Andor‘s Luthen Rael Is a Profound Look at the Cost of Rebellion

People die in the name of rebellion in Star Warsall the meter . 10 - fender twinkle out in ball of flaming above the Death Star , speeders splintering on the salt of Crait . Heroic last stands like Admiral Holdo , Obi - Wan Kenobi , Anakin Skywalker , or Kanan Jarrus . Butthis week ’s Andoroffers a view of sacrifice arguably as tragic , if not more tragic , than any of those deaths .

Sacrifice is the name of the game in “ One manner Out , ” as the prison break on Narkina 5 explodes in a flurry of topsy-turvydom and destruction . Characters we ’ve come to know across these last three episodes of Andor drib like flies , no clock time have to grieve or contemplate them asCassian and Kinowhip the integral prison into a radicalized force tobe reckoned with . On Coruscant , Mon Mothma is require to make a unlike variety of ritual killing : the handwriting of her daughter in marriage ceremony to seal an sneaky deal with a Chandrilan gangster that ’ll get her the fiscal liquid she needs to aid the Rebellion . In a brief coup d’oeil of Maarva ’s decline on Ferrix , we see the cost she is paying — her own health , refusing intervention so she can find forcefulness in her own style to connect the causeroused in herby Aldhani .

And then in the concluding scenes of the sequence , we metaphorically and literally plunge into the depths of Star Wars ’ world — something Andor so often excels at — for “ One way of life Out ” to deliver its most haunting musing on the price of revolution . Meeting an ISB turncoat in the bowels of Coruscant ’s underworld , Luthen Rael makes a desperate attempt to keep the wavering man on his side — a world unwilling , perhaps rightfully so , to keep balance the delicate line between truehearted agent of the royal intelligence operation and now , in the twelvemonth since Luthen last directly met him , a husband and father to a young child . hop to deal a bounty of information in exchange for Luthen have him leave the ISB and the rebels behind alike , the witness , Lonni , tearfully ask “ My sacrifice … it imply nothing to you , does it ? ”

Image: Lucasfilm

This is what adopt from Luthen — when Lonni reverse the tables and demand what he could ’ve sacrificed to possibly compare to his own — transcribe word for Good Book , because it ’s really worth get word in its totality :

Calm . Kindness , kinship . sexual love . I ’ve throw up all chance at internal peacefulness , I ’ve made my mind a sunless space . I share my dream with ghosts . I wake up every day to an par I wrote 15 years ago from which there ’s only one conclusion : I ’m beshrew for what I do . My anger , my self , my involuntariness to succumb , my eagerness to fight , they ’ve place me on a path from which there is no escape . I yearned to be a savior against injustice without mull over the cost , and by the time I looked down , there was no longer any dry land beneath my feet .

What is … what is my forfeit ? I ’m condemned to apply the tools of my enemy to kill them . I cauterise my decency for someone else ’s time to come . I burn my life , to make a dawn that I be intimate I ’ll never see . No , the self-importance that started this fight will never have a mirror , or an audience , or the twinkle of gratitude . So what do I give ?

Screenshot: Lucasfilm

Everything .

It ’s a noteworthy spoken language , made more singular by an all - timer public presentation from Stellan Skarsgård . This is n’t really a particular tad of the Luthen we ’ve seen before — a man of theatrics , subversion , and temper . There is no charismatic drawl or grandstand here ; Skarsgård step forwards on the gantryway towards Lonni in a lowly turbolift , edge almost uncomfortably tight to the electrostatic camera . The only time we cut away from Luthen are to reflect on Lonni himself , in perspiration , tearful muteness . Every movement in Skarsgård ’s carrying out is pernicious and burdened with a sense of exhaustion . No waving of hands , no booming spokesperson — until the terminal hollering of “ Everything ! ” Skarsgård at most levy his tone from mumbling to a determined clarity over the sound of industry around them , and nothing more .

It ’s all in the eyes , and Skarsgård ’s eyes flit around , not with a sentiency of mania or nervous vim , but flip between Lonni and his own past times as he ponder the Word flowing from his sass like he barely realize the depth of pain he ’s revealing to this humans . There ’s emotion to Luthen ’s language but there ’s not emotion , if that progress to sense . He does n’t growling in rebelliousness , his sad fib is not to move himself to tears . There is a grim emptiness to him as he say it , not that he does n’t care but that he cares so much he has to shut himself off to recognize what he ’s done . His eyes , flickering here there and everywhere , match that haunted emptiness despite their vim .

Screenshot: Lucasfilm

Screenshot: Lucasfilm

Luthen finger empty as he says all this , because that is the sacrifice he has made to give revolution a chance to flourish across the galaxy . He has n’t sacrificed his life with a grand death , but he might as well be all in — the thing we know the Alliance goes on to fight for , save what they love , the unity in the Julian Bond they make , the thing we see empowering Kino and Cassian and the other prisoners on Narkina 5 to rise up in this very episode . He has made the choice to cast those away for himself so that he might see a path to a future where everyone else have those thing . Luthen has made himself a shield , denied himself his own future , to become a vehicle for rebellion itself . He truly has given everything — and why give his life literally , is what is left unuttered , when he no longer has a spirit of his own to lead ? What time value is there in a life that lacks serenity , miss kinship , lack sexual love ?

hoi polloi die in Star Wars all the prison term . They give their lives for others , for their case , and give their own chances for sexual love and pacification in death , and this is desperate and tragic in equal measure . But Andor ’s not one for mythos - making , nor is it one for eulogizing its fall . Luthen ’s tragedy is not to lose his living literally , but that he must go on living having made the choice to empty it — and by chance see a future where the people around him can have the thing he has rent go of . And that ’s just as compelling , just as tragical , and just as heroic as any of Star Wars ’ grandest sacrifice .

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