Andor 1x12 Reaction

I think at the very end meeting scene with Mon's daughter she looked back and saw how much that meeting disturbed her mother and decided then that that was what she wanted to do. Just like her religion, she's making choices in the furthest direction away from her mother.

I've never watched a (full length) reaction twice before, but this one I did. Edit: Actually I did once, y'alls reaction to Haunting of Hill House/Bly Manor years ago haha Perfect show, perfect reaction and discussion <3 I will never unsub.

Luthen’s speech is amazing, and is great for the characterisation, but Maarvas speech is a speech for our times. We were all sleeping.

This show is really special and this episode even more so. Also, Lola and Milena, with their kindness and empathy, are perfect reactors for this show

34:30 - You are correct about the circumstances and were extremely close on her name. The journalist and martyr you are referring to is Shireen Abu Akleh, and yes it was 2022. The oppression and the struggle against it has indeed been the lived reality in Palestine for generations before Oct 2023. (I also made additional comments about funerals and music on the Patreon page for your full reaction of 1x12.) Not many reactors or reviewers seem to point it out, but I believe during her funeral speech, Maarva's stating of her full name was the first time *in-show* where it is spoken that "Andor" is the FAMILY name of both Clem and Maarva and that it was therefore passed down to their adopted son, Cassian. While it's true that the family names were listed in the credits in previous episodes where they appeared, her pre-recorded funeral speech is probably the first time we as the audience get to hear it confirmed within the show's narrative. [Yes, I think the name is also written in Aurebesh(?) on the bricks of both Clem and Maarva, but even 95% of SW fans don't actually know how to read the fictional alphabet.] Andor is therefore not just about one person, but a whole family, and the community it lives in. 41:43 Great that you noticed the "rust" motif that runs through the episode. Ferrix's economy is based around ship scrapyards and scavenging for parts and this status made it an important source for Luthen to supply the rebellion. It's fitting that Maarva [and Clem in flashback] uses an analogy that everyone in their specific community understands more deeply than outsiders like the Imperial occupiers.

THIS, is what Star Wars is all about❤️ It’s just the gritty, raw, down on the ground view of what rebellion truly means

When I was eight and the first Star Wars movie was made it had an impact on my life that I could feel and understand as a child. With Andor the impact is the same but this time as an adult. Star Wars for me falls into the shows and films made to sell toys and the epic moments of story telling that can be traced through out all of the content. Andor is Star Wars at its best and your reaction is great for feeling the connection to the Star Wars universe and the real world. I am looking forward to your season 2 reaction and hope you are able to schedule your viewing around the 3 episode arcs used to tell the story. Thank you for all you do.

Thought i could watch this tonight but i already feel like crying, i'm too emotionally exhausted for some reason so i'll watch this peak episode tomorrow <3 Though i did listen to your intro and since you're given us movies on sunday, can we hope for chainsaw man movie this sunday then? Or the next one even ? Would be so cool!

Great reactions and insights! Thanks! Andor is a perfect show for you. You get it so deeply.🥹 About Luthen, what he is thinking about Marva's speech and Ferrix fighting is that is exactly what he wants and is happy that his plan is working. Remember his plan is to make the empire tighten its fists so that common people can no longer ignore it anymore. Same happened in Ferrix. Marva just said out loud what many in Ferrix were already thinking and feeling, and that led to them rebelling against their oppressors! This is what Luthen wants - for people to stop taking shit, organise themselves and revolt. He can't be everywhere to organise people. They need to do it themselves.

