like the Darth Vader box that had like his gold head on VHS tape. So had that. And then clearly I remember seeing the prequels in theaters. So I was into those. And then I'm always a book, like an audio book and book fan. So I read a ton of Star Wars books and audio books. I had like Jedi Trial, The Cestus Deception. I read the Thrawn books as well growing up. And then, yeah. That's that's I think that's the quick version. I wish it was because Star Trek, I have like an emotional tie to like my dad and like this one's there. But it's less sort of like truly tied in the core of my being, though. I've been a Star Wars fan for my entire life. So like

3:41 that you invite yourself as a Star Trek fan, even though you have engaged with much more Star Wars material than I have. So, again, why do I host this podcast? It is. That is the weird thing, because I always go, yeah, I'm more of a Trekkie than a Star Wars fan, which means I've seen this is what I mean by less of a Star Wars fan. I have seen every episode of every show, including, by the way, the like interest, like the like. mini episodes that they did for the like girls toy line the forces of destiny so i've seen all of that i've even seen the like star wars uh what is it jedi academy the one for the young jedi adventures yeah i've seen those i've read a decent chunk of the books both canon and now i guess expanded universe and uh

4:27 i've seen every single movie so like yeah it's I guess that's less of a Star Trek fan. No, Star Wars fan. I mean, you're lapping both of us right now. Even I have not watched Young Jedi Adventures. Would you like to host this podcast? I mean, I love Andor. I'll talk about it all day. Like, I have an Andor, like, giant Andor poster in our living room. Oh, hell yeah. Yeah, it's great.

4:52 I have no more room. Eventually, I'm going to frame the Gorman poster from the Andor zine that they handed out for season two. oh that's really cool i will say uh so this is an aside but this i just can't get out of my brain so i was at san diego comic -con this year and they have every year the big star wars setup uh where it's like oh they have a giant ad at or whatever whatever what the small ones smaller ones called but the the giant ad at It's, like, life -size. It's a huge installation. It takes up, like, a huge chunk of the showroom floor. And they have a big screen playing. And I remember walking up to it this year, and they just have random Star Wars stuff playing. And I walked up, and it was

5:29 the Gorman Massacre. And I'm like, what a wild scene to be playing just in the middle of the show floor at San Diego Comic -Con. It's just a mass genocide. Like, Jesus. People screaming and dying all around you. Horrifically. It was like, all right, yeah, let me buy my Star Wars dress while I'm watching a genocide going on.

5:52 It's great. Well, don't worry. At the Universal booth, they were playing Schindler's List. So it was a step up from that. Yeah, yeah. great i mean how many times people watch the third impact at a comic book convention which is just also a mass genocide as well so yeah yeah jesus there's too many uh so yeah just uh you know gotta enjoy your star wars content you know we'll just we'll sell anything it's fine so so you were always going to watch andor there was no doubt in your in you that you would ever watch it did you have to convince star trek fans to watch it or did the word about andor spread quickly no i had to convince people i uh because i review every episode of every show on my channel uh

6:35 of star wars stuff and i believe season one and season two of mandalorian had come out i think at that point and i was fairly meh on that everyone else was very high on season one season two got a bit more of a tepid response uh and i was very tepid around the whole show just generally so i was like all right i'll go into and or who the hell knows what this is gonna be i like rogue one but meh and then i was you can even go and watch my reviews for every episode i just get more and more progressively excited like i'm literally i don't know what's going on this is really good it's so deep it's so thoughtful here's all the things can talk about wow it was it's it's kind of a joy to watch those reviews like

7:12 people are like oh yeah i'm really into it but i did have to convince people to watch it like even my brother who's a big mandalorian fan it's like one of his favorite shows he's like ah i don't want to watch andor and i'm like no please just give it give it a go the first three episodes i know are slow but like by the time you get to episode four five six it's fantastic Yeah, people really didn't know what to expect when they started it. And the thing that had come out just before was Obi -Wan, which I assume if you were reviewing that, you must have had your work cut out for you. I forgot that Obi Wan came up before that. Yeah, that was definitely a bummer of a show that has like. Two good scenes

7:52 across six episodes and even the two good scenes are kind of still like sandwiched in some mid. So I can't I can't get over the scene in that show where it's the first time Obi -Wan confronts Darth Vader. And there's that shot where Obi Wan's like looking around and he just like yeets himself out of the frame. It's just the most awkward blocking I've ever seen in a show. It's such a wild choice they made with that one. We'll talk about some awkward volume block shooting later this afternoon. episode oh yeah yes yes yes but yeah i i god obi -wan was such a disappointment such a major disappointment but alas we've talked about a few times but like it really just should have been like a noir tv show yeah I mean, there's

8:36 a billion ways it could have done it better than what they ended up doing. What I love about Andor, and what is the problem with so much of the rest of Disney's Star Wars, is that it's also very referential and just more interested in shaking the nostalgia at you. Like, ooh, look at this thing! And Obi -Wan was, I think, the first time we really got... like a prequel nostalgia bait.

8:59 Like most of it was all original trilogy before that point for the most part. And Obi -Wan was like, hey, look, millennials, you like Star Wars too. Here you go. And now it just continued into Ahsoka, essentially, with Hayden Christensen. And it's like, look, I love Mayim McGregor. I love my Hayden Christensen. I'm not above a little bit of like waving the nostalgia stick at me.

9:20 But you got to have a story to back it up. And Obi -Wan did not. The original script for it was written by Hossein Amini, who wrote Drive. And I have to imagine they intended for it to have that kind of neo -noir feel to it. And you do feel it in those two scenes a little bit. Like they're very moody and dark. And then the rest of the show is... baby leia running around and being precocious which like no shade to that little girl she's very cute she did a great job you know if you're gonna do baby leia you know she did it as well as you could but uh it felt very out of step with the rest of the show And you also have Kumail Nanjiani in there, too.

10:04 And then you had the whole... Maya Erskine is in there, too. Yeah. You have the sister, the Inquisitors in there, which... What a disappointing live -action debut of the Inquisitors. Because I always found the Inquisitors kind of fun. Head not big. Head need be bigger. Yeah. He need to have a big head. Where's my big head, man? They made Sung Kang... ugly i couldn't believe it he's such a gorgeous man and then you see him in obi -wan it's like what did you do what'd you do to my boy how'd you massacre my boy uh but i at least like the you know the one scene between obi -wan and hayden christiansen at the end even but again you always have to have a caveat because then it's like yeah but they're

10:51 on weird rock planet too that like just weird volume staging and nothing going on yeah And like they're doing this thing with the lightsabers are emitting actual light onto the set, which like is very cool in concept. But it's just like. overblows everything and everything just looks like you're in like a cheap neon club and like everybody's all of a sudden blue and red and then it mixes and like suddenly like obi -wan's now purple and it's like if you did that digitally actually it would work better in a weird way like that's what we are used to Mm hmm. Yeah, the one time it really, really worked, I think was in Force Awakens. Yeah, like for all my faults with that movie, and I have many faults with

11:39 that movie. The end fight is visually very great between Kylo and Rey and then also Finn. Finn is there. He sure is there. He is the perennial quote about Finn. He sure is there. That's been all right. Yeah. He has something to tell Ray. What it'll be, we will never know. Ray, I've got something to say. I'll tell you in maybe a sequel that we'll never get. So it'll be a book 20 years from now or whatever the hell.

12:12 Finn died on the way home to his own planet. It'll be like Sam Beckett from Quantum Leap. He never made his way home. Yeah. Alas. Alas. Sam Beckett could have been on Gore. We don't know. He could be on Gorman. Yeah. I mean, he never made it home, so he could have just, you know, trying to get the leap home when he's just going back in time to Star Wars, the Star Wars galaxy. Time is relative. It's all fine. That would be a wild episode. Man, sorry. I just had a weird thought of a wild episode of Quantum Leap where he jumps into some sort of genocide.

12:45 And you're like, oh God, I have to stop this from happening. Jesus Christ. I'm not surprised if they didn't pitch that at some point in the show. I mean, they had him become Lee Harvey Oswald in an episode. Whoa. Yeah. Man, network TV used to be something. They used to do amazing stuff on there. Yeah, I loved the old Quantum Leap. It's such a wild show because it'll be like, oh, this is super problematic where he jumps into someone with Down syndrome in an episode.

13:14 Uh -oh. It's like, oh, no, oh, no. And then they'll do an episode where he jumps into a chimp at NASA. So it's like, all right, I'm into this episode. I'll watch Scott Bakula just walk around like a chimp for an episode. So, yeah, it's great. Speaking of jumping around, though, we've established how you've gotten to Star Wars, but how did you find yourself on the left and sort of creating sort of leftist entertainment analysis? What was your road there? Yeah. So I got into video essays when I worked at The Advocate. So I worked at The Advocate, which is an LGBTQ magazine.

13:48 It was a very famous one, probably one of the oldest magazines and news outlets for queer people for many, many years, decades. And I got a job there as a video producer. And I loved the work. I enjoyed it a lot. But I realized that, you know, I didn't. I didn't get a lot of chances to talk about things other than queer issues.

14:08 And I love talking about queer issues. I still do it to this day, but I'm a big nerd at heart. And that's why I got into film, why I went to film school, what I wanted to talk about. So I started doing video essays on the side there for myself. And I just started taking off and I had other jobs after that. So I went from the advocate. I worked at Microsoft, weirdly enough, for of all places for like half a year as a producer on YouTube stuff for them. Worked at the Museum of Pop Culture in Seattle, worked at GameSpot.

14:35 But YouTube did fairly well for me. And I sort of realized that my two favorite things to talk about was sort of nerd stuff, but then talking about politics through nerd stuff. And Star Trek was sort of the easy way to do that. You can talk. about so much with star trek it would be about race about queer issues you know different things and so i uh just started making content that was about doing those two things and yeah it i just kept doing it ever since yeah and then brought in queer perspectives and things like that into my uh content as well so yeah we'll talk about throughout the episode but if our listeners want to hop pause this episode and then go on youtube and watch anti -fascism is

15:16 the leftism of fools it's a really good intelligent take on the show and yeah thank you we'll discuss it more through the episode but Yeah, I've done so many videos on Star Wars and Andor specifically. So that one is very much about, as you said, about why anti -fascism isn't enough. We need to be thinking about more than anti -fascism.

