Andor Episode 8 Review- Empire Oppressing the Oppressed further

 

Pictured here- Diego Luna & Andy Serkis. Picture from the Star Wars Official Twitter Account

 From the beginning, we knew Andor would show us what pushed Cassian so far that he gave his life just to help Jyn steal the Death Star plans from Scarif, without the guarantee of a successful outcome of their efforts. With each episode, Cassian teeters closer to the edge and there's only a matter of time before we will see him stepping out of his self-serving tendencies, and realizing that he has to serve a higher purpose. In Episode 8, Cassian finds himself imprisoned, serving his sentence in an imperial factory cum prison, where he and his fellow inmates, many of whom have been sentenced for doing nothing, are forced to assemble parts of something which has yet to be named. They're tortured, physically and mentally, and told to keep their mental health issues to themselves.

 Here, Cassian first meets Melshi, who we saw in Rogue One and who joins the Rebellion along with Cassian at some point. Here, Melshi is also far from the character he'll eventually become. He's as hopeless as the situation these characters all find themselves in. Diego Luna perfectly expresses the anxiety and feeling of hopelessness that Cassian experiences. The bleakness and monotony is shown through the stunning sets as well as the suffocating routine of prison life. One of the inmates succumbs to the misery and takes his own life. The horrors are jarring, and this show does nothing but solidify why the Empire needed to fall, as well as why it did. 

 By wasting time and resources imprisoning people for no crimes whatsoever, they pushed them to go to extreme lengths to bring about the Empire's downfall in whatever way they possibly could. Back on Ferrix, Bix Caleen ends up in trouble for trying to seek out information from Luthen Rael on Cassian's whereabouts. Maarva's health is failing, and it seems very obvious where all this is headed. Things are going from bad to worse for Cassian with each episode. 

 I found this episode to drag a bit at the beginning, but it's still solid as a rock in areas such as writing, direction, sets and continuity. The planning going into this series was obviously meticulous. Luthen Rael also meets with Saw Guerrera, and the two end up having a tense conversation regarding Rebel ideologies and the chaotic state of the Rebellion. Again, the writing and dialogues are out of this world and so are the performances by Stellan Skarsgard and Forest Whitaker. 

 The show cannot possibly get any better but somehow does every week. I'm starting to wish it was longer than two seasons, or that Cassian had survived Rogue One, and Tony Gilroy could have given us a series about his life post the fall of the Empire. I give it a 7.8/10.