Alright, time to stop putting this off and write up a lot of thoughts I have about this show.
Just, to start, I have zero complaints about this show. I have nitpicks, but no real complaints.
In general: This show is kind of a second wave of the shocking quality that we got from the Mandalorian, but it feels even more consistent and focused here than it did before. The personal story of Cassian is our primary focus, with secondary digressions about rising presence and actions of the rebellion (which isn’t an alliance yet, making this maybe the first time in decades I’ve seen that acknowledged). It may be a bit YMMV, but I feel like the secondary parts don’t overstay their welcome and usually add more context and tension to the overall story.
The tone is fairly consistently dour, with enough moments of levity to keep it from becoming too hopeless to bother with. I’m rather thankful for this, as it gives the growing conflict more weight than a lot of other recent works have.
The is similarly heavy. Some noir-but-sci-fi sound in there often, to match thematically with the growing dystopian behavior of the empire and Cassian’s role as a small individual just trying to survive. I must point out how much I loved the use of music in the finale, especially.
The dialogue was on point. Characters had distinctive voices, and the lines felt natural.
Characters:
Cassian was a good lead character, his place and arc in the story was interesting to watch. Certainly, selfish rouge to fighting against tyranny is a well-worn trope, especially in Star Wars, but I felt that this worked rather well. It is helped, I think, by both end being downplayed, and thus feeling more natural. He isn’t completely selfish at the beginning, nor is he all that idealistic at the end. He consistently adapts how he reacts to loss and pain through out the story, until the end he chooses to channel it toward fighting the empire.
Maarva was a nice character to have, for what time she was focused on. While she can’t do much more than talk, she still shows herself as a person with a conscience, and unlike Cassian, listens to it while also being practical. Much of character has to be inferred by how the other characters respect her, but what we see of her meshes with it.
Luthen is an interesting reversal of the rebel heroes we usually see. Absolute, ruthless pragmatism. We see him get results with-out heavy-handed showing of it going to far. He’s actually subtle, without an arc, but we get to see more of him though the story and come to see what he thinks of fighting the empire.
I clock these three as the characters with the most focus, and I think they’re the three that most fit what I feel like is the core theme/question of the story, that being changing from keeping safe to taking risks to make things better. A lot of characters in the series are doing one or the other, and a notable few make the change during the story during each arc.
In the first arc, Cassian takes a small risk that sets the dominoes falling, and spends half the series trying to make himself safe. Syril takes a major (and poorly considered) risk, going from the safe desk job he’s actually decent (or even good) at and instead playing at cowboy cop, which goes horribly.
With Aldhani, the whole operation is a clear risk, with Cassian explicitly brought to level some of the risk out. It ends with choice for Cassian that was (or could have been), but he chooses the safest option, to take his share, not make enemies, and pay his debts. On the imperial side, Dedra Meero takes calculated risks and they pay off throughout the rest of the series.
After this, Cassian again makes a small risk (returning briefly to Ferrix), but then plays it safe. This time however, it doesn’t help. Once he’s in prison for a crime he didn’t actually commit, he’s completely for taking risks, as he knows playing it safe will do no good. There, the other inmates have the same realization, starting out playing it safe, then taking a huge risk once they know it’s fruitless.
The finale sees Cassian, Maarva, and Luthen take different kinds of risks. Cassian goes home, taking the obvious risk of walking into a trap to try to do right by his mother one last time, then to going further by trying to rescue Bix. Maarva, though posthumously, tries and succeeds to convince her community to risk greatly by standing up to the empire. Luthen, most notably, has spent most of the series in relative safety, and guarding the safety of his anonymity fervently. His risk, initially, is in trying to catch Cassian personally, so that he can’t give him up. After the riot (or more likely Maarva’s speech) he ends the series by taking a greater risk of bringing Cassian into the fold instead. Cassian offering to join is itself a great risk, loosening his control over his own life in the hope of doing more than he could alone.
This might be all in my own head, admittedly.
Currently listening to: Sand Dream
Currently working on RPGMaker