"Have you been to Ferrix sir? They have their own way of doing things." Empires can only function at scale by treating everyone as the same. There are nuances sure, but you have to create a model and then violently apply that model to every state you conquer. The Roman Empire had a great bureaucracy. The horrors of the British Empire weren't just the frontline slaughters, but the bean-counters back home deciding how much tea and sugar and slavery a human life was worth. Unlike a lot of real empires, the Star Wars empire is also extremely faith-less: their guys believe in nothing. Dedra couldn't comprehend the idea of having your ashes baked into a brick in a wall. Empire has no community. Dedra is surrounded by snakes who would push her down a well for a title-only promotion. Empire is bland and clean and uniform and its most iconic soldiers wear masks that make everyone look the same. Contrast this with the places Empire projects force onto: the muddy slapdash ironpunk aesthetic of Ferrix, where work is considered so sacred they bang a gong at the start and end of every shift. Or Aldhani, where despite a decade of violent re-homing, people still make the hard climb to enjoy a festival in the shadow of an invader's garrison. Even Niamos, a party planet for tourists, has locals speaking up and getting jailed for it. The show posits that a failure of empire is to misunderstand people - their drives and hopes and determination under pressure, but also their culture, their aesthetic, their individuality. Dedra and the other imperials are incapable of imagining that an old dead woman would organize a beautiful, defiant funeral. They gawk at the locals chanting STONE AND SKY. That one prefect is gagged when even the old man banging the gong is pissed off enough to do what little he can. "Tyranny requires constant effort, it breaks, it leaks" Nemik is idealistic but he's right. Everywhere empire goes it creates new enemies. Every hanged father creates more rebel sons. And when it stretches thin enough, things slip through Empire's cracks. "It breaks, it leaks". A tenet of Fascism is that you have to simultaneously believe you are impossibly un-defeatably strong and powerful, while also being such a weak lil baby that evil terrorists and criminals and immigrants can destroy your entire way of life. It is a belief system of fundamental contradiction and that's why fascists and colonialists and pro-empire bootlickers are able to function - your brain has to be a very specific shape to hold those two ideas at once. By definition, Empire filters for people who will fit cleanly into Empire. It took going to a labor camp prison for Cassian to understand that there is nowhere you can live free under empire. When he shows up on the ship, Luthen is barely surprised. "Kill me or take me in". What did Luthen say 2 episodes ago? "You'll stay with me Lonnie. I need all the heroes I can get." Luthen has won the hero jackpot, the activated pilot thief of the woman whose spontaneous speech just moved him. And now we get to see what that looks like across 12 episodes (and a movie!). It's been a joy re-watching this season with y'all. In some ways I'm glad Andor didn't win an earlier poll because it's never felt more resonant. Sadly I suspect it will feel even MORE resonant in 5 years time.

Having seen the whole first season, you can probably see now why this series has become a rallying point for many of us living in countries which are either already authoritarian or rapidly sliding into it. Including Serbia! https://www.reddit.com/r/serbia/comments/1mof7p1/danas_je_navodno_oslikan_ovaj_mural_u_novom_sadu/ The second season especially couldn't have landed at a better time. The series would have no doubt been appreciated for its quality at any time, but I don't think it would have had nearly the same impact if it had been released in, say, 2015. In 2025, so much of the world is sliding into an authoritarian abyss and Andor provided much needed inspiration and encouragement to those of us who want to believe it can be resisted.

As Luthen is standing there and listening to Maarva, he is literally sharing his dream with a ghost. Interesting that Bix says "you climbed over a wall" to Cassian. He didn't necessarily climb to get to her in the hotel, but he climbed over the wall of her shop to find her earlier in this episode and more importantly he climbed out of Aldani with the ship (Nemik yells "climb" multiple times) and out of the prison (Kino also tells the prisoners to climb). Also fascinating how Dedra's hunt for Cassian, Maarva's funeral and Cassian's rescue of Bix play into each other. The imperials might not have "allowed" (not that they could necessarily stop it) a bigger funeral procession if Dedra didn't want it to happen to catch Cassian, and they might have tried to stop Maarva's speech earlier if it wasn't for that. The people of Ferrix are pretty determined to rebel already and the procession catches the imperials off guard while Dedra is out looking for Cassian, so Cassian can break into the hotel rather easily. Then the riot breaks out and Cassian and Bix can just walk out of there in the chaos while Dedra is almost getting trampled.

As you have figured out by now, the show was made in order for anyone to enjoy without knowing anything about Star Wars. This end-credit scene was added more as a wink to the people already familiar with Star Wars. What you probably should know even before Season 2 (and it is not a spoiler) is that the Death star is a gigantic Space station that is used in Star wars A new Hope, to destroy whole planets. And of course the parts used to make it were the parts that the prisoners were building in Narkina V.

Make sure you watch Season 2 BEFORE you watch Rogue one (you prob already know). Love you guys as always and am so glad this series captivated y’all so much 🙏🏾❤️

Excellent reaction and review girls. I was absolutely certain you'd love this show. Among the best shows on tv in general. And this episode along with 10 and a couple of episodes in season 2 definitely are among the best hours of tv ever.

Andor is so peak and Im witnessing all of it vicariously again trough you.

Girls you knocked it out of the park again! Feeling disoriented and even a bit lost after such an episode is normal actually and makes for a more genuine review true to most of our feelings. You were so right to comment on the culture and sense of community of the people of Ferrix as something so beautiful and at the same time rebellious. All season we are shown in small and big ways that strong sense of community in the way they dress, play music, how they warned people of soldiers/corporate security. I particularly love the contrast of the colourful, dusty, brick built Ferrix with unique customs and traditions to the deplete of coulour minimalistic and generic empire. Shows you without telling you that what the rebellion is fighting for is a world where life is actually worth living in. I also have to comment that when you were commenting on Serbia the unaffordable life there, living just for your next meal the crime in Novi Sad I got tears in my eyes because of how similar things are in Greece. There was also a train accident in which the right wing government here bears criminal responsibility. Balkan solidarity I guess! Hope our people wake up as Maarva said!

