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I hated Mon Mothma's storylines this show for the most part. I thought her parts of the show were boring and dull. But in retrospect (and something I identified as the show was airing) that's really kinda the whole point of her. Something to know about this show is that the showrunner making it is a guy who studied fascism in academia and his whole thesis for Andor is what does it actually look like to really have to fight fascism. Because - and speaking as an American - we never had to truly deal with this until now. Our fascist movements in the 30s were kept in check by FDR, so when we think about fighting fascism, we think about storming beaches and conventional warfare. Not what it looks like when your own society turns that way.
It's the human toll and the first real consequences of fighting for the rebellion that Mon Mothma actually has to deal with. Her job is so abstract/removed from reality that it's a huge shock to her, to have to deal with the real consequences herself. The fact this guy is getting killed isn't what's interesting, because people have to die all the time in war. It's her reaction to it that's interesting. Because at that point she's still in her "pretend like everything is normal" phase of her rebellion, and everything isn't normal. Her childhood friend is getting murdered for being a loose end, and she feels like there's nothing she can do about it because she's still a completely passive player in this entire scenario.
On top of being a bootlicker, Syril is a true believer. He's not a cynic who is there to grift. He believes in law and order, and that all this fascist shit will actually make society better somehow. He also desperately wants to belong to something and have a meaningful life, because he knows instinctively that his life ain't that. He's there on Gormon for years, living among the people, being a double agent. He sees how they're just regular people who would rather have normal lives and believes he's there to help them. So when reality becomes inescapable and the cognitive dissonance finally hits, he crashes out. Because this place and its people that he's grown to care for, he is finally realizing oh, they're not just trying to keep the peace. It's literally the "are we the baddies?" meme.
I thought this arc was overly drawn out. They could have gotten the point across with just one episode. But the point of this was to show how slipshod a lot of resistance fighters actually tend to be. If there isn't strong, principled people in charge, things tend to fall apart. Infighting, egos, and stupidity have killed more revolutions than oppressors have. They're showing what the Rebellion started out as, and why it's so important for competent people like Cassian to stand up and assume leadership in desperate times. It's there to contrast to the Yavin IV we eventually see in ANH and Rogue One where there's a real and functioning operation that evolved between the two time frames.
The original plan for Andor was that it was going to be 5 seasons, and that each season would be one year in the lead up to Rogue One. By the time they got around to working on Season 2, they decided to scale back their ambitions so that the events of S2-5 would now only be one season. And those arcs would be 3 episodes each instead.
Her situation was really just an issue of idle hands spending time with
Bail wasn't trying to kidnap her. Bail Organa is categorically a good guy in the Star Wars universe. The problem is, he wasn't taking his rebellion as seriously as Luthien was. He's a Senator, not a spymaster, so he wasn't doing enough to keep his shit secret, and he let his operations get infiltrated by the ISB. Cassian wasn't sent on a mission to intercept Mothma because Bail was ISB, but because Luthian had intel saying Bail's operations were compromised. And if they were compromised, Mothma wouldn't get out of the Senate alive after telling the Galaxy that the Emperor has no clothes.
Yeah this. I think the main part it doesn't work is in the explicit year gap between arcs, where they allude a little to events in between but there isn't really enough for me; not that there are gaps, but that the gaps are large and left empty. I think a less specific timeline would have worked more in its favor, so we know it's "sometime later" but don't have a whole missing year. But even then I found it easy enough to extrapolate unseen events from where everyone is now, at the start of each arc, and things that happen without being foreshadowed or shown still generally make sense. For example, the show could have told us that Dedra was collecting info all throughout, but it doesn't have to—we know her personality. It's the kind of thing she WOULD do, so learning that she has done so and that her obsession with being an intelligence packrat is leading to the Death Star being leaked fits right in with everything.
*shrug* fair enough. I do think it needed to spell things out more, because I had to come in here and have stuff explained to me that wasn't clear in the show itself (or, arguably, at all). You can say that's a me problem, and sure, to an extent, it is, but I do think it's sloppily written in parts. Heck, I think it's pretty sloppy overall - my main issue with season 1 (not the only issue, just my main one) was the multiple episode long prison bits, which felt like they went on FOREVER and weren't at all interesting to begin with, and we got a similar string of episodes at the beginning of season 2 here with the infighting Yavin groups. And for the record, I wasn't second screening this, I was watching both seasons while on the treadmill with bluetooth headphones in, so I was focusing big time on the show to get my mind off the dang jogging lol
Yeah I might agree with Adrenaline; this is pretty surprising to me, because the prison arc literally made me cry it was so good.
This was the mistake when watching it. A lot of information in Andor isn't spelled out. Most of the things you said weren't explained were in fact covered. While Andor is a slow burn there's always something going on. Tay Kolma gets himself whacked and it would be easy to miss some of the more important bits of his arc if you were on your phone.
See above - my phone was literally not even in the same room as me (technically not even the same building, as my treadmill is out in the a garage lol). Also part of my issue with the show is I'd rather see a lot of stuff which is just implied, or happens offscreen (in particular, a lot of the Mon Mothma stuff). The Bail Organa stuff was apparently a misread on my part, but I would argue the show is too subtle sometimes, that part included. I appear to be in the minority about that.
Sorry, didn't mean to imply that you specifically were on your phone, it was more of a general thing.
