For the purposes of this analysis I’m keeping strictly to Andor, as of course Mon is not only a major character in this series but also a prominent figure in the wider Star Wars universe. So some of what I conclude here might contradict her appearances elsewhere.
In this scene Luthen is trying to establish whether Mon is still willing and able to provide funding. She tells him that the money is available but that moving it around is increasingly risky. She then suggests that she has a solution, someone who can help; in retrospect, we realise she’s talking about Tay Kolma.
The clip posted with the Kleya essay shows Mon in her outward appearance identity but this clip starts when the mask is lifted, as it were, and the viewer is given the experience of witnessing the transformation. The same goes for Luthen, and as the camera moves behind Mon he disappears as his gallery identity and emerges as the rebel persona. When we cut back to Mon, we can see the same thing has happened. The tone, the content, the expressions on their faces have all changed in a split second. There’s a delicious irony in that the piece they are supposedly inspecting as a possible gift for Perrin is “a two-faced divinity, a serpent from the overworld and a sun goddess, sharing the same mouth”.
What a fantastic metaphor that is for Luthen and Mon, as well as for the rebellion as a whole. It needs both Luthen and Mon to survive and thrive, the darkness and the light. But of course there’s no easy division into morally good or bad with that, and Mon will have to do deeds as dark as Luthen’s in service of her convictions. It’s more, I think, to do with the appearance of the rebellion as it evolves over time. Mon is more than a political puppet and a source of income, at least by the time of her later interactions with Luthen. There’s huge respect between them despite the frequent antagonism, as both reveal truths about the other. Yet his usual rebel appearance is as a figure clothed in dark robes; Mon’s most iconic robes are white. I also think of her flaming orange dress though in season 2, where she really does seem something like that sun goddess: dancing in flames of destruction and sacrifice, burning “very brighly”.
Mon is here quickly established as in conflict with Luthen. He gets straight to the nitty gritty and immediately establishes for the viewer that this is another long established existing relationship. The secrecy that binds them is at the forefront: this clandestine conversation in the backroom and the sense that this is one of many previous similar conversations. He’s not merely checking that she is still able to provide money, he’s putting a kind of intense pressure on her. “If you can’t deliver I need to know” is loaded with psychological manipulation - guilt-tripping at its most obvious. Mon is very much used to Luthen’s methods though, as is clear when he suggests that everyone is vulnerable and she snaps “Don’t lecture me on vulnerability. No-one is more at risk than I am.”
This might sound strange in the context of what, for example, the Aldhani team are currently planning, an operation led by her own cousin. But of course Mon is vulnerable in a very unique way: she is a respected politician with a uniquely rigidly structured lifestyle, and she is very much on the Empire’s radar already as a “nuisance”. What strikes me very much on rewatching this scene is the potency of the word “new”. New faces at the bank; a new driver. Feeling “under siege” because she simply cannot trust anyone, even within her own family, and certainly not all these strangers. “I have friends everywhere” is particularly ironic as a code phrase when it comes to Mon because she simply cannot afford to have genuine friends. Strangely, Luthen is in some ways a person she can be open with, because they have “taken a vow” and have a “circle” of close rebel comrades (the marriage imagery is particularly poignant). Luthen’s immediate distrust of bringing anyone new into that circle is interesting in terms of his own struggle between wanting the rebellion to go loud and wanting to protect it by secrecy. It’s an innate paradox at the heart of the series.
The other main theme first raised here is the question of how far someone is ready to go in pursuit of their ideals, and the value placed on that. When they emerge back into the main part of the gallery Luthen speaks in a kind of code about the gift: that Mon can return it “If it should be a bit much”. The tone is slightly threatening there. They both know that, just like Lonni later, there really is no going back now. “I’d be the first one to fall,” says Mon, and she’s not just thinking of the danger to herself there but the simple fact that she has been having dealings with the rebellion at all. Funding it for years. The crisis now with the financial inspections is being caused by rebel activity increasing and the Emperor wanting more and more power. Soon, the PORD legislation will tighten the chokehold even further.
So much has been said already about Genevieve O’Reilly’s magnificent performance as the woman who is at the centre of the rebellion: complex and conflicted and yet driven by an urge to bring down a regime she believes is truly evil, at huge personal cost. Gilroy named her as the character with perhaps the hardest path of all as every painful choice and event she goes through is in the public gaze. Even in the back seat of her limo the only slight gesture of relief available to her is to loosen the stiff collar of her outfit. Her costumes are of course beautiful creations but the motifs of collars and chains are there in many of them, and this attempt at loosening them is a repeated gesture. She is suffering alone and in public. Even her home is an Embassy and a family dinner so often a formal affair with dangerous political enemies literally welcomed under her roof. It’s intensely claustrophobic and suffocating.
In this context, Mon’s final scene in the series is immensely bittersweet. She is glimpsed in the final montage, silently staring into the distance, next to Vel who is chatting away. Mon’s expression is wisftul, content and contemplative all at once. She’s wearing a loose and relatively simple outfit, her hair is simply cut and she’s drinking from a camping mug rather than the expensive cup she was so used to previously. She has sacrificed her daughter, her husband, her previous life. She can never go back. There’s hope here but also tragedy, as for so many of the other characters, but Mon’s was a uniquely lonely journey. She has found a new family, at least: the rebellion itself.
Tldr: The mother of the rebellion made the choice to give up being a real mother, and her journey to becoming its leader involved personal sacrifice under the public gaze.
Next time: Lieutenant Gorn