15:35 As much as I love Andor, and I do think there are things in Andor that go beyond just anti fascism and anti -authoritarianism. But for the most part, it is a show that Disney is able to sell because it sells anti -fascism, which ultimately... Anti -fascism is not a threat to the sort of capitalist order, the sort of neoliberal capitalist order of things. Fascism benefits capitalism by resetting and giving a lot of power to capitalism. But ultimately, in the day, capitalism sort of weathers the fascist storm, as we clearly saw out of things like Nazi Germany. So Disney is able to sell it. And that's why they're able to sell it. And that's what that video is kind of about, along with other things as well. I

16:16 saw people on Reddit the other day arguing about this again, of whether and or is... anti -capitalist or not i saw that i saw that exact post as well yeah it's like i don't think it's anti i mean this show as much as i love this show it still ends with like the like elite of the republic running the uh running the rebellion and resetting it back to a republic that once again as we clearly see by the disney sequels falls to fascism so you know it's not exactly upsetting the capitalist order yeah so is and or anti -capitalist the greatest study in the history of forums locked by moderator after 12 000 pages of debate wild wild so yeah i think i want to talk about that while we're at it like it's something i think

16:53 i was thinking a lot about and i'm like my question is like can there be communism in star wars because i'm not sure capitalism exists in star wars like if that if that is what like industrialization is a requirement to create a communist state i don't know if star wars is actually a state that is ready to be transitioned to communism it's not like a it's such a i mean it's because some of this is ill -defined but like The economic system within Star Wars itself is very confusing and is not clear. Like, I don't think you could make it like, oh, there's a communist Star Wars because I'm not even sure that there's a capitalist Star Wars. It's sort of this weird mercantile system. It's kind of like asking if there could

17:29 be communism in like Neverland or something. Like it's a fantasy world more than a real one like Star Trek is maybe. Yeah, well, even Star Trek's very wonky about its economics. I would even argue that Star Trek is probably more vague about its economics than star wars is because at least star wars you get like the banking clan and then you get like you get like a soca where you get like problematically that like guy who was making ships who's still like a secret nazi or whatever but also played by a jewish actor which is an odd decision that they made in that show and then so like there's stuff in star wars that you can like point to is like oh there is some sort of economic system here whereas Star

18:14 Trek is like oh we eliminated money and okay so like what do you do for like to get goods to barter with other like like nation states what do you trade how do people like get stuff and it's like oh no don't worry about it we just we just have an overabundance you know it's a post scarcity society and it's like yeah like maybe on earth but like How do all the all the world's post scarcity? That's not true. So like, what does that even mean? So, yeah, Star Trek is even more vague about like what it is. And I would argue like. The way I always conceptualize them, and as much as I love Star Trek, Star Trek is sort of a very liberalist fantasy of what the future can be. Tech takes us to the future,

19:00 and everyone's treated equally, and we have representative government and democracy, but it still sort of has those vestiges of the United States in space sort of thing. Whereas Star Wars is also kind of that, but it is much more playing into that sort of America as the rebel. but also America as the empire. Like people identify as both rebels and also the empire at the same time, which is such an interesting way that like right -wing folks identify into Star Wars, which is again, I talk about in that video about like how right wing folks are identifying with. the rebellion, even though they are currently supporting the empire, essentially. I'm looking now to see if there is a Wikipedia page for capitalism, which

19:46 I can't believe it took me this long to Google. And so behind the scenes, Count Dooku explicitly referred to capitalism, but it got cut in the Attack of the Clones script. Oh, interesting. Very fascinating. Quote, let me remind you of our absolute commitment to capitalism, of the lower taxes, the reduced tariffs, and the eventual abolition of all trade barriers. He just says it's like, we are committed to capitalism, which again makes no, like, because he's a separatist, which like, what the separatists represent, like, I guess it's the Civil War. They're supposed to represent the Confederacy, but also they...

20:19 But they're not about protecting slavery. They have like real grievances against the rebellion. The politics of the prequels is all over the place. I mean, Alex, I don't know if you know this. but the name of General Grievous' flagship is the Invisible Hand. So that tells you what the Separatists were all about. That's true.

20:43 That's so true. And I mean, like, there are political, like, you know, to get what we're going to talk about today, in the earlier scene between Luthen and Saw in the show, like, Saw references, like, anarchism explicitly. So, like, there's clear, like, political ideology that sort of like understands class and power dynamics within the star wars world and like there's clearly a bourgeois class and like you've seen like and or alludes to sort of communist stuff so like the whole prison sequence is very much like a working class discussion and then you have um what's his face is like uh hid the backstory that andy circus came up for his character was like you know yeah it was a um former union leader so like there's stuff

21:30 in star wars that i would be like all right like you can kind of map this on to sort of like a capitalist society in a way that star trek you cannot in a way that makes no sense to the to the point where like shows like deep space night actively make fun of it like there's there's a scene in star trek where a character a human character says to another character like yeah we have no money and he's like what does that even what does that mean it's like it means i need to borrow some of your money to buy this thing So, yeah. We've accidentally recreated David Graeber from First Principles of, like, we don't have money, we can just trade things, and then that's the value they're worth. Mm -hmm.

22:04 I think another underrated aspect of, like, how Star Wars can kind of reflect reality and class is the fact that, like, technology does not always work properly in Star Wars. It's a very, like, 70s, like, junkie aesthetic where, like, you know, they never have to turn the Enterprise off and on again. you know yeah yeah it's like oh shit this thing is not working yeah but the millennium falcon is always breaking down you know even though it's the best ship out there or whatever so except for the holodeck the holodeck does break down repeatedly so there is that you're saying ai in star trek is also is even there not infallible yeah yeah there's an episode so this is a complete aside there's an episode of

22:53 lower decks that i love um i don't know if you ever watched that where the characters they explicitly point out that like holodeck programs can be written like have a script and you act it out and then the character is like acting out the script but then he's having a an existential crisis for various reasons and so he's like screw it i'm going off the beaten path and he starts like going off the script of what the holodeck program is and other characters like the computer's just generating random bullshit and so it just like takes them on this side adventure that like they go and meet god and he starts asking god questions and it just like like a random like quote generator like god's answers to all those

23:32 questions just like random like ai script stuff so yeah it was it's very very funny and that was written before like generative ai became a thing so it's like oh wow they they kind of nailed this so i'm just trying to get another note for my eventual star wars script of maza meta introduces blocking right of repair legislation in galactic senate i love that i would love i would watch it i would watch the shit out of it Well, with the reference of Mas Amedda, who is one of our glupshiddos on this show, Jesse...

24:03 Especially after Rise and Fall of Galactic Empire, where he is. He plays an essential role in that book. I have it on my shelf. You can't really see it, but I think it's right there, wherever my finger is. That's it, right there. Oh, yeah, I see it, exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But in honor of the late, great WTF with Marc Maron, who are your Glupshiddos? Well, this is, so before we started recording, I told you both I had props.

24:32 So this is an audio -only podcast, so I apologize to the audio listeners, but I have my Glupshiddo, which is this guy. It's Rex. Yeah, yeah. I'm sure I'm not the first one to pick him. No, you are. Really? Oh, my gosh. Oh, I love him. So for listeners, this is Rex, and I have a little toy of him. Sadly, I think his batteries are dead, so I can't make him talk. But he was the driver of the Star Tours ride for many, many years. And then they got rid of him for C -3PO, which is significantly worse. Replaced him with a hotter droid. droid can you believe it there's like a there's a lady droid version of her and and c -3po is the one that drives now on the actual on the actual ride ride which is very

25:20 disappointing look i am a droid person like if i ever got to pitch a star wars show or or movie it would be the droid rebellion let's get the droids rights and have them get a droid jedi that would be my show yeah but C -3PO is the worst of them all. I do not like C -3PO. I find him very annoying in almost all the movies. I do not like C -3PO, and having him be the Star Tours driver is the worst. So I was always very disappointed by that, and I did not know. So I went to Disneyland for my birthday last June and I was always sad, like, oh, they have some Rex merch, but they never they got rid of him.

25:55 And I'm like, was very sad. I did not know that he is in the bar now. Oh, yeah. DJ at the bar. DJ Rex. Mm hmm. So my partner and a friend of mine took me to the bar because it was like, it's your birthday. Let's get drunk tonight. Because it was like pride night. So we were there like late at the park. And so I was like, okay, going in. I got so excited that he was there.

26:16 I'm like, oh my God, it's Rex, my boy. He's right here. He's living his best life. He retired and became a DJ. It's a very popular job path. Yeah. And so this is the other thing that I went and grabbed is my friend for my birthday got me the Rex. There's like a Rex glass, like tiki glass that they sell. Oh, hell yeah. That you can only get in there. It's like, actually, it's a very heavy glass. Like, you'd be shocked how heavy this is. But yeah, it's like a fun little Rex tiki glass that they only sell there. Did they?

26:47 recognize rex as well or were you so you had to explain who rex was yes so my partner my partner is also a star wars fan so she was at least like into the show and i'll just i i was trying to avoid saying him because i didn't want to sound like name dropping but it was lindsey ellis was the person we were with and i love lindsey but she does not give any shit about star wars So I'm just sitting there, my neurodivergent brain being like, so yeah, Rex, he was in Star Tours.

27:15 And they like, I was explaining how they build them and like all of these things. And she just looks at me and goes, uh -huh. In that way that she does. But she was the one who bought me the glass. So, you know, she at least appreciated that I loved him. So, yeah. Thank you, Lindsay. And I think. That is the perfect Glupshido story.

