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Gizmodo
21-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Gizmodo
They Just Gave Kleya a Goddamn Gun
Sometimes a blaster is just a blaster, but often in 'Star Wars,' it says something about its wielder. There's a scene in the ninth episode of Andor's second season where Vel Sartha, inspecting a table full of requisitioned weaponry at the Rebellion's Yavin base, picks up a blaster and asks whose it is. Except, that's not what she asks, raising the pistol into the air in front of a crowd of new recruits. What she actually says is 'Who belongs to this?' I was thinking a lot about that line an episode later, when, as she infiltrates a hospital in a desperate attempt to end the life of the man who saved hers as a child, Kleya Marki, one of Andor's standout characters, slips a tiny blaster with one hell of a kick out of her purloined nurse's scrubs and calmly executes an ISB tactical officer. And then does it again. And again. It's the climactic, tense moment of an episode that builds up to this singular moment of emotional and dramatic release as she tearfully turns off Luthen's life support. In many ways, Kleya's whole life, one torn apart by the Empire, and rebuilt out of her hatred of it, is leading to this moment, and this moment of infiltration and execution is just the final flourish. The scene is incredible beyond the slickness of Kleya's mission, but in the week since Andor came to an end I find myself drawn back to that blaster. Or really, it's just a gun. Not in the way that those terms are particularly a differentiator, in Star Wars the former is far more common, but they are interchangeable. Star Wars is famous for having many of its most iconic blasters have origins in real-world weaponry—not just inspired by but literally being actual guns that just have bits greebled on or lopped off and shifted around. Kleya's pistol feels less like that approach of Star Wars design. Sure, what little we see of it there is a little acquiescence to sci-fi beyond the fact it shoots energy clean through a Stormtrooper's skull, like a little light on the side. But it's the Star Wars blaster that's just looked the most like a regular gun that I've seen in a while, it almost looks like a derringer with its stacked barrels and the small grip. It almost doesn't feel like a blaster. It's not the first time we've seen that kind of design philosophy inverted on Andor—the Aldhani heist crew in season one, before they purloined more Star Wars-y weapons from the base, were essentially running around with AK-74s. But being stripped of so much of the Star Wars artifice in that way feels like a parallel to how Kleya handles it and herself alike. It's telling that this scene is actually the first time we see her wielding a weapon in Andor; up to this point Kleya has been a coordinator, a go-between for Luthen, and her tools of resistance have been her comms system and icy looks in equal measure. And yet that little blaster is still thoroughly her. There's no frills, there's nothing more than what it needs to do: point, pull the trigger, put a bolt through someone. If Cassian's Bryar pistol reflected his own sense of character in that characteristic little whirring sound whenever he primed it, it's that simplicity that makes Kleya's reflect her. It's not elegant in its simplicity, it's almost brutal even, because the blaster isn't meant to be grand or say something about her character in that regard. It's not even meant to be iconic, even if the scenes of her using it have quickly become since the episode aired. It's a tool that puts people who are in her way down, and that's all it needs to be. It all comes back, again, to that scene with Vel. The story of Andor is, in some ways, the story of that blaster she picks up: it's Syril's pistol from when he came to arrest Cassian on Ferrix, which Cassian then stole, took with him to Niamos, then he gifted it to Melshi after their Narkina 5 breakout, and now it's made its way to the heart of the Rebel Alliance. Do Andor's characters belong to their weapons, once they've chosen to pick them up? Are they defined by that choice, the symbolic gesture of their resistance to the Imperial regime? Sometimes they are. Or sometimes a gun is just a gun, no more, no less. In Kleya's case, it can be a bit of both. After all, that in-between is where she's always worked best.
Geek Tyrant
20-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Geek Tyrant
Luthen Rael's Dark Backstory in ANDOR Hit Harder Than Fans Were Ready For — GeekTyrant
Star Wars has given us plenty of memorable characters over the years, heroes, villains, and the complicated in-betweens. But Andor managed to introduce one of the franchise's most quietly devastating figures in Luthen Rael, played with weary intensity by Stellan Skarsgård. His mysterious, layered presence kept fans guessing for two seasons. And then, in the final episodes of Season 2, we finally learned the truth, and it wrecked me. While the show may be named Andor , the finale pivots its focus toward Kleya Marki (Elizabeth Dulau), Luthen's right hand, whose story unexpectedly becomes the emotional core of the last arc. With Luthen arrested and clinging to life, it's Kleya who steps forward orchestrating his mercy killing, escaping Coruscant, and carrying the rebellion forward with the help of Cassian, Melshi, and K-2SO. But it's in the flashbacks intercut through this final stretch that we finally uncover Luthen's tragic backstory, and it's far more haunting than anyone predicted. Forget the fan theories about him being a Jedi or a rogue Separatist. In Episode 10, 'Make It Stop,' we learn that Luthen was once a sergeant in the early Imperial military. Not just a cog in the machine, but a man directly complicit in a genocidal assault on a civilian population. The sequence is bleak and raw. There are no familiar Imperial visuals no Stormtroopers, no TIE fighters flying in action, just the cold, mechanical horror of warfare. We see Luthen hunkered down in a vehicle, drowning his guilt in drink as radio chatter floods in: 'Runners on the hill.' 'Strafe it.' 'If it's moving, kill it.' Then comes the moment that breaks him… He finds a child hiding in the vehicle, Kleya, and instead of turning her in, he chooses to protect her. From there, the story jumps forward. The two are now fugitives, surviving by selling antiquities, a business that eventually places them in the halls of Coruscant high society. We don't get all the details, but Kleya's age makes it clear this happened in the early days of the Empire. What started as a chance meeting between victim and soldier became something far more complicated: a bond forged in blood and moral ruin. Their relationship is messy and Dulau put it bluntly in Andor Season 2 Declassified: 'It is not a father-daughter relationship. For it to become that, it would mean that Kleya forgives him for having done that to her family. There are parts of Kleya that really hates this man. That day is not going anywhere, it will always be between them, but love does grow around it.' It reframes everything we've seen between them, the tension, the silence, the strange relationship. They are not just colleagues or co-conspirators. They're two people tethered by a shared trauma, building a rebellion out of ashes. The most heartbreaking detail is that Luthen's guilt is his fuel. When he tells Kleya, 'I need to know you're making a choice. I lived most of my life without ever realizing that that was a possibility,' it's a man trying to give someone else the freedom he never had. He's not asking for forgiveness. He's asking not to make the same mistake again. By the end, Luthen knows his story won't make it into Rebel legend. The newer, shinier leaders of the Alliance have no room for ghosts like him, and yet, his final arc is one of the most impactful in Star Wars history, not because he dies a hero, but because he never believed he was one to begin with. In a galaxy full of destiny, prophecy, and chosen ones, Luthen Rael's legacy is something far more human. He led a life defined by regret, and a rebellion lit from the ruins of his past.