The Death Star is the subplot of the Star Wars movies from the 70s and 80s and the movies start with Darth Vader trying to recover the plans to the Death Star from the rebels.

What I love about Luthen being there to listen to and witness Maarva, is that he’s a man unable to bridge different rebel cells together, unable to get Cassian, who was ripe to be molded into a rebel, committed to the cause, unable to do all this perhaps because he’s condemned to use the tools of his enemies. And then Maarva, with a single speech, rallies an entire city in front of Luthen’s eyes. Maarva both directly and indirectly radicalized Cassian enough for him to go to Luthen and gamble his life to be taken into the cause. Everything Luthen couldn’t accomplish was done by someone who knew the power of community and home.

God the music in this show is so good. I've seen this episode 5 times and I still get goosebumps at the tension building. Maarva's speech is iconic and Fiona Shaw delivers it with a mix of warmth and rage that is truly inspiring. I love Luthen's expressions throughout the speech and aftermath. It's a sort of melancholic jealousy that is hard to quantify. I can't help but feel his envy at maarva's ability to inspire people around her in plain sight of the empire, and at the tangible roots she has to her community all gathered to hear her one final time. I feel his regret at having to keep fighting in the dark, and his yearning for a community as solid as Ferrix. Those things aren't for the damned, after all.

35:55 everyone knows Maarva would have wanted her brick to be used to crack fascist skulls. What a way to honor her

If you play every Andor intro theme at once, it forms a symphony: https://youtu.be/X5Yu6azI3yA?si=OpJ77D9KS99Gct3W

Girls the Chainsaw movie is finally out.Are you planning to react soon??It is soooo good

“Tyranny requires constant effort. It breaks, it leaks. Authority is brittle. Oppression is the mask of fear. Remember that.”

Yes, the things the spider droids were carrying to build the Death Star were the things the prisoners in Narkina 5 were assembling.

I did get teary eyed just from hearing some of the best written lines again. It is the kind of crying that feels good though. Bittersweet, but inspiring and beautiful. One of the big standouts for me in this show is how fleshed out the culture of different places is. These aren't just location changes with different environments and a few aliens. They created lived in places with history and traditions that feel real and authentic.

It's pretty funny how all the instruments in the parade are just ~10% alien-ified versions of real ones. I guess it's hard to invent a brand new instrument. "Uhh, yeah, just glue an extra tube onto that piccolo." It's interesting that Cassian doesn't really hear Maarva's speech. He's busy rescuing Bix. (I guess the message that Brasso delivers for her in the tunnel is enough to bring him onside with the rebellion* -- fair enough!) Her speech does inspire the citizens of Ferrix into action, but it seems like they were almost ready to throw down already. So more than anything, the speech is actually aimed at the audience -- first as a kind of voiceover accompaniment for Cassian's rescue mission, and then as a rhetorical kick in the ass about the real world. Obviously the show had a lot to say about the "real world" across the whole season, but the specific construction of this sequence is much more straightforward about it than most of what has come before. *IMO it's a *little* silly that Brasso has Maarva's detailed parting words for Cass memorized and ready to pass along verbatim like that. I guess they thought they couldn't do two recorded messages in the same episode?I think Fiona Shaw would have knocked it out of the park, personally.

Regarding the Death Star, you're probably better off just going into Season 2 and Rogue One without learning anything more about it, as it really gets into spoiler territory at that point. Most people watched this show with the knowledge of A New Hope and Rogue One, and it's a very refreshing experience to watch someone who is going in completely blind.

There will be times when the struggle seems impossible. I know this already. Alone, unsure, dwarfed by the scale of the enemy. Remember this, Freedom is a pure idea. It occurs spontaneously and without instruction. Random acts of insurrection are occurring constantly throughout the galaxy. There are whole armies, battalions that have no idea that they’ve already enlisted in the cause. Remember that the frontier of the Rebellion is everywhere. And even the smallest act of insurrection pushes our lines forward. And remember this: the Imperial need for control is so desperate because it is so unnatural. Tyranny requires constant effort. It breaks, it leaks. Authority is brittle. Oppression is the mask of fear. Remember that. And know this, the day will come when all these skirmishes and battles, these moments of defiance will have flooded the banks of the Empires’s authority and then there will be one too many. One single thing will break the siege. Remember this: Try.