27:36 Because our barometer for a Glupshido is that when you are excited to see them, everybody you're with looks at you like, what the fuck are you talking about? Yeah. Lindsay literally had to sit there for like 10 minutes just listening to me neurodivergently explain the entire Star Tours experience. And she was like, yeah, sure.

27:59 Let me buy you the glass. So, yeah, it was a good time. But yeah, I love Rex. He was always my favorite growing up. Not to go on too much of a tangent, but I learned about an incredible joy the other day, which is that... In 1983, Metro North in New York tried to make a robot mascot to convince kids not to touch the third rail of the train system. His name is Metro Man, and he's just a little droid. See, this is the AI that I would be in for. Just weird little guys that are there just to tell us not to kill ourselves. That's it. That's it. It's like, hey, don't do something stupid today. Metro Man says, the tracks are really not the place to play, so everybody stay away. Only at the crossing where crossing's allowed. Thank you, Metro Man.

28:44 If that was the AI that we got to have, that would be the ideal situation. Well, yeah, that's a common question that we have. How do we synthesize our love with droids with the acknowledgement that they are AI? Yeah, so this is something I was actually talking about. I was at Dragon Con two weeks ago, and I was on a Black Mirror panel and also talking about this within Star Trek 2. about that exact question of what does AI represent in stories versus what AI actually is. So if you look at the history of robots and droids, and actually I'm working on a video about this right now. So the word robot comes from a Czech play called Rossum's Universal Robots, which was the robots were very clearly a metaphor

29:29 for the working class. And generally speaking, like robots have been a metaphor for that. or for racialization. I mean, obviously those two things are intertwined. And then sometimes gender as well, where you get things like companion and things like that, where gender kind of comes into play with it. The video I'm working on is about how android women are treated differently than android men. Totally. Yeah, usually my consensus is like, oh, droids are metaphors for race or working class folks, but like... And they'll usually be used for metaphors of like uprisings and like working class solidarity or the fear of working class solidarity in some cases. But but you'll still have a woman android. And so

30:10 it's like, oh, we can have working class uprising, but we can't we can't escape patriarchy. I mean, Christine is sick of me bringing up L337, but I think now is the time to bring up L337. Oh, no, that's yes, exactly. It's like she's the working class like hero of the droids and she's the one bringing it up and then she's just a joke. And then they literally make her a like an object. almost like a pseudo sex object in the way that like both Han and Lando talk about the Falcon in future movies is like a lady that's like their their partner so it's like she becomes like the exact example of what all women become it's literally captain kirk on futurama it goes like my ship which i love is a woman it's like

30:50 that is oh you say that you say that in futurama but like that's explicit in some star trek novels and he wants to fuck the ship but also that her that her name is a joke is insane and i can't i really have not gone over it yet of why that happened yeah So, yeah, no, it's it's it's very interesting. Anyways, like sort of go back to the original question, like droids are usually working class metaphors or race metaphors like data. Data in Star Trek is used as like a racialization metaphor of like creating a race of robots to do work and things like that. But now we have our sort of techno fascist oligarchs utilizing that to create the sort of propaganda around the product. I mean, it's the thing they're doing

31:32 right now is like, oh, we have a 10 percent chance that AI. will become Skynet in the next like three weeks or whatever the hell they're saying and it's like that's just it's just propaganda to scaremonger about their product and it is so fascinating to just talk on the gender aspect of it because I was discussing this about how they masculinize and feminize like their stuff so it's like oh when it's when the chatbot is whenever their llms are considered to be like doing war or doing like dangerous things that they're worrying about like oh it could become sentient and kill us all it's like oh so when it's doing sort of masculine coded things that's when it can become sentient and have its own

32:09 interior world but when they sell it as a chat bot that you can like have as your partner and being sort of this frictionless bot that can like do all of your romance needs and even sexual needs Then it has no interiority, can never, never do anything against you. And that's when we feminize it. So it's very fascinating. I mean, it's pure Freud of it's mommy who does everything for me, but then also my wife. Exactly. When really all we want is DJ Rex to drive the bus.

32:35 That's really all we want out of AI. I just want this weird little guy who's just having a fun time and is kind of like a little bit overwhelmed every single day. He's like, I don't know what I'm doing to drive my bus. And that would be ideal. Well, we don't live in that world. Anyways, I talk a whole bunch. I've been writing about this recently, so my neurodivergent brain is going off. No, this is great. happy to to get to be an outlet for you because we're we're doing this shit all the time over here too so it's cathartic to have a fellow obsessive uh droid lover here yes less let me just uh let me just rant at you it's great i love the droids so much yeah like i said my pitch for a star wars movie

33:20 would be like oh the droids start rebelling and then you know the jedi or whoever it is like ray or whatever you want to have it be sort of like starts like helping like fight the droids like oh who's controlling this and then they realize by the end like oh they find a droid jedi like oh this this droid can use the force oh are we the baddies have we been doing this wrong oh fuck the droids actually do deserve rights and maybe we are complicit in all of this bullshit and start uh start fighting back what if the whales are really tiny droids Yes. Yeah.

33:52 There are force sensitive droids out there, at least, you know, back in the the legends and the non canon. I remember that there was there's one comic where the little droid who Luke's uncle Owen goes to buy. it is revealed that he was actually Force -sensitive and knew that R2 needed to get purchased to get with Luke. And so he blows himself up. What? In order to do it. His name is Skippy the Jedi Droid. It's an eight page comic featured in Star Wars Tales number one, and it's about R5 -D4. The Force wanted him to die? Yeah. Jesus Christ, that's horrible.

34:43 I have to die so others can live, basically? Exactly. That's horrible. I hate that. I hate everything about that. I guess it's... I'm wondering, is it better than that one episode of The Mandalorian, which I think is the worst thing Star Wars has ever made? Do you know what I'm talking about? Where they go to that one planet and the droids seem like they're rebelling? And it's like weird droid apologia. Oh, yeah. And then it turns out...

35:08 Is that the one where Christopher Lloyd turns out to be manipulating the droids into killing people? Yes. It's like, oh, yeah, you know, don't worry. The underclass slaves, they're not going to rebel. They like they like working for us. They like working for the upper class people who are weirdly run by a former Nazi. And they make that explicit. And it's Jack Black and Lizzo for some reason. They like that. And actually, it's the weird like separatist guy who like.

35:40 I'm not entirely even sure what he represents in any sort of functional way that's manipulating people. Like, yeah, it's a horrible, horrible metaphor. And I just am like, why? Why did you do this? And it's also like direct democracy. So they're making fun of direct democracy in that episode, too. Well, democracy is the thing that never exists within Star Wars. That's always sort of the missing element. Well, they explicitly say in that episode that it's a direct democracy.

36:07 But then they like. Which would, like, imply some level of, again, like, communism or anarchism or, like, something going on there. But then they explicitly have, like, an upper class and an underclass. And, again, led by, and nothing comes of this other than, like, Jack Black is just an explicit former Nazi. Like, I don't, like, I don't even know what. That was crazy.

36:30 You're right. I totally forgot he was, like, an ex -imperial. Yeah. These part of the amnesty program. They make that explicit. I was like, what does it have to like? Why? What did that add to this other than making this even more fucked up? I legit think that that episode is probably the worst episode of Star Wars ever made just in terms of everything it's doing.

36:55 Like there are worse things in Star Wars. Like Watto is just an anti -Semitic caricature. But like as a as a piece of storytelling, I think that episode is probably the worst thing. It's a nadir for sure. Not every episode could be the convert, so. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, no, no. If the convert is Andor with crayons, then that episode is Andor with wet spaghetti. The convert's the one where it's the introduction of the amnesty program, right? Yeah, yeah. Oh, God, yeah. Where it's like, oh, yeah, you know, Project Paperclip, you know, it was actually fine and we just needed to treat the Nazis better. You know, we just treated them too meanly and that's why things were bad. Well, they have their AI therapist,

37:39 so that'll make them not Nazis anymore. Yeah, yeah. If we just gave them more resources and listened to them and stopped treating them like shit, they all would have turned out fine and given them a good therapy and, you know, Project Paperclip. would be great we just have we'd be living in like you know we'd have all the rocket ships and be living in space right now well we can keep talking about the mandalorian but we're here to talk about andor and yeah let's talk about some coherent political storytelling yeah let's let's get into our seven minutes today because previously on andor Cassian hitched a ride away from Narkina with his chill and new pals Dewey and Freedy. And this week we return

38:24 to the beautiful beaches of Niamos, except there's no more thumping club remix to welcome us because the beaches have just been decimated by the Empire's ruthless crackdown and we see that there isn't a soul in sight. I think it's early morning. I think it's just that people are not up yet. I don't think so. It looks pretty bright out to me. I mean, maybe, you know, there's people napping or whatever. But to me, it really reads like the Empire has through their, you know, their Patriot Act. People know that if I go out to the beach, I'm going to get arrested. And so I'm better off just staying inside. Yeah, I mean, it's kind of what we're seeing today with like ICE stuff where people are just like,

39:11 oh, ICE is arresting people. And so people stay inside and don't go out and then isolate themselves. And so then when people do get taken by ICE, people are not speaking to each other or don't know what's going on. At least that's what the Trump administration wants. So, yeah, I read it similarly as you. And there's all these like.

39:30 beach chairs left behind. It feels like the leftovers. People have almost been raptured away and they've just left all their stuff behind. Don't mention the leftovers. I will derail this podcast for four hours to talk about the leftovers. Don't you offer me a good time. I will. Oh, God, I will talk about The Leftovers as well. I've been thinking about rewatching it because Lanterns with Damon Lindelof writing that. So I was like, oh, I'll talk about it. Season two of The Leftovers is the best season of TV shows ever written.

40:01 I stand by that. Yeah, I would agree with that. I had to rewatch. I watched when it came out. It's been a while. So I need to rewatch to remember. I remember like the hotel, the dream hotel and everything, but I can't remember everything off the top of my head. Rustin, can you cue up Homeward Bound? Sorry. Sure thing. I don't understand that reference because I haven't seen The Leftovers.

