Latest news with #Luthen
Gizmodo
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- Gizmodo
‘Andor' Put So Many Easter Eggs in Luthen Rael's Shop
You knew about the 'Indiana Jones' one, but did you see the winks at 'Revenge of the Sith' and 'Phantom Menace'? One of the many, many things that makes Andor so great is that it's uninterested in fan service. There are no gratuitous cameos. No wild, broad connections. First and foremost, creator Tony Gilroy wanted to tell an emotional, impactful, and timely story of heroism and hope, which just so happened to be in the world of Star Wars. But that doesn't mean other members of his team didn't want to have a little fun, and the set and prop designers did just that. In the first season of Andor, fans instantly noticed that Luthen Rael's shop on Coruscant was filled with recognizable and clever winks and nods to Star Wars and Lucasfilm projects of the past. The most famous, of course, were the Sankara stones from Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, but Luthen also had Sith artifacts, Mandalorian armor, and more. All of which made sense. Luthen, after all, does deal in rare artifacts and antiquities, so he would be interested in acquiring and selling things of this nature. This season, that was taken up a notch, and the official Star Wars website has a post breaking it down. Like, for example, Luthen has a Sith Chalice on display, much like the one Palpatine had in his office in Revenge of the Sith. There's a Kalikori, a prized Twi'lek family heirloom, much like the one we've seen from the Syndullas in Star Wars Rebels. There's a Royal Naboo headdress that looks very similar to one Queen Amidala wore in The Phantom Menace (shouldn't Bail Organa have picked this one up to hold for his daughter?). Finally, there's even a Gungan skull. Which Gungan? We don't know, but I'm sure many of us have a few top choices. You can see images of those and more all over at The same article also reminds us of everything from Andor season one, including a Jedi Temple Guard mask, like the ones from Star Wars: The Clone Wars; a Gungan shield as seen in The Phantom Menace; and another Naboo headpiece, this one resembling one Padme wore in Attack of the Clones. Again, Bail, why didn't you buy these? The best part about all of this is it has nothing to do with the story. There's no impact on Luthen and Kleya's work in the shop. No smoking gun to solve a problem. It's just there to remind you this story is happening in a world where all of this other stuff happened too. Both seasons of Andor are streaming on Disney+. You can see the above artifacts most specifically in episodes five and 10 of season two, as well as four, five, and seven of season one.
Geek Feed
25-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Geek Feed
Andor: Why the First Planet Attacked is Naboo
When it comes to Star Wars shows, Andor was pretty sparing when it came to references, but while it wasn't outright mentioned, some fans did speculate that the planet that Luthen and Kleya were on when they bomb the bridge was Naboo a.k.a. the central planet of conflict in The Phantom Menace. What's interesting is, the planet has been confirmed by writer Tom Bissell who says that it was integral that Luthen attack that planet first when he wants to make a statement to the Emperor. In a recent interview with Backstory Magazine, Bissell explains: 'We know that we were going to have their first act of terrorism, Kleya and Luthen together, and I argued it should be on Naboo, because that is The Emperor's home planet, and if Luthen was going to make his first public statement, I think he is going to stick his thumb into the eye of the guy that he hates more than anymore. So, when Tony heard my reasoning, he was like, 'I like that. Let's do that.'' When the episode first came out, fans had pointed out that the bridge was the giveaway that the planet was Naboo because it's also the same bridge that's used for Padme's funeral at the end of Revenge of the Sith . For now, fans are still reeling from the ending of Andor and lamenting how 'there won't be another Star Wars project like this,' but seeing all the positive buzz that the series got, maybe there could be room for some more mature-themed projects in the world of Star Wars down the line. I do admit, it's going to be hard to jump into The Mandalorian and Grogu knowing how solid the themes of Andor were. Catch the complete Andor now streaming on Disney+.
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.