I love that Cassian used the underground gate Maarva tried to open under the hotel for the “rebellion” to sneak in

Tbh pretty much every time I watched/listened Nemik's manifesto, I get emotional because how fittingly his manifesto encapsulated the essence and the spirit of the rebellion. I absolutely love how they teased the manifesto and the built up throughout the season. From episodes 5,6,and 11, they make you wonder what exactly Nemik had to say, and finally they dropped his words in the season finale. Every arcs throughout the season can relate/resonate with Nemik's manifesto in some ways. I feel like if Cassian listened to the manifesto early in ep7, he probably won't fully resonate with Nemik's words, because he still thought he could outrun the Empire, and started a new life or be a bystander as long as he had money. But the prison experience on Narkina 5 changed his perspective that imperial oppressions were not something you can avoid or ignore. Those injustices would pretty much affect his life wherever he goes even in a remote resort. All the sacrifices and defiances would've been for nothing if he or other people don't continue to try to fight. I also really like how Nemik emphasized the word "try" at the end because there's no single magic bullet to defeat the Empire. Many people will die trying in the rebellions, but that's all people can do: to have faiths that their efforts aren't meaningless, they aren't powerless and they can make differences even if they won't be able to see the end result.

I realize this would be impossible, but season 2 released 3 episodes per week, 👀 just saying...

Maarva's speech had me ready to run through a wall. Also want to highlight Clem's monologue because I think it's underrated and sometimes overshadowed by all the powerful speeches we get throughout the show. "People don’t look down to where they should. They don’t look down, they don’t look past the rust. Not us though, eh? Eyes open, possibilities everywhere."

“Maarva was here”

Your physical expressions / emotional reactions spoke volumes, you didn't need to worry about speaking words lol. Amazing reactions as always...can't wait for season 2. Also now that your reacting to movies, you guys can watch Rogue One to continue the story :)

Nemik’s manifesto, Luthen’s speech and Marva’s all forever in my mind plus more in season 2 this show is not only great but soooooo memorable

This episode had me in so many tears I CANT EVEN GIRLS YOU CRY AND THEN I CRY AND ITS JUST TEARS

It’s crazy that we are already at the end of season 1. It doesn’t feel like that long ago since you started this

Amazing episode and conclusion for the season. One thing I love about this season is there is this tension and urgency for so many characters. There are a surprising amount of mentions about wasting or lacking time and I think it gives the momentum to the season. Dedra really does NOT like to waste time. Ep1: "Not now. I don't have time." Cassian to B2 Ep3: "I was hoping for a more relaxed conversation, but you're right, we don't have time." Luthen to Cassian "I thought there was time to figure it out, but I was wrong." Luthen to Cassian Ep5: "We don't have time for this." - Vel(?) to Skeen/Cassian Ep8: "Now, is there anything you'd care to tell me before I waste more of my time figuring out what it is you are up to?" Dedra to Syril "I was overly ambitious, yes, but time was slipping away, and the opportunity was real." Syril to Dedra 2x "We're wasting time" 5-2D table five member Ep9: "I don't like wasting time." Dedra to Bix "And there we are, wasting time." Dedra to Bix "Yes. No. There's no time." Dedra to ISB officer (interrogating Kreeger pilot remotely) "Time is not unlimited." Tay to Mon Ep10: "You don't have time to be stupid!" Cassian to Kino "Stop wasting time." Kleya to Luthen (or vise versa) "Because she's wasting time." Luthen to Lonni (about Dedra lol) Ep11: "I don't have time for this." Vel to Kleya "You're wasting time" Luthen to Saw Ep12: 2x "We're wasting time." Dedra to ISB officer

"I can remember every time it happened, every time the dead lifted me with their truth. And now I'm dead, and I yearn to lift you" Since I'm sure there'll be a lot of people bringing extreme season 2 hype I'll temper it by saying that for me personally season 1 is the better one and it's possible S2 won't be completely as smooth for people who haven't seen other Star Wars as S1 was... but I can only temper the hype so much, season 2 is fucking incredible too

GIRLS! Starting next episode and for season 2 you will see a number and “BBY” before certain episodes. To keep it simply BBY stands for “Before Battle of Yavin” which takes place during the original Star Wars, so if it says 4BBY just know it means 4 years before the first movie. Hopefully y’all see this in time so you are not confused haha

Did they mis the end credit scene?

toca sufrir 💔

Girls the Chainsaw man movie is now available to watch!

Tony Gilroy and Diego Luna initially envisioned five seasons, which is precisely why they secured funding from Disney and Lucasfilm. However, considering the characters timelines and how the years required to produce each season would directly impact characterization, they didn't feel many seasons were truly necessary, two would be enough for a cohesive conclusion. Tony as a screenwriter felt that forcing the show to go longer than necessary wouldn't make him comfortable and would go against his professional dignity and rules, as he would have to alter the paths of characters with already established trajectories in a universe where events are canonical. My love for this show and these characters is immeasurable and having only 24 episodes is sad, but it was the best decision Tony and Diego could have made and I respect them immensely for it

You know this is one of the best seasons of television ever when you can’t choose the best monologue

It physically hurts that I can't watch this immediately

“Tell him I love him more than anything he could ever do wrong” This show has too many iconic lines, but this will always stick out to me the most.

The original line was actually “Fuck the empire” not fight, but Disney didnt allow it. Hilarious that fuck is where they drew the line 😂