40:22 Yeah, I know. This guy stinks. Usually what I say is The Leftovers is lost if it was tighter and more entirely aware of what it was trying to say. It's very similar in tone and the ideas that it has, but it's much shorter, much more coherent, and knows what it wants to say. Well, Lost is one of my favorite shows, so you've won me over. And I say that, again, I say that as a Lost fan. I was on the message boards. I called the Dharma Initiative hotline that they had for that game. I don't do video essays, but I've always wanted to do a video essay about season three of The Leftovers and post -COVID, of this big thing that seemed like it was a monumental thing, and then seven years later, people have

41:05 either moved on and moved past the trauma, but everyone is still sort of, some people have not let it go. And some people just can't process it. It's like a very weird metaphor of the thing before it happened. Yeah. We all have like a collective trauma that we're all just like, yeah, we know we're fine. We're all fine. It's okay.

41:20 And just piling it on more and more with everything that's happening in the world right now. And it's just like, yeah, we're good. We're okay. It's not affecting how we interact with each other at all. No, no, no. Speaking of interacting, Cassian's trying to avoid some interacting. We did get sidetracked by the leftovers. I'm sorry.

41:36 It's okay. We cut inside one of the hotels and we find - First the birds say, it's a living as they fly away. Yes, exactly. And inside there's two aliens sleeping and cuddling under the covers as Cassian sneaks inside to grab a hidden briefcase over the showers that holds his - credits his gun and Nemec's manifesto. And he peeks it open for a hair, forgetting that the volume is on.

42:08 And we get to hear Nemec's voice for the first time in, I think, six months of doing this show. That's how long it's been. Do we want to address our recently discovered fuck up? What was the fuck up? When we got the art of Andrew, we did not translate the... The arabesh on Nemec's manifesto is... It's Britney, bitch. Yeah. I'm bringing sexy back. Is that just... It's just lyrics.

42:40 It's literally, it's Britney, bitch, and then hit me, baby, one more time. Blow it. Is really what it is? Yeah. Oh, my God. That's hilarious. I love that so much, actually. That is the manifesto that I need. I need that. It would inspire me. I mean, there was that moment of Britney Spears, like, communism memes, so I guess they were right.

43:00 Yeah, yeah. Nemec is a girly pop stan for sure. Oh, 100%. 100%. You know he's blasting Carly Rae Jepsen all the time. Well, then Mon's datapad is hooked on a feeling, apparently. Mm -hmm. Which is very boomer -coded for her. Yeah. Yeah. I also love the two little aliens that are asleep. Yeah. That he just, like, interrupts. So just, like, two little weird little guys, little glupshitos just sleeping on the bed that he just, like, snoring really loudly. It's cute. Yeah, it's like a nice little domestic scene that he's interrupting.

43:35 Yeah, exactly. And as much as Niamos has, like, been decimated by the Empire, like, clearly people are still here. Yes. I don't know why it's something so weird, but there's like a little like table fan in their hotel room blowing. And I'm like, I guess, yeah, Star Wars, you would just recreate a fan like that is a basic concept of making air. But it looks like it's like too much of a. modern object to exist within the star wars universe of just it's a fan he's got an ikea fan just stuck it in there well because like if this was star trek it would be like a dyson air blade and it would be some like impossible shape but here it's like a little yellow windmill just spinning in the corner i love it you need

44:18 the fan in space miami you do it's probably humid as hell over there Yeah, yeah. Niamos is definitely muggy. It may be muggy, but luckily these aliens are out cold and Cassian's able to grab his stuff and sneak out of there as they snooze none the wiser. And that's our little glimpse of Cassian for this seven minutes. My little boy, my boy.

44:43 Any thoughts about Cassian that you want to talk about? You know, it's obviously not a huge set piece for him like we do for another character coming up. Yeah, no. I mean, I love him. He's my boy. He's one of my favorite characters in Star Wars, so I always love to see him. So, yeah. It is interesting, too. This is a hotel, and then we also get the hotel on Gorman in Season 2, so there's sort of that interesting parallel between the two spaces, which is kind of interesting in the Season 2. So, yeah. And it's interesting that, you know, we're getting this little tiny glimpse of Nemec's manifesto and hearing it kind of like in the moment, like he's clearly like in the middle of a sentence or like the middle

45:27 of a chapter, which is communicating to us that like he was listening to that since receiving it from. It was it was on his mind as he was sort of putting it away and hiding it, hiding it away like a different. less subtle show would have you know given us a little glimpse of and or like listening to it every episode since he got it or whatever yeah that's what i do like about and or it's it's very effective storytelling but it's it's not lean either like there's a show if you ever seen the show dark i never watched it but i've heard a lot about it it's it's a good show but Dark is very similar to Lost in that it's like a mystery box show and they have every sort of set piece and there's a lot of

46:11 things you're solving. And you can tell with that show that every piece of the mystery was figured out before they even shot the first episode. They had clearly mapped it out pretty well. And so that show, like every scene is very mechanical of like, this is going to do this and then this is going to do this and this is going to do this.

46:28 This is the piece of information we're going to communicate to you. This is the question that you're going to ask in this scene. Yes. And it's very effective. And there's like no fat in that show whatsoever. And while you can, it's impressive to just see how well they thought it out. There is something about. these moments that Andor lets us have, which is like, clearly this show is very thought out and it knows what it's setting up and what it's paying off throughout, at least within the season. And yet we will get still like little moments where it's like, Oh, we'll bring this up or we'll have the weird little, like, you know, sleeping people, the sweeping little aliens here. And then we'll give you a

47:04 reminder of this thing at this point in the season. It's not just very like, Oh, well, you know, you saw, you saw Nemec's manifesto in episode three. You'll remember in episode 10. It's like, no, we'll give you a little like reminder here. yeah the show is really smart about how early does it need to remind you about a concept before then paying it off later because like in the next episode we're gonna get to hear his actual manifesto and it's gonna become such an emotional underpinning to it but like if that came out of nowhere it would be jarring and it would feel out of place with the show And then they're able to do the opposite of that at the end of the show. When Pardigatz is listening to Nemec's

47:47 manifesto, it's this wonderful reminder of where the show started from. And it gives the feeling of it coming full circle. And you don't need to set that up beforehand. It's actually better that we haven't heard Nemec's voice in so long. Yeah, it's a very good like... A to B to Z and just connecting all of those things, especially because it's such a powerful emotional moment in next episode of this show that you don't.

48:15 Yeah, you just like, oh, yeah, I know this thing. It's it's I remember. But yeah, that's our that's our little brief glimpse of Niamo's for this week. Niamo's. Goodbye to Niamo's. Not welcome to Niamo's. Yeah. Yes. We leave Niamo's to then find Luthen arriving on the rugged volume set of Zegra Millo. Maybe one of the worst shots in the show is him coming in. There he is. There's our boy. Yeah. Yeah, I guess. So for listeners, I have a Luthen and I have a Saw action figure.

48:51 They're like the two Andor characters that I have. And you just acted that out as the scene was playing, right? Yes. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Every time. Every time. The Gorman front. You just need your two tubes action figure too. And then you could really do this whole scene together. I can do the whole thing. Custom made two tubes.

49:13 You're giving him Anton Krieger. Is there a two tubes action figure? No, there's not. I've watched it. Really? Not an official one. That is crazy. I demand it, Disney. What the fuck is wrong with you? You think I would have bought it by now? I mean, we've gotten we've gotten weirder. We got like Maz Kanata. Like we don't get two tubes.

49:40 Come on. They may not have an action figure, but I do see a Star Wars Masterworks card signed by Edrio Two Tubes' voice actor, David Accord. That is only $30, Alex. There's a custom version of him. I found a custom Black Series Two Tubes. Yeah, that looks fun. Oh, no. No, wait. No. Okay. There is. I just found. One does exist as part of a Rogue One pack of four characters. So you can get Jyn, Saw, some random Stormtrooper, and then Two Tubes. Oh, but they're not the full size? No, they're like mini. They're mini ones.

50:20 Yeah, yeah, yeah. But he does exist. You can get a little Two Tubes action figure. Wow. If George was in charge, we could buy a two -tubes body pillow. The Star Wars Rogue One Jedi Revolt four -pack. We've got a lot of two -tubes to talk about. Yeah, yeah. Let's get into the scene. I'm sorry for distracting us with toy talk. That was very important. With merch spotlight. I was the one who brought up the toys, so you're fine.

50:47 Yeah. Outside Saw's base, benthic two -tubes, demands that Luthen stop. Two tubes adjust his blaster and instructs the partisan to search Luthan. Luthan asks why all the hubbub and two tubes tells him Saw is in a mood and Luthan says good to know. Is he never not in a mood? They're just different moods. Yeah, the many moods of Saw Gerrera. We'll find out he's wacky today, but positive wacky. Yeah, yeah. Yes, the partisan finds Luthan's walking stick and quietly wonders if it's a secret lightsaber. yeah i was gonna say nothing ever comes of that no i mean it's just his walking stick and like i in the art of andor book they talk about how they liked the idea of him having this like retractable walking stick and it's like it never acknowledges

51:37 that it looks like a lightsaber Yeah, that was the thing. I remember that being such a big theory that he was like, oh, he was a Jedi who escaped Order 66 or whatever. I think Tony knew what he was doing. I think that this was classic bait of like, you know, we're going to show that he has a little walking stick. And I mean, come on, like you see this, you know, the season finale is the next episode. And it's like, well, clearly he's going to go to Ferex and he's going to whip out a lightsaber and like save Cassian from being killed. something you know he's gonna take the kyber crystal that he gave cassian in you know episode three and put it into the the the walking stick it's gonna turn into be a lightsaber especially

52:20 when he had the darth vader shot last week yep yep yep yeah if it turned out to be a red lightsaber whoa wow He bled that kyber crystal. Star Wars theory would have jizzed his pants, but we don't live in that world. Don't worry. He'll make an AI version of it soon enough. It'll be great. Yes. Luthen tells him to put down the stick or give it back. But then Two Toops is tired of all this and gets the show on the road. And the partisan gives Luthen back his cane. Inside one of the tents, Saw excitedly tells Luthen, I'm in. I'll do it. And then Luthen asks, do what?

