Andor: Season 2: Episode 5: I Have Friends Everywhere
What is it ? : Andor picks up a false identity to travel to Ghorman, one as a designer making a pilgrimage to look at the fashions there. Luthen visits Bix with a mission, but doesn't assign it to her when he discovers that she is taking drugs for her nightmares, he tells her that the drugs work in the short term, but the nightmares will return worse than ever, telling her he needs her well.
Imperial Security Bureau officers search Syrils office, and he objects getting arrested, but they do find the monitoring devices. The Ghorman Rebels contact him, and ask for reports showing what is being shipped to the new construction so they can discover whether it is being filled with weapons as an armoury, which he gets for them. Syril then returns to Coruscant under the pretence of visiting his mother, but returns to Dedra and spends some time with her "in the dark", before they have a meeting with Partagaz to report the situation. He decides that they will allow the Ghorman Rebels to have a success, to build their confidence and status as part of their plan to create a legitimate reason for the militarisation of Ghorman.
Luthen discovers that Sculdun has discovered one of his collection of antiques is a fake so is going to audit his entire collection, which endangers a listening device that Luthen planted in one of the pieces he sold Sculdun, and the only opportunity to retrieve it is a party that Sculdun is having just before the audit.
Andor travels to Ghorman, and checks into a hotel where he speaks a member of the staff about the Ghorman Massacre where Grand Moff Tarkin killed hundreds of people. He then heads out to a cafe and sets up a meeting with the Ghorman Rebels, through their leader who is a dealer in the spider silk that the world is famous for. They speak and tell him that they are going to raid one of the shipments they discovered about from Syril, and arrange for him to review their plans. He thinks their plan will work, but is sceptical about the aftermath, that they will be not only living exactly where they acted against the Empire, but also trying to publicise their activities to raise awareness against the Empire, which he thinks is a recipe for disaster.
Wilmon is working with Saw Gerrera's Rebels helping train one of their number to decode a system before it explodes. Saw speaks to the Rebel to discover whether he can do the task, and he assures Saw that he can, so Saw decides that he will kill Wilmon now he is of no use. But when he confronts the pair, he instead guns down the person Wilmon was training, as he was a secret Imperial plant. They abandon their D'Qar base, and head on the mission where Wilmon does the job for them, and Saw steps up to the device that he just decoded. Wilmon questions how he can stand the leaking gas from the system, and Saw tells him of working on a similar plant in a prison camp, where the gas would melt their clothes and choke them, but he embraced it, telling Wilmon he should embrace it to, so Wilmon removes his mask and begins choking but embraces the pain. . . .
High Points : A couple of elements I really enjoyed, Bix watching Imperial News, which is a couple of women gossiping on couches, very much the Star Wars version of Fox News, something I'd kind of guessed at last episode, but was wonderful to see the propaganda at work.
And I have to complement the special effects, the shot of Saw Gerrera's rebels launching from D'Qar and leaping into hyperspace, where we follow one particular X-Wing, is absolutely gorgeous. As are the sets, Ghorman and Coruscant look absolutely amazing, I have difficulty discerning which sets are practical and which are digital, I can only believe they really spent a lot of money building massive sets.
Andor himself is pretty darn stunning in this episode, getting to see him switch between his role as the designer on a pilgrimage to Ghorman, and his professional Rebel agent personality is fabulous. He's learned so much from Luthen, being able to swap roles seamlessly and having an edge to him to make life and death decisions. The conversation in the material shop is absolutely gripping, as they switch between topics to avoid detection.
Low Points : But, it's another slow one, not that it drags, but again nothing much happens, with Andor and Wilmon being the only ones which really do anything much, Syril at least integrates himself with the Rebels a little more, but Dedra, Luthen and Bix don't really do anything this episode, and Mon Mothma isn't in it at all.
Tense, well acted, but very, very slow.
So what do you really think ? : A decent episode, and the irony of the difference between Luthen and Saw at the beginning and end of the episode is amusing, with Luthen advising Bix that the drugs she is taking will be bad for her in the long run, and Saw telling Wilmon to huff the gases which will definitely do harm (is this us discovering why he's on breathing equipment in Rogue One?).
With Wilmon getting in with Saw and seemingly buying into his ethics and beliefs, it will be interesting to see what that brings as Saw and Luthen are obviously both Rebels, but with very different ways of working, will this lead to a conflict in beliefs between Andor and Wilmon?
And obviously, Andor's cover on Ghorman is in danger without him being aware of it at all, as Syril is the agent that has provided the information on the transports that the Rebels are going to raid, and obviously he knows who Andor is, which will potentially lead Dedra and himself towards the discovery of Luthen Rael, but we'll see if that happens this arc, or if that's for the next one.
Final Words : So once again, the third episode of an arc is where everything is going to happen, we've got Luthen trying to recover his listening device during Sculduns party, which presumably will be attended by his now relative, Mon Mothma, and we've got the raid on the transport convoy on Ghorman, which is exactly what the Empire wants to happen to create a cause for a ramping up of their activities.
Score : 9/10
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