By midway via the primary episode of Andor’s second season, fledgling insurgent Cassian Andor (Diego Luna) has run throughout a complication on his newest mission: a band of insurgent troopers who see him as a risk reasonably than an ally. In reality, they appear to see nearly the whole lot as a risk: the critters within the in depth jungle round them, any outsiders they run throughout, even the opposite members of their very own group. From the primary second Cassian meets them — at gunpoint, in a mass confrontation — they’re already loudly arguing with one another about the correct technique to seize him.
We’ve by no means seen this fractious, incompetent group earlier than — however thanks to a couple small references in Andor season 1, we all know a couple of issues about who they’re, and presumably how they wound up stranded at Cassian’s drop level. Right here’s how these loud, flailing goobers match into Andor’s continuity — and the way they match into what appears to be this season’s overarching theme.
[Ed. note: Minor spoilers ahead for episodes 1 and 2 of Andor season 2, and for a small subplot in season 1.]
After capturing Cassian, the insurgent group argue amongst themselves about the place they might presumably go subsequent, assuming they’ll both study to make use of Cassian’s stolen experimental TIE Avenger or speak him into transporting them. It’s clear that along with not having any agreed-upon chief within the group, they don’t have any form of headquarters or clear purpose. From the arguments, we additionally know they’ve been caught on the planet for 2 days, with minimal meals and provides. From one member, Cassian learns they’re members of the Maya Pei Brigade, one of many insurgent teams his sponsor/handler Luthen Rael (Stellan Skarsgård) has been backing.
Who’s Maya Pei, the insurgent chief?
We’ve additionally by no means seen Maya Pei in Andor, however she’s been talked about a couple of occasions by Noticed Gerrera (Forest Whitaker), who brings her up in a rant about numerous anti-Empire insurgent factions he disdains as “misplaced” as a result of they lack his “readability of function.” In a scene in season 1’s “Narkina 5,” he sneers at Luthen that he wouldn’t work with Maya Pei as a result of she’s a “neo-Republican.” (Luthen for his half describes Noticed as an anarchist, although seemingly one he’s nonetheless prepared to work with.)
She will get one other fast point out from Dedra Meero (Denise Gough) in an ISB assembly in season 1 — Luthen’s try to purchase an Imperial Starpath Unit from Cassian in season 1 apparently occurred “in a safehouse run by a insurgent cell related to Maya Pei.” Whereas the ISB is conscious of her existence, although, she by no means turns into a major a part of Andor’s story; she’s only a background element, the top of certainly one of many independently working insurgent teams Luthen helps provide and generally coordinate.
Curiously sufficient, the collapse of the Maya Pei Brigade appears to reflect what occurs to a different of Luthen’s splinter riot initiatives in season 1: the one run by Anto Kreegyr, who Luthen cold-bloodedly sells out in season 1 so as to hold certainly one of his Empire informants protected. A very sophisticated little bit of spycraft-versus-spycraft feinting and counterfeiting leads Luthen to sacrifice Kreegyr and his group, permitting them to hold out a guerilla assault on an Imperial energy station with out warning them that certainly one of their pilots has been caught and interrogated, and the Empire has laid a lure for them.
Maya Pei’s group says one thing related occurred to them — “We obtained ambushed! We misplaced six ships, 40 fighters!” certainly one of them tells Cassian. Maya herself was apparently caught within the crossfire, although the group is split on whether or not she’s lifeless, and on what precisely occurred within the thick of battle.
How does the Maya Pei Brigade match into Andor’s story?
What’s extra vital concerning the disintegrating remnants of the Maya Pei Brigade is how this squabbling group of survivors helps carry ahead among the largest concepts at play all through the present — the numerous, many fracture factors in a factionalized riot, and the way tough it’s to deliver one to bear in opposition to unified totalitarian rule. That theme performs out in all kinds of how throughout Andor’s two seasons, from Mon Mothma’s genteel political riot within the Senate and secretive funding efforts outdoors of it to Luthen’s schemes, Cassian’s adventures, and the key ISB challenge in season 2.
Right here, although, the theme operates on a very small scale, and a very impassioned one. Maya’s surviving forces don’t agree about their targets or easy methods to pursue them, about who ought to lead the group or what their organizer would have needed. They don’t even agree about what simply occurred to them, or their chief. Their suspicions in opposition to one another and in opposition to everybody else make them a hazard to themselves and to another a part of the riot that touches them. And so long as they keep that suspicious, chaotic response to the collapse of their very own faction, they’re incapable of seeing an ally when he seems. (It doesn’t assist that Cassian is making an attempt to keep up fundamental operational safety by not explaining his mission to them, or admitting who he experiences to.)
Picture: Lucasfilm/Disney
Their inside group squabbling mirrors the bigger battle we noticed in season 1, as represented by Noticed Gerrera’s contemptuous tackle different insurgent teams: In principle, all of the organizations he mentions in his rant are on the identical aspect, together with Luthen. All of them need an finish to the Empire, with its oppression and overreach. However they don’t agree philosophically about easy methods to pursue their targets, or what may substitute the Empire of their excellent galaxy. Noticed dismisses all of them as “separatists,” not acknowledging that he, too, is a part of the issue — judging different factions of rebels as unworthy, and refusing to cooperate with them.
All of this factors to a rigidity between completely different essential features of the riot. It’s essential for all these little splinter teams to function independently of one another as a lot as potential, for data segregation and deniability. However there’s a restrict to how a lot any of them can accomplish with a small band of individuals devoted extra to a particular chief and a slim philosophy than to the trigger that unites them.
And all of that is constructing as much as the remainder of the motion in season 2, because the scattered, splintered riot seen in patchy glimpses all through season 1 turns into the extra purposeful, devoted group seen in Rogue One and the unique George Lucas Star Wars trilogy. The place the biggest-picture story in Andor season 1 was about Cassian’s transformation from head-in-the-sand cynic to devoted freedom fighter, season 2 takes on some larger concepts about how particular person members of an revolt having readability of function isn’t sufficient to make a riot profitable — not when it’s divided up amongst factions who’ve completely different clarities of function, like Noticed, or no readability in any respect.