52:56 And he's down to join Krieger at taking down the Spellhouse power station. He asks Luthen to tell Krieger Saul will bring air power, but they'll take tactical orders from no one. Luthen would have loved this answer weeks ago, but now it's a problem. Saul rattles off plans, but Luthen stops him. You're too late. Krieger leaves tomorrow.

53:14 It's no problem. Saul's got charts. All Krieger has to do is tell him he wants his support and agree to his terms. Make it happen, he demands. Luthen sighs. He thinks not. Sorry, Rustin, did you want to say something? No, yeah, he's just so excited in this moment. Oh, yeah, he's like a puppy, yeah. You know, he really thinks, like, he's going to make Luthen's day here. That he's like, this is all you wanted, right? Like, you know what? You were right, Luthen. Gosh darn it, we're going to go and do this thing. And, like, you mentioned Edrio's line about how he's in a mood. And, like... Was that Edrio or was that Benthic? Oh, you're right, Benthic. I'm so sorry. Well, we don't know. Could that be

53:51 Edrio? It is actually Benthic because I saw that in the Partisans, Benthic is listed as one of the commanding officers of Saw's Partisans, but not Edrio. So I think Benthic is the leader here. And Edrio is hanging out. Benthic is stuck doing duty? Is he stuck doing, like, guard duty? Edrio is, yeah. No, Edrio, Benthic is the one that's outside. It doesn't matter. I was going to say, I'm like looking and like, I don't really even know. Benthic is the one who has the tooth necklace.

54:24 That's how you know. The one who met him outside then is Indrio. No, no, Benthic has the... That's what I just said. No, Benthic has the... Benthic has the teeth. The tooth necklace. That's what I just said. I've used it the other. Yeah, yeah. It's okay. Tony Gilroy is just sitting here going, I hate Star Wars. They got the shot all set up and then Pablo Hidalgo taps his shoulder and is like, you got the wrong tubes on set today.

54:53 It's supposed to be the one with the puka shell necklace. Oh, well, excuse me. I might as well fuck off then. That's what they get for trying to save money by having... Pretending that one costume is two different aliens. It is true. But yeah, Saw clearly in a manic state right now. He's diving headfirst into a plan and he's going to get a rude awakening when he hits the water. He just bought so much shit off eBay.

55:25 He's going to a real manic mode. I get to blow shit up today. It's a good day. Luthen sighs. It's not going to happen. And Saw is confused because Luthen was so excited. Luthen tells him the truth. ISB knows Krieger's plan and they'll be waiting for him. Saw asks Luthen how he knows this, but he won't tell. But he realizes Krieger doesn't know and asks Luthen, how do you know I won't tell Krieger he's walking into a trap?

55:52 Luthen tells him, I don't. Annoyed, he reiterates, I don't know what you'll do. This is all far from ideal. So Saw gets the story straight. Luthen is ready to burn Krieger. That means 30 men will be going off to their deaths. And Luthen reminds him 30 plus Krieger. I do like that line. Because again, it's like Luthen being very aware of exactly what he's doing and how many people have to die.

56:14 Because it would be very easy just paying him as the cold pragmatist who doesn't give a shit. But lines like that do point at like, he's well aware of the accounting of what he's doing. And he has thought about it. And he's making like, he's like, yeah, I'm killing 31 people. And he's not flipping about it. And it would be easy to have him be defensive. It would be easy for him to be saying, no, Saw, you don't understand.

56:40 We need to let this happen, which is like kind of what he's saying. But he's always on the forefront of saying, plus Krieger. Like he is always mindful of just how much of like a moral stain this is going to be, you know, letting these men die. even though it's necessary. He knows that it's an evil thing to do, but it's the only option that they have here. Yeah. It again goes to that speech, like I burned my life for a new sunset that I'll never see, you know? And so it's it's I like that that is always ever present in the writing of his character. I also like that he acknowledges that he doesn't overstretch and try to like order Saw around. I mean, obviously, so that wouldn't go over well with Saw and he

57:25 knows that. But he's like, I don't know what you'll do. And it's and it doesn't come across as like, you're just crazy. Yeah, I don't know what you're going to do, command. And it's more just like you you make your own choices. And I'm not entirely sure how to, like, game that out. But I'm just trying to let you know what what. this is going to be. If I could game you out, we would not be in this situation. Things would be very different if I could game you out.

57:45 Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And it's very matter of fact, rather than sort of like judgmental, I think is probably the best way to put it. Yeah, I don't think Luthen's doing a performance here to try and convince him things. I think this is pretty much genuine Luthen. Yeah, which is it's not always what we get to see. He has this sense of a kind of like. tired exhaustion about him in this scene that I kind of really like.

58:08 Of like, I gotta do this. And it's not like, oh, he's over it. But it's just sort of like, yeah, this is what I gotta do. Alright, let's do it. B .S. Now Saw tries to do the Battle of the Wits from The Princess Bride. Because there are two options. Either Luthen is ISB or he has a source he's protecting. And if he's not ISB, is protecting the source worth losing Krieger?

58:29 And Luthen says, I did. I'm not so sure right now. Saw asks, what if it was me instead of Krieger? What would you do? Easy. Krieger doesn't know Luthen. He's not vulnerable if Krieger is captured. Luthen admits, I've been in a room with Krieger, but he doesn't know that. Krieger can't hurt Luthen, but Saw can. Now, that's a logical line, but I don't know if it's true. Like, it's true.

58:52 It would be true in some context, sure. But I do also know that, like, Luthen would sell out Saw if it was beneficial to the overall rebellion, like, easily. Like, easily is probably the wrong word, but. I don't know. I mean, Luthen clearly respects Saw and his, you know, capabilities. I think that he knows that. saw would die before giving anything up to the empire right like there's a reason that he is okay revealing himself to saw where he will not do that with just about anybody else yes that is true and i yeah because there is a uh ideological like saw is just very very ideologically motivated rather than simply like i'm doing this for some glory or whatever so that is true that being said though i do think

59:47 there is some sense of he would if it was needed like not in this context and not this flippantly i mean not not that he's giving away krieger flippantly but like this is a different situation and i think there would be some where he would sell saw out if if it was again for the best like i mean this This whole point of like protecting Lonnie, like Lonnie is the more important thing to protect in this situation. But then, you know, in the near the finale of the series, like Lonnie gets killed to protect information. So like no one's above getting killed for the greater cause.

1:00:18 Even Luthan himself. But Luthan also knows you need two wings to fly. And he's he's the one playing the inside game and saw the one that's doing anarchy and fucking shit up. So he needs that part in order for his system to work. He needs that sort of chaos. Well, I will. I will. Sorry, this is me being an anarchist. Anarchism is not just chaos. I know you. I know you know that. That's why I'm just being facetious. Well, I mean, they literally say that in the show of, you know, anarchism is seductive when they just mean blowing shit up. Yes. Well, actually, yeah, that is. I did a whole video on this. Actually, I think it was the leftist. Yeah. The video that you pointed out, anti -fascism is leftism of

1:00:57 fools. There was a whole section of that video where I was like, what is saws? actual ideology and the implication seems to be he is an anarchist in in actual principle which would make sense with his background as like a guy in indigenous guy fighting for his homeland though his homeland also had a monarchy so there's some questions there yeah But then in season two, he does have that line where it's like, I forget exactly the line, but it's like the Empire will be gone before the Republic comes back. He has some line about the Republic coming back, which feels like a much more like, oh, he's a restorationist. Like he wants to bring back the liberal democracy, which doesn't make sense considering that like

1:01:36 he is very well aware that the Republic fell, like used him and then became the Empire. So like it's a line like that's a great scene in season two, but it's a line that. like ideologically reads weird for me for his character um so i was and it was one of those like is it because they were trying to sort of set him up as like a we need to restore the republic kind of guy is sort of an ideological bent of the show loki i don't know but it was it was an interesting I cut it from the video because it was like such a sidetrack and unnecessary to what I was talking about, but it was very interesting. If you ever try and do like a political grid map of all of the Star Wars characters, I think you would try

1:02:12 to put Saw in and he would just go, you have no idea where I am. Yeah, you have no idea. He's off the grid. Some of the things you know exactly where he is. It's like, we know Saw. We know where you're at. I saw Rogue One. My read of that line is that what he's saying is we'll all be dead before the Republic. The Republic is back. And I read that kind of ironically, that he's saying all you guys are so focused on just restoring the Republic, but you will die waiting for that to happen. And so on our Patreon, patreon .com slash and orcs pod for anyone listening, we did an episode. We did an episode that we called the Book of Saw and we went and watched like all of Saw Gerrera's appearances across

1:02:59 like Clone Wars and Rebels and Bad Batch and Jedi Fallen Order. And our guest, Eric Villis Boas, had a very astute point that, like, Saw's role in the show, in every appearance, essentially, is to basically force the characters to question how committed are they actually to the rebellion. And I think in Luthan, we see maybe the only person who is more committed than Saw is. Especially in this scene, we get to see somebody who can actually push Saw further to the left than anybody else can. Well, I would say that Saw, I mean, maybe I'm wrong about this. I don't think Luthan has a particular... and political project either.