Yahoo
20-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
What happens in the ‘Andor' finale, and how it leads into ‘Rogue One'
WARNING: The following piece contains spoilers about Andor Season. It feels paradoxical that Andor is over. On the one hand, creator Tony Gilroy and his team have been working on the series since at least 2020, with various delays in production and release caused by the COVID-19 pandemic and the 2023 Hollywood strikes, so now all that work has finally paid off. On the other hand, how can the most acclaimed Star Wars show be over after only two seasons, when other big-scale genre shows last for years and years? More from GoldDerby Taye Diggs on getting his groove back in 'Forever': 'This role was very therapeutic for me' Oscars producers reveal how Conan O'Brien made the 2025 show his own - and why they're 'fully in love' with the host 'Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning' reviews: What critics say about Tom Cruise's final (?) mission But because the end of Andor ties so directly into Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, which runs right into the original Star Wars, the show is now part of a chain of epic storytelling beyond any release. One result of that connectivity is that Andor viewers have known how titular hero Cassian Andor (Diego Luna) will die since before the show began. But plenty of other characters on the show aren't in Rogue One, so their fates have been open-ended. The final three episodes of Andor give those characters resolutions, starting with Luthen Rael (Stellan Skarsgård). The underground revolutionary has played a key role in forming the Rebel Alliance over two seasons. Still, his epic Season 1 speech about how, 'I burn my life to make a sunrise I'll never see,' indicated he was doomed to die in obscurity, and indeed he did — but not before making one last key contribution to the Rebel cause. After all, that epic speech was delivered to Luthen's Imperial Security Bureau mole Lonni Jung (Robert Emms) to convince him to keep delivering insider information. It worked, and in Episode 10, Lonni rewards Luthen with the biggest secret in the entire Empire: the Death Star. By accessing the files of Dedra Meero (Denise Gough), Lonni has learned that the Ghorman Massacre, the mining of Khyber crystals on Jeddah, and other Imperial activities are all connected in developing a massive new weapon. Lonni demands safety for himself and his family in exchange for this huge jackpot, but Luthen kills him. Luthen knows how vital this intel is and finally decides to leave Coruscant for the safety of the Rebel base on Yavin. But first, he needs to burn his headquarters so the Empire can't access all his information. In another excellent example of tactile technology on this show, we see Luthen pouring acid over his computers — and that's when Dedra walks in. After years of hunting and refusing to give up, she's found her 'Axis.' But if Dedra expected Luthen to spare himself the brutal treatment he's delivered to informants and acquaintances over the years, she gets served a rude awakening. He slits his wrists while she's not looking, but not before providing some beautiful final lines: 'You're too late. The Rebellion's not here anymore. It's flown away; it's everywhere now.' Dedra races Luthen to the nearest hospital, desperate not to lose her quarry before she can interrogate him, but again, she underestimates the Rebels' commitment to their cause. His longtime assistant Kleya Marki (Elizabeth Dulau) sneaks into the hospital, but to kill Luthen rather than save him. Before that happens, we're treated to flashbacks of a younger Luthen saving her as a young orphaned girl from a battlefield. This is a thematic Rogue One connection rather than a direct plot one, because it reveals that Luthen and Kleya had a similar adoptive relationship as the one between Saw Gerrera (Forest Whitaker) and Jyn Erso (Felicity Jones) in that movie. Kleya kills Luthen and is alive to tell the Rebellion the big news about the Death Star, but first, they must get her off Coruscant. Dedra's loyal assistant, Heert (Jacob James Beswick), has learned many lessons from his mentor and is doing a good job of hunting Kleya down. Luckily, Cassian and K-2SO (Alan Tudyk) arrive just in time to save her. Rogue One fans have been waiting two seasons to see Cassian and his droid best friend fight side-by-side again, and watching them take down a battalion of stormtroopers does not disappoint. Meanwhile, Dedra finds herself arrested and interrogated by her coworkers. In