It doesn't feel like the kind of Star Wars show that is going to drop everything, point at a familiar character arriving onto the scene, and go, look! There is a war going on. This week's thrilling episode dropped one of the most absurdly deep-cut canonizations of this era of Star Wars. The first part of "Aldhani" picks up where Andor's three-part premiere left off, as the two of them race away from the planet Ferrix, and the latter just as quickly pushes the former into taking on a new mission. Luthen offered a down payment for the job and a request that he return from it to deliver the gift in person. The necklace is adorned with a blue crystal that is crucial to both the Jedi and the Death Star. The Easter egg isn't the Kyber. Luthen tellsCassian about it. It's blue Kyber. There is a stone called sky stone. The man said that the uprising against the Rakatan invaders was celebrated. The first explicit reference to a deep cut piece of Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic lore was casually dropped by Andor. It is the kind of thing that most viewers will not notice. It's an out of nowhere shock for the people who know it. The Rakata was first seen in the 2003 Bioware video game Knights of the Old Republic, a beloved Star Wars game that is set to get a lavish remake. An ancient race of cone-headed, fish-eyed aliens, it has been revealed that they are the architects of the devastating weapon at the heart of the final act, the Star Forge. We mean ancient. The Rakata were almost 30,000 years old before the Star Wars movies. The Rakata were masters of technological prowess to the point that it would be impossible for them to be as high as they were in the present day. The Rakata were good with machines, but they were also good with the Force, having learned of its powers from a similarly ancient race called the Kwa, but ignoring their teachings of balance only allowed them to use the Force on the Dark Side. The Rakatans were power-mad assholes, so they used advanced tech and Force mastery to develop the Infinite Empire, which was a militaristic, galaxy- consuming imperial might. The Rakatans were cruel galactic masters, enslaving entire species to build their war engines, wiping out entire planetary ecosystems to terraform them as they saw fit, and completely eliminating any opposition to their rule. The Infinite Empire ruled the universe for over 10,000 years, but it wasn't really Infinite.
Who Were the Rakatans?
The path for the foundation of the first Galactic Republic was laid by a combination of factors. A combination of slave world uprisings and in-faction rivalries gave way to a massive civil war as the Star Forge fed off of the Force within the Rakata. Around 25,000 years before the events of the Star Wars movies, the Rakata was hit with an outbreak of a deadly plague that robbed them of their connection to the outside world. Worlds in the Infinite Empire were able to rise up and expel the Rakatan because of their weakness. The Rakata were able to grasp for power and turned the remnants of their own people into a war-torn ruin. After fleeing underground, the survivors moved into pockets of tribal civilizations, but their hold on the universe was forgotten.
It is the first time that the Rakata have been explicitly name-checked on-screen, but it is not the first time they have appeared. Since Disney acquired Lucasfilm, bits and bobs of lore and details from both Knights of the Old Republic and The Sith Lords have made their way into contemporary canon, but for the Rakata and the Infinite Empire, things have been less well known. The world Rakata Prime was mentioned in the Force Awakens visual guide, but not as the first hyperspace- capable species in the universe. The species can be found in Fantasy Flight's Star Wars game sourcebooks.
The Infinite Empire's iconography can be seen on-screen even if it wasn't directly identified as such. The Wraith Box, a piece of Rakatan technology that appears in the game Star Wars: The Old Republic, is one of the treasures in Dryden Vos' collection. The Infinite Empire symbol has a blink-and-you'll-miss it appearance in Star Wars Rebels' second season. The emblem of the Infinite Empire carved over all of them can be seen in the season finale of the show.
Nothing. That is wonderful! Luthen wants his necklace back after he completes his job, but that is about as high as this reference gets. The Rakata are dead by the time of Andor. This is the kind of thing that will fly over the head of a casual observer as just a piece of background fluff, but it will also have a very specific kind of Star Wars fan sending their eyebrows into the upper atmosphere.
That is just great. Not every reference to Star Wars needs to be a thing. The galaxy far, far away is meant to be huge, and it can handle just having some texture for texture's sake. Whether or not you want to travel back in time 20 years to blow your younger self's brain wide open or if you want to travel back in time 20 years to ruin your younger self's mind is up for debate. No more, no less.
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