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 menace somewhat than an ally. In reality, they appear to see nearly every little thing as a menace: the critters within the intensive 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 option to seize him.
We’ve by no means seen this fractious, incompetent group earlier than — however thanks to some small references in Andor season 1, we all know a number 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 will 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 aim. 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 number of instances by Noticed Gerrera (Forest Whitaker), who brings her up in a rant about varied anti-Empire insurgent factions he disdains as “misplaced” as a result of they lack his “readability of objective.” 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 big a part of Andor’s story; she’s only a background element, the pinnacle of one in every of many independently working insurgent teams Luthen helps provide and typically coordinate.
Curiously sufficient, the collapse of the Maya Pei Brigade appears to reflect what occurs to a different of Luthen’s splinter rebel tasks in season 1: the one run by Anto Kreegyr, who Luthen cold-bloodedly sells out in season 1 with a view to hold one in every of his Empire informants protected. A significantly 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 one in every of their pilots has been caught and interrogated, and the Empire has laid a entice for them.
Maya Pei’s group says one thing related occurred to them — “We received ambushed! We misplaced six ships, 40 fighters!” one in every of them tells Cassian. Maya herself was apparently caught within the crossfire, although the group is split on whether or not she’s useless, and on what precisely occurred within the thick of battle.
How does the Maya Pei Brigade match into Andor’s story?
What’s extra important in regards to the disintegrating remnants of the Maya Pei Brigade is how this squabbling group of survivors helps carry ahead among the greatest concepts at play all through the present — the various, many fracture factors in a factionalized rebel, and the way tough it’s to carry one to bear in opposition to unified totalitarian rule. That theme performs out in all kinds of the way throughout Andor’s two seasons, from Mon Mothma’s genteel political rebel within the Senate and secretive funding efforts exterior of it to Luthen’s schemes, Cassian’s adventures, and the foremost 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 objectives or the best way 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 rebel that touches them. And so long as they preserve 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 take care of primary operational safety by not explaining his mission to them, or admitting who he studies 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 the best way to pursue their objectives, or what would possibly substitute the Empire of their ultimate 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 totally different essential elements of the rebel. It’s crucial for all these little splinter teams to function independently of one another as a lot as doable, 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 selected 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 rebel seen in patchy glimpses all through season 1 turns into the extra useful, 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 riot having readability of objective isn’t sufficient to make a rebel profitable — not when it’s divided up amongst factions who’ve totally different clarities of objective, like Noticed, or no readability in any respect.
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