Andor Runs on Deception and Dread in “Aldhani”

We’re back with more rebel difficulties (and they’re just getting rougher)…

Luthen Rael is bringing Cassian Andor to a world called Aldhani, where he's asking him for help on a mission to steal an entire sector's payroll from the Empire. He offers to pay him to do it, and gives him a kyber crystal for safe-keeping as insurance, but he wants it back. Rael meets with the head of the mission Vel Sartha (Faye Marsay), and tells her that she has to take Cassian on because they need another person for the mission—she protests as it's days away, but is given no choice. Rael departs and Cassian and Vel make the day's walk to her camp.

The Imperial Security Bureau gets wind of what's happened on Ferrix and sends Lieutenant Supervisor Blevin (Ben Bailey Smith) to dispatch the Pre-Mor company entirely. Karn goes home to see his mother, Eedy (Kathryn Hunter). ISB agent Dedra Meero (Denise Gough) notices that the Imperials have retrieved the unit Cassian was trying to sell to Rael and tries to muscle Blevin into handing over the data on it since it falls within her sector. Major Partagaz (Anton Lesser) winds up telling her to back off Blevin and stay in her lane—noting that she has a different background from her cohort and that he's pleased with her career trajectory thus far.

Cassian is brought to the camp where he meets the rest of Vel's team: Karis Nemik (Alex Lawther), Arvel Skeen (Ebon Moss-Bachrach), Cinta Kaz (Varada Sethu), Taramyn Barcona (Gershwyn Eustache Jnr), and their Imperial inside man, Lieutenant Gorn (Sule Rimi). Everyone is very upset about someone being brought in three days before their mission, but Vel tells everyone they have to deal with it and that she’ll vouch for "Clem" (the name Cassian gave her). They give him the rundown of their plan to get the payroll snuck out during a natural event that occurs every three years; the locals think of it as a meteor shower, but Karis explains the science behind it to Cassian.

Rael lands back on Coruscant and dons a wig and much nicer clothes. Turns out that his cover day job is running a gallery where he sells expensive historical artifacts to rich folks. Mon Mothma (Genevieve O’Reilly) comes in to get her husband a birthday gift, and Rael shows her around. She arrives with her new driver, which Rael sends his assistant Kleya Marki (Elizabeth Dulau) to distract, and the two head to the back to discuss their real business—Rael needs more money from her to fund rebellion activities, but she's being watched more carefully now and it's hard to move the money around. She tells Rael that she wants to bring another person into their operation to make things easier, and he protests, but is eventually forced to relent. Mon Mothma heads home to find that her husband, Perrin Fertha (Alastair Mackenzie) is prepping to host a dinner party that he browbeat her into agreeing to, and that he's invited some of her enemies in the Senate because he thinks they’re "fun."

Screenshot: Lucasfilm

Cassian is eating with the Aldhani team around the fire and is given a tablet with information on the mission to read up on—he needs to have all the info memorized by morning. He looks about and asks if he's allowed to finish his dinner first.

We’ve got a clear issue going forward, and one that I was worried about at the outset: The series seems to be divided into four(?) mini-films with a single middle chapter, going by the division of both screenwriters and directors. This wasn't much of an issue in the first week, when you could watch the first set of episodes in one go, but this week… the episode just ends, and in an extremely awkward spot, too. And there's no new episode right on its heels to detract from the awkwardness, so it winds up drawing attention to this odd carving method. They might as well have just grouped the episodes by arc and released them that way if they’re not going to bother having a true episodic structure.

We’re missing a bit of the design that made the first episodes so exciting, although they’ve managed to show some of it in the Coruscant scenes with Rael's storefront and Mon Mothma's apartments. Aldhani is yet another landscape planet, this time with a bit more of a Scotland vibe? I mean, any time it's real green and you’ve got "highlands"… So many space sheeps.

Screenshot: Lucasfilm

There's also Karn's trip home to see his mom, which clearly doesn't bode anything good. But again, we get very little on that front. It's frustrating because they’re clearly trying to experiment with form a bit lately on television, but TV already knew how to handle multi-character arcs better than this? And so do books, by the way.

There's little else to glean from the Aldhani section aside from the usual "we don't trust the new guy" heist antics, cranked up to eleven on account of how high the stakes are. They haven't given us much information by way of the endgame on this plan either; are they all going to escape the planet after-the-fact? Is Gorn going to defect or stay behind and try to cover their tracks? Also, when they say "payroll" are we talking about data or money? Am I being obtuse, because payroll does have more than one meaning, and that changes the parameters of their mission significantly… but if it's data, what do they want it for, and if it's money, why is it being kept here?

Of course they’re sneaking something out from inside a dam complex. If I had a nickel for every time dams were the site of shitty imperialist actions… I mean it's realistic, but also pretty funny how often it pops up. (Sorry, I literally just rewatched the pilot of Due South the other day, and it's in another relevant series that airs this week, so it feels like I’m being surrounded by dams. Dams on all sides.)

Screenshot: Lucasfilm

The showrunners promised that we’d get to see much more of Mon Mothma's character, that there were dark things in her past that we didn't know about yet, and that we might wind up forming a different opinion of her through this series—which sounded pretty try-hard to me, so I was skeptical coming in. So far what we’re learning is… her marriage is shit. And her husband—who is also a member of the Senate, apparently—doesn't care much about the work she tries to do. This means that she's clearly keeping her Rebellion activities from him, so that's bound to get real ugly somewhere down the line. If the man is this flippant about what she does in the public sector, I can't imagine he’ll be into her activities bankrolling the fledging Rebel Alliance.

Her scene with Rael is one of the best things in the episode, as is Rael's landing on Coruscant when he dons his wig and fancy clothes and jewelry. We get the sense that his position on Coruscant truly is a role he's playing, a primary persona that genuinely means nothing to him. He has to work to "get into character," has to remind himself of how to be that person. He tells Cassian that he knows he's the sort of man who will eventually die for this cause, which is certainly because he's accepted the same fate for himself. But it also happens to be a mean bit for foreshadowing on his part, since we do know how this ends.

Screenshot: Lucasfilm

The side-plot we’re getting at the Imperial Security Bureau—or ISB as they’re colloquially known—is also interesting. The ISB is best known in Star Wars for being the department where both Director Krennic and Agent Alexsandr Kallus came from. Krennic was obviously one of the main antagonists of Rogue One and Kallus appeared on Rebels, a figure who was eventually turned to the Rebellion via his relationship with Ghost crew member Garazeb Orrelios. Getting a better idea of their inner workings and how they view their job within the Empire is a point of interest, particularly through the eyes of Dedra Meero, who seems to have a different background than many of her fellow officers. We’ll certainly be seeing more of her.

Screenshot: Lucasfilm

Next week, friends!