After we first meet insurgent chief Luthen Rael (Stellan Skarsgård) in “Star Wars: Andor,” he is serving to Cassian Andor (Diego Luna) escape the Ferrix police and recruiting him for a heist job. Then we see Luthen lives a double life, working as a luxurious antiques seller on Coruscant, the capital of the Empire he is preventing. Kleya Marki (Elizabeth Dulau) is Luthen’s assistant in each halves of his life.
So from the start, Luthen has had an air of secrecy; we see early on that he wears one masks (effectively, a wig) so are there others? In “Andor” season 1 episode 8, “Narkina 5,” Noticed Gerrera (Forest Whitaker), a radical anti-Imperialist, asks Luthen what his ideology is. Luthen solutions he is a “coward” who’s afraid of letting the Empire develop unbeatable. Okay, however that is not actually answering the query. What made him so afraid within the first place?
For that matter, how did Luthen and Kleya forge such an unbreakable belief, the place they’re each so prepared to sink into extremes to destroy a lot higher evil? “Andor” revealeded Luthen’s even darker-than-expected backstory in his last episode, season 2’s “Make It Cease.” He was as soon as an Imperial soldier named Lear. He took half in at the very least one bloodbath (and perhaps extra) and found a younger lady (April Woods) hiding for her life in his ship. His already shaky religion within the Empire shattered and he abandoned, taking the lady with him. One guess what her title was.
In an unique interview with /Movie, “Andor” creator Tony Gilroy mentioned that Skarsgård didn’t need Luthen’s motivation as a insurgent to be revenge. So, as Skarsgård himself defined within the behind-the-scenes featurette “Andor Season 2 Declassified: Farewell,” Gilroy had an epiphany: “It is (Kleya’s) revenge.”
Kleya hates Luthen an excessive amount of to forgive him
In additional flashbacks throughout “Make It Cease,” we see how Luthen taught Kleya to be a insurgent. Kleya has sworn to destroy the Empire and Luthen helps her as a result of he owes her greater than he can repay. However though Luthen raised Kleya, Dulau has mentioned persistently throughout interviews that she would not see their bond as father and daughter.
Chatting with the Hollywood Reporter, Dulau acknowledged comparisons between Luthen and Kleya’s flashback storyline and “The Final of Us.” Nonetheless, she additionally finds the “Andor” story “a lot darker.” Joel (Pedro Pascal) and Ellie’s (Bella Ramsey) relationship, for all its complexities, is in the end certainly one of love. With Luthen and Kleya, it isn’t so easy. In “Andor Season 2 Declassified,” Dulau elaborated:
“It’s not a father-daughter relationship. For it to turn into that, it will imply that Kleya forgives (Luthen) for having (helped kill her household). There are components of Kleya that actually hate this man.”
Discover Dulau says components of Kleya hate Luthen. There are additionally components of her that love him, however that love may by no means be pure like a father or mother and kid’s needs to be. Luthen, too, may in all probability by no means have a look at Kleya with out feeling guilt. Their final scene collectively underlines the contradictions. Kleya kills an imprisoned Luthen to silence him, displaying loyalty to her vengeance above all else, however she does so with a damaged coronary heart and a final kiss on his brow.
Kleya is not the one orphan with a problematic guardian
In line with Dulau (by way of the Hollywood Reporter), one film that Gilroy pulled from for the Luthen & younger Kleya flashbacks was Peter Bogdanovich’s 1973 “Paper Moon.” Con artist Moze Pray and his (perhaps) daughter Addie Loggins (real-life father and daughter Ryan and Tatum O’Neal) drive throughout Kansas collectively and pull scams alongside the way in which. As with “The Final of Us” comparability, Dulau thinks that Luthen and Kleya’s bond is way darker than Moze and Addie’s.
One comparability she may discover nearer comes from the horror-thriller anime “Monster” (primarily based on a manga by Naoki Urasawa). In “Monster” episode 9, our hero Dr. Kenzo Tenma is taking firearms classes from Hugo Bernhardt, a retired mercenary. Bernhardt has a silent younger lady dwelling with him — however she’s not his daughter. Throughout an operation in Myanmar, he killed the lady’s mom, then introduced her dwelling so she’d have somebody to boost her. Although Bernhardt admits the lady will in all probability hate him for the remainder of her life, on the episode’s finish they’re at the very least capable of take pleasure in a heat meal collectively.
One other manga/anime that makes such a relationship not a aspect plot however the entire story is “Vinland Saga,” a Viking-era historic epic by Makoto Yukimura. The lead of “Vinland Saga” is Thorfinn , a teenage warrior preventing in a Viking band led by the devious Askeladd. Thorfinn’s personal father, Thors, was murdered by Askeladd. Thorfinn serves Askeladd not as a consequence of loyalty, however hatred; he needs to earn a correct duel along with his father’s assassin. Blinded by his rage, Thorfunn solely realizes a lot later that in all of the childhood years he spent making an attempt to avenge his father, Askeladd was his father. However that does not imply Thorfinn may fully forgive and overlook, the identical approach Kleya could not for Luthen.
“Star Wars” is a few lot of issues, however the primary 9 movies at the very least have retroactively turn into a household saga, beginning with Darth Vader’s reveal that he is Luke Skywalker’s father in “The Empire Strikes Again.” In “Return of the Jedi,” Luke’s arc is all in regards to the battle between the daddy he idolized additionally being somebody who has harm and terrified him a lot — and whether or not he can reconcile that by pulling Vader again to the sunshine.
“Andor” could shirk plenty of “Star Wars” clichés (together with the clear divide between gentle and darkish) however its exploration of a fancy parental relationship is greater than true to the sequence’ traditions.
“Andor” is streaming on Disney+.