1:03:45 Like Luthan. No, yeah. Luthan's not being like, like maybe he's a, I want to restore the Republic guy, but he doesn't even really express that. And he has no like, here's my manifesto. And even Nemec's manifesto, as much as I love it, is just anti -authoritarian. Yeah. It's not, like you could argue there's some calls to collective action in that, but it's not particularly a political screed. And like Luthan is probably more dedicated to the cause than Saw, but I would say Saw is definitely. much more ideological from what we can tell about him and even even he is sort of the the show is vague it's like again the anarchism line which you could still read as they just mean chaos but that and i just given they're

1:04:25 talking about like different political like groups and he's like they're all lost lost i always read that line at least my interpretation of is like it no he's literally talking about anarchism as a seductive concept because because then that gets into the whole like oh communist like a state communist versus anarchist debate that always occurred the important thing is that we view all of our lens of modern politics through the 1920s that's what that's that's how we really solve our political issues today yeah exactly exactly you know yeah let's just go back to on anarchism and then have that be our text i was like what that was ingles right wrote that one i think what alien would peter kropotkin be in

1:05:02 the star wars universe oh god oh let me look at a picture of him It looks like Santa. Yeah, I mean, I have the conquest of bread over there. Literally, a whole part of my shelf is just anarchist text. What would Peter Kropotkin be? I want him to be a Wookiee, just because I'm seeing a big beard. But he's like short and squat. Then he's an Ewok, baby. Yeah. Honestly, you could argue that the Ewoks are probably the closest to like...

1:05:35 I mean, the Ewoks just, sorry, this is getting into my narrative. Ewoks were arguably stolen from Le Guin, who was an anarchist. So there you go. This just came up on our episode with Margaret Killjoy, actually. She just informed us about the Le Guin story set on the planet of Endor, where they're fighting the Empire.

1:05:58 What if he looks exactly the same, but he has a Ki -Adi -Mandi head? There you go. There we are. We got it. We did it. We solved it. What is it? Serene? Something like that. Yeah. I don't remember. We're not that big of nerds that we know Ki -Adi Bundy's alien race by heart. Yeah, he's a Sarian. You know what? You didn't read that one trading card that had his age that we all need to follow and that was definitely George Lucas' plan from the start that the Acolyte disrespected.

1:06:29 How dare they bring Ki -Adi back? Yeah. He should have been a baby. I wanted to see him as a little toddler in that scene. With the same sized head though. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Same sized head. God, imagine giving birth. God, sorry, that's an aside, but those anti -woke people are always ridiculous and stupid, but that one in particular was like, George Lucas was always biting by this cannon and he would have respected the trading card that came with a cereal box or whatever the fuck it was. He literally didn't give a fuck about any of that shit. He didn't care. Did you know that Keanu Mundy had a respectful, albeit Somewhat tenuous relationship with Master Yarel Poof.

1:07:13 Thanks, Wikipedia. Oh, I needed to... Thank you. I'll be somewhat tenuous. It's just a funny phrase. Somewhat tenuous. The Ki -Adi -Mundi Wikipedia page is under super semi -protection, I assume, because of the controversy. Because of that shit. It's like, no, this training card said he was a child. He never would have been this old. Like some angry fans getting on that. What a ridiculously dumb thing. I think the only thing that was stupider than that was when season two of Andor came out and people were like, Darth Vader would never abide by sexual violence in the Empire. You never would have let that happen. If Darth Vader knew that that happened, that guy would have been.

1:08:02 dead. You mean the guy who killed his wife? The man's an incel. What are you fucking talking about? Oh my God. Space Rasputin doesn't have a weird thing with sexuality? I can't imagine. Oh my God. That was also Star Wars theory, wasn't it? Probably. I think, I think it was. So we're serious about Rasputin. I don't even think he knows who Rasputin is. He's seen Anastasia maybe.

1:08:32 Yeah. Yeah. But I think he thinks that that's Anastasia. Yeah. He maybe saw it. And if he did, he probably thinks it was a fantasy movie and like not based on real history. I mean, everyone, that is a fantasy movie. It is a fantasy movie. I mean, you know what I mean? Like not based on any real history. You know, yeah, but Darth Vader's just choking out all the rapists. That's what he's definitely doing. I mean, he does wear a black hat, so. Yeah, sure, yeah. You see how this looks, right? There's just not the face that we want to put on for the Emperor. Paragon's a moral virtue. That's Darth Vader. To catch a predator starring Darth Vader. That's all I'm imagining now. Just watch the movie Primetime

1:09:20 is just starring Darth Vader. And he's just stopping Jedi from capturing little children. I can't believe the younglings. I'm the one bringing us back on script. Usually it's the opposite. You thought you were meeting a youngling here. Well, I'm here to tell you. Oh, God. All right, let's get back on script. Let's do it. Jesus Christ. Yes, Luthan tells Saw it's his decision whether he wants to go with Krieger. And then Saw looks around. Surely this is somebody else's decision. I love that bit where he's like looking around for somebody else. No, Luthan makes it clear. It's Saw's decision. And Luthan asks, do we let Krieger go down and play the long game?

1:10:00 Or do we warn him and throw away a source that's taken years to cultivate? Saw tries to pry out more information. Is somebody with the ISB with Krieger? Maybe that means that somebody is here at Saw's base. Moothin tells him he's wasting time. And Saw answers, why wouldn't you? This is when it gets real, Princess Friday. Like you're just, that's what I want you to think. I do like it though. Cause it is showcasing the beginning of Saw's hyper paranoia. Like he's, he's definitely paranoid in other scenes that we see him in, but this is really the beginning of that. It is, it is. I mean, they have to explain the rogue one, like mask that he's wearing, but it is the one thing that I wish we had, uh, wasn't just

1:10:38 attributed to like, oh, he's cooked his brain from all the drugs that he's been smoking in season two. Another anarchist stereotype. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Uh, you know? Yeah. And it's just like, uh, just have it just be the increasing paranoia that got to him. Cause he, he, it were, I mean, it works without that regardless, but it is one of those like, Oh, I guess you just have to explain the gas mess or rogue one. We need to have an explanation for that. Tony Gilbert did all he could, but the, the Disney, the Disney, uh, Canon will, will come for you one day. It's fine. He did toss out that one, uh, K2SO comic though. So. And I'm sure people were real normal about it. Oh, yeah, no. Pablo Hidalgo coming

1:11:17 in very sad, being like, sir, we have to acknowledge his asthma. The K2SO comment. The K2SO. I did love his response to that. He was just like, no, I'm not doing that. Screw that comic. Yes. Speaking of stalling, Luthien tells him to stop stalling. So instead, he asks, who is it? Who is the spy? And finally, after all 11 episodes, Luthien tells the truth of what we've always known. It's Two Tubes. Two Tubes is the spy.

1:11:45 Goddamn Two Tubes. And Two Tubes is like, what the fuck did I do? Yes. He yells at Antognath, this is nonsense. Two Tubes is two -faced. This is like one of the, we had some real silliness last episode with Dewey and Freedy, but this is a very silly scene. I get it is. But I do. Again, it goes the paranoia. But I also like I do appreciate that this show just has a sense of humor. Like there is like even with the old lady in season two in the in the hospitals like that, we still get our weird little Star Wars like humor moments, which I always appreciate.

1:12:19 Yeah, I get the feeling that like two tubes is even like he's he's reacting like somebody referred to him as the wrong political ideology. He's like, sir, no, no, no. I promise. I promise. This guy does nothing. I've read Kropotkin. I've read Bookchin. Don't come at me. I didn't vote for Kamala. I promise. I swear. I swear. That is a joke is that Ben Thicke is one of them is a communist and the other one's an anarchist and they are constantly fighting about it. Oh, okay. I love it. I love it. It was harm reduction.

1:12:46 I swear. Yes. Luther continues telling the truth of two tubes. He's my man. He tells me everything. Tell Saw he deserves to know. And Two -Tubes is hurt. Everything in his heart. Yes. Just the whisper of sweet nothing in my ears every night. He tells Saw that Luthen is lying. He only has allegiance to Saw. And in this moment, distracted, Luthen grabs Two -Tubes' pistol and points it at Saw's head. Saw reminds Luthen there's no way out alive if he shoots him. But Luthen admits, I'm doing this so you'll listen, so listen. Krieger goes down. The ISP will feel invincible. They'll feel untouchable. We'll have a clear field to play. The alternative? krieger pulls out we wave him off they'll know they'll have to wonder they'll

1:13:28 trust nothing just like you're doing right now sauce stares back trying to take it in actually i'm gonna pause here i'm gonna say to her question of like what is luthien's ideology i think luthien just knows this is it we just have to reset the board as much as we can to get to a different calculation that we can then build something it's just right now the status quo is not cannot lead to any change so i just need to lead to some level of shuffling the deck yeah Well, again, it is it is just like, again, anti -authoritarian.

1:13:55 I mean, there's that anarchist. What's the what's the phrase? It means ends makes means. Right. Is that the phrase where it's just like, you know, you should your means should match what your ends are. I think that's the phrase. But Luthan is like, I'll do do whatever just to wipe the board clean. So, yeah, I think I think he's just sort of an anti -authoritarian kind of guy, which I mean, just just like Tony Gilroy. So, yeah. Yeah. Which is true. Exactly what my essay was about. One day we will grill him on capitalism.

1:14:22 One day. I mean, my read on Tony is he's probably, he's probably like liberal, I would assume, would be my guess. I would imagine he's somewhat to the, he's to the left of the Democratic Party. Yes. You know, and for an old man like him, you know, who's, you know, that's great. I'm not asking him to go out on the vanguard. He's a social democrat who admires the left as inspiring figures, but that's as far as he goes. Yes, that's exactly the right read. When I say I don't consider the Democrat Party to be liberal at this point, they are conservative by any measure. I mean, that's why he cast Stellan Skarsgård, because he's a true social democrat. Mm -hmm. We don't have a liberal party. And I say that as a left

1:15:12 anarchist, so it's like we don't even have a liberal party, which I would also disagree with, but we don't even have that. So, yeah. What's the quote? You know, you can't shame the empire if the empire doesn't have shame. Mm -hmm. But yeah, Saw stares back to Luthen, trying to take it in, and Luthen continues, if I were ISB Saw, why wouldn't I just send you out there with him?

