In the Flesh: Andor s2e10 'Make It Stop'

“Make it stop,” a young Luthen begs. He says it again and again, more a compulsive tic than a prayer. He shouts it in between swigs from his flask. People are dying outside the ship where he sits, gunned down by the dozen as he listens to their screams, to the rapid tattoo of blaster fire. But he’s not some lone survivor hiding from an ethnic cleanse, he’s the ranking non-commissioned officer in the death squad carrying it out. It’s only when he finds the young girl he’ll name Kleya hiding in the vents of his squad’s ship that he discovers he has both reason and ability to desert. He can’t do it to end his own misery, but for the chance to salvage what remains of Kleya’s freedom? That’s a sacrifice he can make, consigning himself forever to a double life, taking Kleya in as his adoptive daughter. In spite of his protestation that it’s only a convenient fiction, it’s clear the two feel deeply for each other.

The rest of the episode intercuts their early journey with Kleya’s infiltration of the hospital complex where a critically injured Luthen winds up after his botched arrest by Dedra Meero. As is typical of the show’s suspense scenes, the entire hotel sequence is a masterpiece of tension-building. To execute that kind of thing week after week, episode after episode, without repeating beats or running out of creative material is no mean feat. I don’t know when we’ll see something this tight and this consistent again. The flashback storyline is a different animal, just as emotionally taxing, but quieter, and episodic in nature. We watch as “make it stop” goes from a plea to a mission statement, as Luthen, in his own rough, unsentimental way, tries to make sure Kleya has a chance at another kind of life. Watching Rebel bombs incite a panic on Naboo, a lushly James Gurney-esque paradise, feels like as clear and damning a political statement as we’re likely to get from mainstream television. 

As Andor enters its last stretch and its principal players begin to fall away, a sense of gradually increasing momentum takes hold. Kleya tenderly kissing Luthen’s brow before turning off his life support feels like a farewell to an era, an acknowledgement that it’s all free-fall from this point on. Dedra’s career is likewise going up in flames, all her upstart initiative and tactical insight squandered on an ill-conceived personal confrontation with Luthen, which goes rapidly sideways when he attempts suicide with a ceremonial dagger. It’s all coming apart. Lonnie left shot through the heart on a park bench. Luthen dead in a cold white room. No last words. His final act of defiance is his silence, his total commitment to the overthrow of his enemies. “You disgust me,” Dedra sneers at him, her piggy little eyes alive with frantic hatred, but it’s not hard to imagine that what really disgusts her is that this man stands for something, that he sacrifices himself for others, that in his flawed but staggering life and work he reveals the shallow, grasping selfishness of her own.