particular, Director Orson Krennic (Ben Mendelsohn) believes she is a traitor who leaked news of his Death Star project to the Rebels. Poor Dedra thought working harder than everyone else in the Empire would always get her ahead. Still, she didn't realize that working in an evil corporation means the person above you will throw you under the bus if it saves their neck, which is exactly what Krennic does. As Major Partagaz (Anton Lesser) notes later on, the Death Star should be finished by now, and Krennic's delays have now led to news leaking before it's even ready. Krennic scoffs that Partagaz 'sounds like Tarkin,' which is a second namedrop for an unseen Rogue One character after Krennic earlier asked Dedra how she learned about Galen Erso, Mads Mikkelsen's engineer from that movie who is building the damn thing. Dedra thought that by 'scavenging' every scrap of information she could find from across the ISB's operations, she could find 'Axis' and end the Rebellion in one fell swoop. Instead, putting all those secrets in one place allowed the Rebels to see them and set in motion events that will destroy the Death Star — there's that great chain of storytelling in action! Throughout Andor, viewers have seen how the extensive Imperial bureaucracy can be as much of a hindrance as an advantage. At the same time, Luthen's Rebels are fleet-footed and quick to adapt to changing dynamics. But with Luthen dead and the Rebellion now with an official leadership council in place on Yavin, we see how their gears are getting clogged up, too. Cassian expects his return with news of the Death Star to be greeted triumphantly. Still, instead, the leaders underplay the news (because, in fairness, it is horrifying) and diss Luthen now that he can no longer defend himself. But when Cassian insists, Senator Bail Organa (here played by Benjamin Bratt instead of the usual Jimmy Smits) approves him to go to Jedha and investigate this intel, where we will find him at the beginning of Rogue One. As for the other non-Rogue One characters: Kleya is safely ensconced on Yavin, while Dedra is sent to the same type of Imperial prison-factory that Cassian once escaped — how's that for just desserts? Like a samurai, Partagaz dies by ritual suicide behind a closed door. At the same time, Mon Mothma's topknot-sporting ex-husband, Perrin Fartha (Alastair Mackenzie) takes some new mistress (or perhaps even second wife) home in his flying car while he sadly drinks liquor. Best of all, Bix Caleen (Adria Arjona) is still alive, and she's not alone. She's holding a baby, which adds another dimension to her decision to leave Cassian when she did. If he knew he had a child to protect and raise, maybe he wouldn't have been able to make the selfless sacrifices that would save the galaxy from the Death Star. This is Andor's final surprise: It turns out that viewers didn't know how Cassian's story would end after all. Heroes can die, but legacies live on. Somewhere out in the galaxy, there's always a new hope. Best of GoldDerby 'It's very daunting': Luke Kirby on taking the lead in 'Étoile' after playing 'vampire' Lenny Bruce in 'Mrs. Maisel' Taye Diggs on getting his groove back in 'Forever': 'This role was very therapeutic for me' 'The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power' star Charlie Vickers breaks down Sauron's emotional reaction to killing Celebrimbor Click here to read the full article.
Yahoo
17-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
TVLine's Performer of the Week: Elizabeth Dulau
THE PERFORMER | Elizabeth Dulau More from TVLine TVLine Asks: Would The Handmaid's Tale Weaponized Wedding Cake Have Worked on You? As 9-1-1 Season 8 Ends, Eddie's Future With the 118 (and as Buck's Roommate) Is 'Up in the Air,' Warns Ryan Guzman 9-1-1's Oliver Stark Previews Buck's 'Dirty' Finale Crisis, More 'Clashes' With New Roommate Eddie THE SHOW | Andor THE EPISODE | 'Make It Stop' (May 13, 2025) THE PERFORMANCE | 'Ghorman. Scarif. Kyber. Krennic. Erso.' Kleya said not much more than that in the Star Wars series' antepenultimate episode, as she repeated back to Luthen what he'd just learned from (ill-fated) Lonni in the cold open. And while it was tempting to instead honor Elizabeth Dulau for Episode 11 (in which Kleya implores Cassian to make Luthen's sacrifice mean something)…. No, it really was Episode 10 in which the actress moved us most. Yes, there was the aforementioned exchange with Luthen, soon after he'd gotten wind of the 'super weapon' Krennic has been building for a decade. Kleya assumed she herself