1:15:30 I didn't want you to have to make this choice. And then Saw repeats, 30 men, and Luthen repeats, plus Krieger. which I love. I just love that that's a callback. It's such fucking good writing. Yeah, it's a nice refrain. Like Krieger is weighing on him this whole time. Like as much as Luthan is able to compartmentalize what he has to do for the rebellion versus what is like... objectively moral, he can never fully separate that away.

1:16:02 And he knows what he's doing is wrong, but it still must happen. It's inverse of how he usually thinks. Usually Luthien thinks of the bigger number as the greater, you know, it's a greater good. And here Saw is going, you know, well, that's just 30 guys. And then Luthien's focusing, no, this is just one. You know, it is the inverse of how he usually formulates his calculations.

1:16:23 Yeah, he's unable to depersonalize it in the way that he typically can. Because he knows Krieger, at least to some degree. Saw smiles for the greater good. And Luthen tells him, call it what you will. And losing his smile, Saw decides, let's call it war. Good show. Yeah. It's almost like this is good writing. Let's call it Star War.

1:16:45 Yeah. You know, I miss back when the writing on Star Wars was good, when it was like sand, coarse, and it gets everywhere. I think that this scene, though, is important because within the canon of the show, there are many characters who do not think they're at war right now. Mon Mothma does not think they are at war. But here we see that Luthan and Saw... do indeed see you know the the actual position they are in and are acting accordingly and this is what it looks like and it's not pretty and it costs you dearly yeah it's it's a nice continuation of did you read um the reign of the empire book we're going to read it for our patreon patreon .com slash and orcs pod in the new year and uh we're hoping

1:17:41 to interview alexander freed with our friends at the authorized podcast so that's look forward to that patreon .com slash and orcs pod well and that and that i'll say in that trilogy is like saw just rolled one right into the other so like he's like the the clone wars turned right into this war so for him it's just always been war which is an interesting realization to make like everyone kind of got to be like oh yeah everything's great and oh we'll realize that the empire's bad over time, but he was like, no, I've just been rolling from one to the other.

1:18:13 Same war. It's that years from now, we will not refer to them as World War I and World War II, just one big war. He's still in the middle of those two. Yeah. Should we say goodbye to Sigur Milo? Sigur Milo? I think so, because... We return to Coruscant, where Edie is dressed up for a night on the town, but the moment she's out of view, her son Cyril sneaks off into her room, opens her safe, and amongst her, her jewelry grabs a stash of credits inside and pockets it.

1:18:49 This is just like one brief little moment with Cyril, you know, following the previous episode where Mosk informed him about the death of Andor's mother. And my question for you guys is, do you think that Cyril used to do this all the time as a kid, stealing from his mom's purse? Or... Did he always fantasize about doing it, but was too chicken shit to actually do it? And now he has a reason to actually go in and take the money.

1:19:21 This is my heroic moment. I can finally do it. I can finally steal from Bob. I got a rifle through my mom's purse. I think he did it once, like bought a figurine and then was so terrified about it, he never did it again. Oh, I think I was going to say he got caught and got yelled at so horribly. you know it's like you're just a disappointment to the entire family the first time he waited for her to just go out the door and this time he knew i'm gonna go outside wait for her to go up the turbo lift and then i'm gonna go in this then i'll grab it it's such a funny peril between him and cassian the cassian like hides his money in this hotel room that he had like he had to stay out was in prison and then what you just realized i just didn't

1:20:01 put that together until this moment yeah so true yeah and then just cyril just a little fuck up has to take his mom's money out of her cat like her jewelry oh my god the writing on the show is so good you guys seven within seven minutes we have our two kind of like two sides of the same coin doing the same action of going in credit yeah getting the same credits oh my god yeah i just did it and he and he sees and he's like And you can see how he, Cyril, fantasizes that he is what Cassian is. Oh, in his mind, he's doing the exact same thing. Yeah, it's what Cassian is doing. It's like the exact same thing in his mind. Yeah. It's also for me, it's like I love because there is no like paper currency in the

1:20:48 Star Wars universe that like even the like mom hiding her money in a thing is just like a. hard coins like it's such a funny thing to be like the $20 rolled up in the couch is literally just you have to have these giant metal bars is very funny yeah it's like in a it's like in a space jewelry box sort of thing it's just yeah it's like oh right with mom's like earrings yeah she's got her diamond necklace and her gold doubloons next to each other oh my god there's a run on the banks go get your doubloons her like gaudy pearls and then her doubloons yeah yeah Before we say goodbye, we should ask Jesse, one of our favorite questions is, who would you love to have played Uncle Harlow if you could cast any

1:21:29 actor? Oh, God. Why am I blanking on his name? I know exactly who I would want him to play, and he just won an Emmy last night, and I'm blanking on his name. Stephen Root? Stephen Root. Stephen Root is a very good answer. That's an incredible answer. Stephen Root would be fantastic. That's also a new one. Yeah, that's a first -timer.

1:21:44 Yeah. Great choice. Oh, I can see it so well. Yeah, I think he would play off of Edie really well, I feel like. That would be very fun. Imagine Steven Root and Cyril Karn bouncing off of each other. I mean, we can get Catherine Hunter in Widow's Bay, right? She would just fucking knock that shit out of the park. Yeah. Now I'm upset we didn't get that. Season two, let's make it happen, Katie. Come on, Katie, make it happen.

1:22:15 Just put the entire cast of Andor in. yeah why not it's all widows they're all just going to widow's bay yeah benthic shows up to go to the beach i mean kyler solar is not doing anything else at least you could give him on widow's bay he could be like matthew reese's like brother or something or like a cousin or a relative of some kind you know if kyler solar's agent listens to this podcast what the fuck are you doing Where is his starring role? Why is he not starring in like an HBO show right now? No, he's going to be in season six of Slow Horses. Great job, buddy. Is that really what he's going to be in?

1:22:53 Yeah. To be fair, I do like Slow Horses. I mean, people do love that show. It's like the only show that gets six seasons now. So that's not nothing. It's a show that's like, it's a nice, like really interesting spy thriller fun show that like comes out yearly. Like I appreciate that. Yeah. I guess he's just he's in the lane of I'm an American guy who lives in England.

1:23:14 So I'm always gonna be the American guy in any various show. Not a bad gig if you can get it. I do appreciate they also brought back James Callis. James Callis was in Slow Horses as well. If you watch Battlestar Galactica. Oh, really? Yeah, he is Baltar from Battlestar Galactica is in that show. And he's very fun. He plays like the head of MI6, who's just like a politician type who just does not know what the fuck he's doing. It's great. Incredible. I just love modern television of number of seasons, six, number of episodes, 31. Yeah. Six episode seasons, baby.

1:23:48 That's what we get now. That's barely more than Andor. Yeah. That's barely more than a season of an NBC show 15 years ago. Season one of Lost has like 31 episodes. Hey, at least we're getting more than two seasons. All right. Just shut up and take what you were going to get. Oh, man. I miss those days where it's like, all right, every TV show gets like 20 episodes and a Christmas special. I mean, Night of the Seven Kingdoms season two coming out like early 2027 is a miracle.

1:24:20 Yeah, that is wild. I'm so pumped for that show, too. What another great show. That's another discussion. Night of the Seven Kingdoms. Yeah, yeah. It's better than House of the Fucking Dragon. Again, another discussion for another day. I have many thoughts on that show and its politics. Well, you can save that for other podcasts. House of the... I can't even think of one. Never mind.

1:24:43 Seven Kingdoms was good. Yeah, you already got it. You beat me to it. Well, we return to Luthen with what is maybe the closest thing to a Star Wars wipe we ever get in Andor. There's this little, like, shrinking dissolve across the screen. And we find Luthen contacting Kleia for a bit of double talk as he informs her about this costly deal with Saw. under the guise of talking about a business deal, he says, it was more expensive than I hoped, but I wasn't in a position to bargain.

1:25:23 And, you know, we were just talking about slow horses. We were talking about spy shows. Like this is a moment that feels like a great little bit of genre spy craft in the middle of Andor. That's what I love about this. I just love their radio espionage stuff. Like, I love the little waveform that you can see on her on your equipment that whenever they're talking, it's just it is something that I like about Star Wars over Star Trek. I mean, there's things that I like about both, but like. just the tactile nature of Star Wars I really like in fact they literally just I mean it's a terrible episode of a show that I'm not a big fan of but Strange New Worlds just had an episode where like they all get turned

1:25:59 into puppets so they can't touch the touchscreens and I'm like it would be fine if you had just buttons yeah everything being a goddamn touchscreen yeah alas alas I also want to point out a way that when Luthien before the conversation puts away a bunch of his like costumes including a wig so presumably he was doing something else on sagarmillo that required a wig or he just wanted to have the wig on man don't judge i i he's just like putting away the walking stick or something i think like it's where the wig belongs but he's not like putting the wig back or anything okay i was hoping he was doing other other antics Will you wear figs? He just wants to wear a wig, you know, maybe it's his driving

1:26:38 wig, you know? His driving wig. Yeah, exactly. The glove box is for the gloves. The wig box is for the wig. Clea asks if he's coming home and Luthen tells her that depends. I'm most curious about the other piece, meaning one Cassian and or is it no longer available? Clea informs him that Cassian is very much still alive, but there are negotiations ongoing and our representatives are involved, but there are a number of other buyers on the ground and your presence would only complicate the bidding at this point. And Luthan isn't content to sit on the sidelines and tells Clea if they lose this piece, they'll have to close up shop. And Clea tells him there's nothing more we can do, but... Luthan knows that

1:27:29 that's not true. And so this is another scene that plays differently knowing Luthan and Clea's relationship, because it's very clear in this moment that Luthan does not order Clea around. He is not checking in with his secretary to ask like, what messages do I have? She is a equal partner in this rebellion and is very much. keeping an eye on the bigger picture as Luthan is doing his man on the ground shit. Yeah, there's tension between the two of them, which I really do appreciate.

