#sells off a bunch of antiques after the war's over and retires to a nice sunny planet somewhere

[theaggresivepacifist]

luthen, andor, and rogue one

The doom has finally come upon me, I care about a piece of Star Wars media (everyone who’s here for Stranger/SF, forgive me and avert your eyes from the spectacle that’s about to follow, unless you too share my obsession with the above topics)

We have to wait until 2024 apparently so please excuse me while I scream into the void about LUTHEN in the context of Rogue One - 

- or more specifically his ghost, how Cassian becomes for Jyn Erso what Luthen is right now for him, because I’m obsessed. (Forgive any minor inaccuracies as, as I say, I have never really paid attention to Star Wars much before now, other than when Rogue One initially came out.)

We know that by the end of Andor S2, everything will have to have gone to absolute hell for the Rebellion and specifically Mon Mothma, who is forced to go fully into hiding with the Rebellion, and Saw Gerrera, who is badly injured and breaks away from the mainline Rebellion. There are apparently canonical reasons for that that are way too far over my head right now, but what interests me is that Luthen Rael, “Axis,” the master of the Rebellion’s spy network, one of its key strategists and financiers, who brought in the man who helps to ultimately secure the Death Star plans and turn the tide of war, is gone by the time we make it to Rogue One/the end of Andor. I can only assume, based on the foreshadowing we’ve seen so far, that he’s dead (more on that later). 

Now enter Jyn in Rogue One. Like Cassian at the start of Andor S1, the Empire has separated her from her family. She too has been in the Empire’s prisons and what appear to be some kind of labor/mining camps. She’s been a child soldier, like Cassian in “the mud at Mimban.” She’s still hoping to be reunited with her father, just as Cassian is looking for his sister. She’s so beaten down that at this point, all she cares about survival, not rebellion. Sound familiar? And just as Luthen does for him in Andor S1, Cassian is the one who encourages her to take this war seriously, “to fight these bastards for real.” He becomes her handler, as Luthen is his, and works with her as she discovers her own reasons for wanting to fight the Empire. 

And Cassian, from the first moment we see him in Rogue One, is the one making all of the horrible, messy, secret choices and sacrifices necessary to keep the rebellion going - killing his injured comrade rather than letting him be captured, using Jyn to get him to her father so that he can (unbeknownst to her) take him out. The kind of vicious, tragic decisions that Luthen had to make, or felt he had to - his “I’m damned for what I do,” Cassian’s “We’ve all done things we’re not proud of in the name of this rebellion.” Cassian knows about and has some kind of precarious dealings with Saw Gerrera - who was Luthen’s contact, as well as Jyn’s guardian, and now Luthen is gone. And as many people have already pointed out, Cassian and Jyn end up dying in the very goddamn poetic sunrise Luthen said he burns his own life for, and will never see. ARGH

In closing, a few theories on what might have happened to Luthen based on what we’ve seen so far, because I live for the angst and GOD I NEED TO KNOW:

1) Mon Mothma betrays Luthen to the Empire for some reason in the name of the greater good of the Rebellion, cementing what we already saw at the end of S1 re: her daughter – she’s beginning to take initiative in making ugly sacrifices for the cause.

2) Luthen dies for Cassian in some way, whether that’s protecting him or allowing Cassian to kill him, cementing his growing sentimentalism/that he’s tired of hiding and sacrificing love and connection, and wants to be a more humane person – to make the Rebellion more humane.

3) Luthen dies in some kind of fallout with Saw Gerrera, cementing the tensions there and the break with the main Rebellion. (Also, if this is not the case – the fact that Saw outlives Luthen is so ironic given what we know about them so far, how isolated Saw is and how central and well-connected Luthen is, and I wonder if that influenced Saw’s decision to leave the Rebellion. That would especially be true if Mon Mothma or someone else sold out Luthen.)

4) I doubt it, but Luthen betrays the cause because he’s tired of sacrifice, and either disappears or gets taken out by Mon Mothma, Cinta, etc., or Cassian (also would cement Cassian’s growing coldness and allegiance to the cause that we see in Rogue One, when he kills his own injured operative).  

He could also just die in some tragic random way, which wouldn’t fulfill a narrative arc but would speak to the cost of war, and how even the greatest among the great can be brought down by chance, by a single cog in the machine, even by someone who’s just scared or following orders or unaware of what they’re doing. The show certainly has killed off a lot of its compelling characters quickly so far. There’s also potential for the arrestor cruiser incident to come back to bite him, because that was extraordinarily close and showy by Luthen’s standards, but that seems like too much of a stretch.

Anyways, I CAN’T BELIEVE I JUST WROTE 900 WORDS ON THIS and am so mad we won’t have closure until end of 2024, ow.