Midway by the primary episode of AndorThe second season, the incipient insurgent Cassian Andor (Diego Luna) has encountered a complication in his final mission: a band of insurgent troopers who see him as a menace as a substitute of an ally. Actually, they appear to see virtually the whole lot as a menace: creatures within the in depth jungle round them, any stranger with those that are, even the opposite members of their very own group. From the primary second, Cassian is aware of them, at a gunpoint, to a mass confrontation, they’re already discussing the right approach to seize it.
We’ve by no means seen this frantic and incompetent group earlier than, however because of some small references in Andor Season 1We all know some issues about who they’re, and probably how they find yourself stranded at Cassian’s fall. That is how these robust and agitators match these AndorContinuity, and the way they match what appears to be the overall theme of this season.
(Ed. Word: Minor spoilers forward for episodes 1 and a pair of Andor Season 2, and for a small secondary plot in season 1.)
After capturing Cassian, the insurgent group argues between them on the place they may go subsequent, assuming that they’ll study to make use of Cassian Avenger’s stolen experimental draw or persuade him to move them. It’s clear that, along with not having any agreed chief within the group, they don’t have any clear headquarters or goal. Of the arguments, we additionally know that they’ve been trapped on the planet for 2 days, with meals and minimal provides. From a member, Cassian learns that they’re members of the Maya Brigade Pei, one of many insurgent teams their sponsor/dealing with Luthen Rael (Stellan Skarsgård) He has been supporting.
Who’s Maya Pei, the insurgent chief?
Nor have we seen Maya Pei in Andorhowever they’ve talked about it a number of instances by He noticed Gerrera (Forest Whitaker)Who mentions it in a pursuit about a number of anti-Empire insurgent factions that despise as “misplaced” as a result of they lack their “readability of function.” In A scene in “Narkina 5” of season 1, She mocks Luthen who wouldn’t work with Maya Pei as a result of she is a “neo Republican.” (Luthen for his half describes SAW as an anarchist, though apparently one with whom he’s nonetheless prepared to work).
She receives one other fast point out from Dera Meero (Denise Gough) at an ISB assembly in season 1: Luthen’s try to purchase a Imperial StarPath Unit Cassian in season 1 apparently occurred “in a safety home led by a insurgent cell related to Maya Pei.” Whereas the ISB is conscious of its existence, nevertheless, she by no means turns into an essential a part of Andor‘S Historia; She is only a background element, the top of one of many many insurgent teams that function independently, Luthen helps to provide and typically coordinates.
Curiously, the collapse of the Maya Brigade PEI appears to mirror what occurs to a different of Luthen’s Splinter rebel initiatives in season 1: the one directed by Anto Kregyr, who Luthen sells chilly blood in season in season 1 to maintain one among his informants of the empire protected. TO A bit of notably difficult fakes and falsifications of Spycraft in opposition to Spycraft He takes Luthen to sacrifice Kreegyr and his group, permitting them to hold out a guerrillas assault in opposition to an imperial energy middle with out warning that one among his pilots has been caught and questioned, and the empire has put a lure for them.
Maya Pei’s group says one thing related occurred to them: “We ambushed ourselves! We misplaced six ships, 40 combatants!” One among them tells Cassian. Maya was apparently trapped within the crossfire, though the group is split over whether or not it’s useless, and what occurred precisely within the coronary heart of the battle.
How does the Mayan Brigade Discover within the historical past of Andor?
What’s extra important in regards to the stays of disintegration of the Maya Brigade Pei is how this group of dispute survivors helps to hold out among the most essential concepts at stake all through the present: the numerous, many fracture factors in a rebel to factions, and the way tough it’s to deliver one in opposition to the unified totalitarian rule. This challenge develops in all kinds of kinds in the whole lot AndorTwo seasons, from the mild political rebel of Mon Mothma within the Senate and the funding efforts Secrets and techniques outdoors of it to the schemes of Luthen, the adventures of Cassian and the principle ISB mission in season 2.
Right here, nevertheless, the theme operates on a very small and notably passionate scale. Maya’s surviving forces don’t agree on their objectives or how one can persecute them, who ought to lead the group or what their organizer would have wished. They do not even agree on what had simply occurred to them, or their chief. Their suspicions with one another and in opposition to all others make them a hazard to themselves and for another a part of the rebel that touches them. And whereas sustaining that suspicious and chaotic response to the collapse of their very own faction, they’re unable to see an ally when it seems. (It doesn’t assist Cassian is making an attempt to take care of fundamental operational safety by not explaining their mission, or admitting who informs).
Picture: Lucasfilm/Disney
His inside group that applies displays the best battle we noticed in season 1, as represented by Noticed Gerrera’s derogatory imaginative and prescient on different insurgent teams: in principle, all of the organizations talked about in his pernity are on the identical facet, along with Luthen. Everybody desires the top of the empire, with their oppression and overreach. However they don’t agree philosophically on how one can pursue their targets, or what may change the empire in its perfect galaxy. Noticed discards all of them as “separatists”, with out recognizing that he’s additionally a part of the issue: judging different factions of the rebels as unworthy and refusing to cooperate with them.
All this factors to a rigidity between totally different essential points of the rebel. It’s needed that each one these small Splinter teams function independently of one another as potential, for the segregation of data and denial. However there’s a restrict to how a lot any of them can obtain 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 that is accumulating to the remainder of the motion in season 2, because the dispersed and shipyard rebel seen in irregular glimpses throughout season 1 turns into essentially the most practical and devoted group seen in Rogue one and George Lucas Star Wars’s authentic trilogy. The place the historical past of the most important picture in Andor Season 1 was the transformation of Cassian of Cynic Cynical head within the hand to Freedom Fighter devoted, season 2 assumes some bigger concepts about how particular person members of an revolt which have readability of function will not be sufficient for a rebel to achieve success, not when divided between the factions they’ve totally different Function clarities, resembling Sierra or no readability in any respect.