1:28:03 And it's not just him telling her what's going on, which is very nice. Yeah. This scene and the scene with Luthan and Saw both have like big Tom Stoppard energy, where like there's a lot of word games happening in both scenes of it's good writing of just it's how do we sort of communicate one thing without saying the other thing? And it's smart writing. A laser show, he could just be saying what he's looking for.

1:28:21 This doesn't need to happen besides the fact that it's smart writing. At least their show would just be like, he can just talk normally. It's fine. But they bother to actually think about how these two communicate when they know they're being tracked. And it's just good world building in the sense that like we're learning about these characters in the way that they talk to each other. Like we're learning about how we've seen how paranoid Saw is. He's worried about spies. And here we see that like. Lutha knows that he is correct to be paranoid, like people could be listening at any moment. And especially when making an ordinary phone call like this back to the shop, he needs to be prepared for if the ISB are on to me, we can't give them

1:29:04 anything to, you know, incriminate us with. no it's great it's again i just it is nice to see how cohesive this show is with what we do learn their later relationship is in season two like what they make explicit and it ties very well to this because it would have been very easy to just have him be the the leader and like then have this season to be a retcon but i like it i like that it carries through the whole show Exactly. Luthen tells her, you need to think of the consequences of losing that piece to another collector. And Clea insists she's preparing for every outcome. But Luthen's reply is then garbled by static. What happened to him? What's to become of Cassian Andor? You'll have to tune in next

1:29:55 week to find out because that's the end of our seven minutes here on Andorx. I'm sad that I missed the lightsaber ship. You could talk a little bit in advance if you want. Yeah, yeah. That is the one sort of like, this is ridiculous. This is some ridiculous Star Wars nonsense, but I love it anyways. You know, I don't know if that was Tony Gilroy choice or if it was something thrust upon him. I think you're still in Skarsgård's demand. He's like, I'll do the show if you let me do a space battle. I want to do a space battle.

1:30:25 That's definitely a stellar Skarsgård. But yeah, it's just such a ridiculous, like needless moment. I mean, you do learn a little bit about how effective that Luthing can be if pressed. But overall, it's sort of like a needless moment that doesn't add to anything or do anything else. But it's just weird little Star Wars shit. And I love it. I think it is showing that they are not.

1:30:48 foolproof in escaping the empire. Like we've seen Cassian get picked up kind of out of nowhere and be unprepared for it. And so here we're seeing the contrast to that, which is Luthen getting picked up and he is much more prepared for how to deal with that situation. He always has like 10, you know, backup plans in case shit goes down, which is true. It just turns out that this backup plan is lightsaber ship, dual lightsaber ship. It's great. And it also it also speaks to like, again, something that I love this show for, which is just like bureaucracy and how you just like can still get caught up in the empire just through sheer bureaucracy rather than like them actually looking for you. Absolutely. Looking

1:31:34 ahead to the season two, is there anything that we would love to have you back? Is there anything you would love to call your shot for to come back for in season two? Any particular moment of bureaucracy, perhaps? I mean, actually, I always love that scene with Cassian and the hotel... The hotel clerk on Gorman? The hotel clerk. Yeah, that's always a really nice moment. Not the least of which is just hot Cassian. I mean, he's always hot, but he's not always hot, but man. that valerian sky he's a snack for sure oh yeah very much so uh so yeah i mean i mean i i mean there's so many other things that season i mean every everything though we have friends everywhere that sort of um the senate episode's always really great but

1:32:20 yeah i'll come back for anything because i Again, just random seven minutes. There's so much to talk about. I'm just laughing about Variant Sky's sunglasses again. I feel like that's going to be a big conversation topic for season two. I'm going to talk about them constantly. Look, he has drip and it's great. Absolutely. I mean, that's his character and he has to play the part.

1:32:38 So he has to wear that Gucci. He does so well. But I love it. Sorry, this is his side. He's just like, he plays it so well from a guy who I feel like has not. had that experience in his life like i'm trying to like go through his whole life like but he's just like no i know how to do this i can play this this is great it's one of the things i think he learned how to do that in a unseen adventure yes i'm sure a comic that tony gilroy will toss away at some point a comic that someone will bring to him to sign and he's gonna say what the fuck is this thing why would i sign that but get this the fuck away from me Oh, I love it. But yes, that scene would be great.

1:33:21 I think that's a really interesting scene. Yeah, absolutely. Consider it yours. I'm only here to talk about Behemoth. I will not be signing any comics. Jesse, thank you so much for being here. Thank you for having me. This is always great. Yeah, this was a treat. Do you have anything you'd like to plug and where can people find you? Yeah, I'll plug a few things really, really quickly. If you like me speaking into a microphone and doing podcasts, I do too many podcasts. I have one called, you were joking about House of the Dragon, I have one called Cast of Kings, which is a Game of Thrones slash Lord of the Rings podcast. We're currently going through Rings of Power, a show that definitely has the

1:34:02 same level of writing as Andor. Look, I always say Rings of Power is trash, but it's my trash. You're doubling the viewership of that show. Just me, just me alone. But yes, I have that. I have another podcast called Starter Trek, which is a podcast that I do with Tawny Newsome. If anyone knows her, she is the voice of Mariner on Star Trek Lower Decks, as well as a writer for Star Trek Starfleet Academy. She takes her friend Andrew T through episodes of Star Trek that he's never seen before because he's never seen Star Trek. And so it's sort of a fun, comedic podcast, and I'm a co -host of that. Cool. And then I'm on YouTube. You can find me at Jesse Gender on YouTube, and I do video essays. And

1:34:46 I have several about Star Wars and Andor specific. So you can find those. We will link that in the episode description. Yay. Thank you so much. But yeah, no, this again, thank you for having me. I love talking about the show. I'm legitimately talking with a tattoo artist to get it as like the one way out as part of a sleeve that I'm doing on my arm. Hell yeah. I'm always down to talk more. In English or Arabesh? I should do it in Arabesh, actually. That would actually be fun. I hadn't actually considered that. But now that you say it. Because, yeah, it's going to be a whole sleeve that's going to go down my arm of a bunch of different things that I am a nerdy fan of. And so that's going to be

1:35:22 one of them is that scene. So that's awesome. You can put Britney Spears in that one, but no other difference. Oh, my God. I love that. Yeah, you got to be careful. It might end up like one of those kanji tattoos that turns out to just be saying like elevator. oh god it you know what now then i have to have a whole flashback episode like on lost with how did i get this tattoo jack's tattoo episode uh best episode of lost byling is gonna give you your tattoo yeah be careful What an episode. Talking about best episodes of TV. I mean, that's what network TV used to be. It's like, fuck, what do we make an episode about? I don't know. Where did he get those stupid tattoos? I do miss that era of television. It

1:36:13 is just like, yeah, fuck, we need an episode. Fill time. Fill time. Vamp. It's good. It's good. How did Cassian get his tattoos? We'll never know. Do we think any Ender characters have a dumbass tattoo that they're embarrassed of? Dicks. 100%. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Definitely. Definitely. But she got a real indoor tattoo. But Bix is embarrassed about it, but it's probably actually cool and has an interesting backstory. Yeah.

1:36:37 Mon Mothma, I bet, has like a tramp stamp of like a butterfly that she got in college. Perrin got a tattoo on a bachelor party when he was blackout drunk. Perrin got the equivalent of whatever the little mustache tattoo on the finger is. He sucks so much. I love him. A parrot is great. He does suck, but he has weird moments of humanity that I really appreciate. Yeah, absolutely.

1:37:05 He's a much more empathetic person than he appears. I think he's just drinking it all away. Yes, yes. I do wish that is that one scene that I, sorry, we're just talking now. I do wish that one scene had gotten to be in the show. They were talking about like where he doesn't turn her in. Yeah. There's a scene they wrote and they didn't do. And I was like, I kind of wish we had that because I would like to see that.

1:37:26 It adds a little nuance to them that I thought would have been interesting. Well, when we get the Perrin comic tie -in book, then we'll get to see what happens to Perrin. Star Wars Perrin. Yeah, Star Wars Perrin. Where's the, why don't they make a Perrin for the figure? I don't get it. Put them right next to your two tubes. Well, thank you, Jesse, for being here. Thank you all for listening. Be sure to rate and review us on your. Podcast platform, a choice to help spread the word about the show. All you got to do is just give five stars and say podcast good. It takes one second to do it. Check out our Patreon at patreon .com slash and orcs pod, where for just five credits a month, you'll get our full

1:38:14 and orcs detours, including a very special episode that's going to be dropping on Wednesday, where we're kicking off a miniseries going through all of Tony Gilroy's film. And so we're starting with his very first produced script, which is a figure skating romantic comedy called The Cutting Edge. I remember that. Alex and I have never seen it. I'm quite looking forward to getting to talk about it on the show. You're going to go all the way through the new one, the Pedro Pascal. That's the idea. Yeah. We're going to go through all of his filmography and see what ways does it relate to Andor and what ways does it not. I mean, it's got Terry O 'Quint. You're going to get lots of lost talk, which is exciting.

1:39:02 Oh, hell yeah. I didn't even know that. That's incredible. I can't wait. Aside, I just watched X -Files for the first time, and I learned that Terry O 'Quinn is in that show three different times as three totally different characters, including the movie, which is wild. That was network TV, man. You could just do it. No one was paying that close attention. Nothing was like a shared interconnected universe, you know?

1:39:27 So it was so much easier to do that. If Uncle Hollow was a piece of shit, Terry O 'Quinn could also work. I was just about to say, yeah, that would work for sure. And him and Catherine Hunter would be a great duo. Don't tell me what I can't do, Cyril. I'll tell you what you can't do. Uh, well, so go over to our Patreon, patreon .com slash andorkspod to check that out. Follow Andorks on social media at andorkspod. Send in your questions about the show to andorkspod at gmail .com. Later, dorks. Bye, dorks.