would take care of destroying their comm station at the gallery, but Luthen insisted on doing the deed — to Kleya's dismay. That 'burn' would be interrupted by one Dedra Meero, leading to Luthen's attempted, secret-keeping suicide. As Kleya from a distance watched his body taken away by a med team, Dulau's acting journey began — accentuated by flashbacks to how a Sergeant Lear, 17 years prior, came to be her guardian and mentor. Every time the camera caught Dulau's face, you saw the conflict. As a pragmatic spy, she knew what needed to be done. That she had to finish what Luthen began with that ancient blade. But man, Dulau also made clear the silent anguish Kleya was feeling, about ending her father figure's life. There's also much to be said for how Dulau sold us on Kleya's impressive skillset, of which we'd only had glimpses. She thought fast on her feet, seizing opportunities to infiltrate and navigate the hospital halls. She was handy and stealthy with a small blaster. And when she triggered the explosives to distract the troopers guarding Luthen's room, you could feel her recalling a similar button press from her past. In the end, Kleya overcame all obstacles and made her way to Luthen's ICU room. Without hesitation, she coldly detached the life support mechanism that was barely keeping him alive. Then… then she looked at him, as he exhaled a final breath. Dulau's brow knitted, a tear rolled down a cheek. Kleya knew an unexpected chapter of her life was ending. And an unpredictable one was about to begin. Scroll down to see who got Honorable Mention shout-outs this week… There were a number of capital-M moments in the Season 8 finale of ABC's 9-1-1, but one in particular will remain at the forefront of our memories as we anxiously await the show's return this fall. We're referring to the incredible speech delivered by Chimney to the rest of the 118, following a successful mission at a collapsed apartment building. More than simply powerful, the two-minute monologue felt vital, authoritative and, dare we say, healing. And while the writing and cinematography certainly enhanced the epic moment, most of the credit goes to Kenneth Choi, whom we could feel stepping into his power with each sentence, like the steady beat of a drum. Though we can't say for sure what will happen when 9-1-1 returns for Season 9 this fall, we're confident that we'll look back on this speech as the moment Chimney took his rightful place as the firehouse's new captain. — Andy Swift For six seasons, Ann Dowd built a Handmaid's character we've loved to hate: a holier-than-thou harridan who grabbed the infinitesimal amount of power Gilead gifted her and used it to oppress other women. Dowd made Aunt Lydia someone we could reliably despise… until this week's episode. Dowd started the scene at the Red Center with Lydia's usual righteous fervor, bellowing about insubordination and threatening major violence. But when June appeared, Dowd began the delicate work of dismantling Lydia, piece by piece. Faced with the reality of the rape and violence she'd helped perpetrate, Dowd had Lydia visibly soften, her resolve crumbling as her face trembled and her eyes filled with tears. And when Lydia finally capitulated to her own guilt, Dowd falling to her knees and offering up an anguished cry to God, it only made us all the more excited for the arrival of the series' Lydia-centric sequel, The Testaments. — Kimberly Roots Piper Perabo left it all on the operating-room floor in the Season 21 finale of Grey's Anatomy (recapped here). After Jenna was told yet again to be patient about daughter Dylan's recovery — or lack thereof — the desperate mom snapped, going so far as to take hostages in hopes of forcing a miracle. From there, her portrayer became the embodiment of a raw nerve, alternately rageful and reflective, apologetic and frightening. She offered glimpses of the lovely, sensitive person Jenna might have been on better days, then over and over snapped her back into the fraught moment at hand. When finally Dylan's bleeding stopped, Jenna collapsed in tears, Perabo allowing her whole body to shake from the shock and relief that the ordeal was over. — Charlie Mason Which performance(s) knocked your socks off this week? Tell us in the comments! Best of TVLine Young Sheldon Easter Eggs: Every Nod to The Big Bang Theory (and Every Future Reveal) Across 7 Seasons Weirdest TV Crossovers: Always Sunny Meets Abbott, Family Guy vs. Simpsons, Nine-Nine Recruits New Girl and More ER Turns 30: See the Original County General Crew, Then and Now
