In Star Wars, people die in the name of rebellion. The X-Wings flickered in the air above the Death Star. Like Obi-Wan Kenobi, Admiral Holdo, or Kanan Jarrus, the last is a heroic one. The view of sacrifice offered by this week's Andor is more tragic than any of those deaths. The name of the game is sacrifice, as the prison break on Narkina 5 explodes in a flurry of chaos and death. In the last three episodes of Andor, we have come to know the characters so well that we don't have time to grieve or contemplate them. Mon Mothma is asked to make a different kind of sacrifice: the hand of her daughter in marriage to seal an underhanded deal with a mobster that will help the Rebellion. In a brief glimpse, we see the prices she is paying, her own health refusing treatment so she can find strength in her own way to join the cause.
In the final scenes of the episode, we metaphorically and literally plunge into the depths of Star Wars' world, to deliver its most haunting musings on the cost of revolution. Luthen Rael tried to keep the wavering man on his side, even though he was unwilling to keep balancing the delicate line between loyal agent of the Imperial intelligence operation and now. Wanting to trade a bounty of information in exchange for Luthen letting him leave the ISB and the rebels behind them, Lonni asked if it meant anything to him.
In Luthen, Lonni asks what he could've sacrificed to possibly compare to his own, and it's really worth seeing in its totality.
Calm. Kindness, kinship. Love. I’ve given up all chance at inner peace, I’ve made my mind a sunless space. I share my dreams with ghosts. I wake up every day to an equation I wrote 15 years ago from which there’s only one conclusion: I’m damned for what I do. My anger, my ego, my unwillingness to yield, my eagerness to fight, they’ve set me on a path from which there is no escape. I yearned to be a savior against injustice without contemplating the cost, and by the time I looked down, there was no longer any ground beneath my feet.
What is... what is my sacrifice? I’m condemned to use the tools of my enemy to defeat them. I burn my decency for someone else’s future. I burn my life, to make a sunrise that I know I’ll never see. No, the ego that started this fight will never have a mirror, or an audience, or the light of gratitude. So what do I sacrifice?
Everything.
A remarkable speech was made more remarkable by an all-timer performance from the performer. This isn't a shade of Luthen we've seen before. There is no charisma in the way that Skarsgrd moves forward on the gantyneway towards Lonni. There is a feeling of exhaustion in every movement of Skarsgrd. There was no waving of hands or booming voice. Skarsgrd raises his tone from mumbling to a determined clarity over the sounds of industry around them.
It's all in the eyes, and Skarsgrd's eyes dart around, not with a sense of mania or nervous energy, but flicking between Lonni and his own past as he ponders the words flowing from his mouth. There is emotion to Luthen's speech but not emotion. His sad story is not to move him to tears. He says that he doesn't care but that he cares so much that he has to shut himself off to acknowledge what he's done. His eyes match the emptiness of the place.
Luthen feels empty because he has sacrificed so much to give revolution a chance to succeed. He might as well be dead because he hasn't sacrificed his life with a heroic death. He decided to put those aside for himself so that he could see a path to a future where everyone else gets those things. Luthen became a vehicle for rebellion by denying himself his own future. When he no longer has a life of his own to lead, what is left unsaid is what he has given everything. A life without peace, kinship, and love is not worth anything.
People die in the movies. They sacrifice their own chances for love and peace in death for others, and this is heroic and tragic. Andor isn't one for mythos-making or for eulogizing it's fallen. Luthen's tragedy isn't to lose his life, but to empty it and see a future where the people around him can have the things he has let go of. That is just as tragic and heroic as any of the Star Wars' greatest sacrifice.
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