By midway by 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 risk fairly than an ally. In actual fact, they appear to see nearly every part as a risk: 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 fitting method to seize him.We’ve by no means seen this fractious, incompetent group earlier than — however thanks to a couple small references in Andor season 1, we all know a couple of issues about who they’re, and probably 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 may probably 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 kind of headquarters or clear purpose. 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 couple 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 function.” 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 keen 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 considered one of many independently working insurgent teams Luthen helps provide and generally coordinate.Anto Kreegyr’s hologram in season 1 of Andor. Picture: Lucasfilm/DisneyCuriously sufficient, the collapse of the Maya Pei Brigade appears to reflect what occurs to a different of Luthen’s splinter rise up tasks in season 1: the one run by Anto Kreegyr, who Luthen cold-bloodedly sells out in season 1 so as to hold considered one of his Empire informants protected. A very difficult 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 considered one of their pilots has been caught and interrogated, and the Empire has laid a lure for them.Maya Pei’s group says one thing related occurred to them — “We bought ambushed! We misplaced six ships, 40 fighters!” considered one of them tells Cassian. Maya herself was apparently caught within the crossfire, although the group is split on whether or not she’s lifeless, and on what precisely occurred within the thick of battle. How does the Maya Pei Brigade match into Andor’s story?What’s extra vital in regards to the disintegrating remnants of the Maya Pei Brigade is how this squabbling group of survivors helps carry ahead a number of the largest concepts at play all through the present — the numerous, many fracture factors in a factionalized rise up, and the way troublesome it’s to deliver one to bear towards unified totalitarian rule. That theme performs out in all kinds of the way throughout Andor’s two seasons, from Mon Mothma’s genteel political rise up within the Senate and secretive funding efforts exterior of it to Luthen’s schemes, Cassian’s adventures, and the foremost ISB undertaking 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 targets 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 towards one another and towards everybody else make them a hazard to themselves and to every other a part of the rise up 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 attempting to take care of primary operational safety by not explaining his mission to them, or admitting who he stories to.) Picture: Lucasfilm/DisneyTheir inner group squabbling mirrors the bigger battle we noticed in season 1, as represented by Noticed Gerrera’s contemptuous tackle different insurgent teams: In idea, 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 targets, or what may exchange the Empire of their best 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 stress between completely different essential points of the rise up. It’s essential for all these little splinter teams to function independently of one another as a lot as potential, for info 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 slender 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 rise up 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 rebel having readability of function isn’t sufficient to make a rise up profitable — not when it’s divided up amongst factions who’ve completely different clarities of function, like Noticed, or no readability in any respect.
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