Some More Ep 12 Thoughts

[unspeakablehorror]

Some hopes and final speculations for Episode 12:

 

The season finale is really going to help decide the direction of season 2, so how they handle this upcoming intersection on Ferrix is the main question.  I've got to assume Cassian is going to go back to Ferrix to attend Maarva's funeral.   Because the other option is that he *doesn't* go back to Ferrix and then...what?  Everyone else just has a friendly meetup there?  I don't think so, lol.

At this point they've built up the clues that Luthen is a Jedi so much that they'd have to confirm something else before I'd believe he isn't one!  So if it really is their intent for him to not be a Jedi, they've got some work to do.  I think this possibility is unlikely though.  If they did have something else in mind, I'd have to see how they handle it before judging my opinion on that choice--there are good and bad choices they could make there.   I don't think they will confirm him to be something else, though.  So that leaves confirming he's a Jedi, or not confirming that and just letting the existing evidence speak for itself.  

I think confirming he's a Jedi would require more willingness to upset a portion of the audience, and is thus the braver choice.  If they don't confirm it, the people who think he's a Jedi will mostly continue to think that, and the people who don't will mostly continue to think he's not.  If they do confirm this, they will likely do so in either the next episode or the last episode of Season 2.

Then again maybe only Kleya is a Jedi.  Why do I care about this Jedi stuff?  It's not because I want fanservice, because making random characters Jedi isn't fanservice for me.  What is fanservice for me is seeing Palpatine be his awful-terrible-no-good self, but I almost kind of hope he doesn't appear because I feel like his physical appearance would overshadow the main characters too much.  Even though seeing some sort of confrontation between him and Mon Mothma would be both reasonably plausible and could be plot-relevant as well as involving some important political subplot.  So no, Luthen being a Jedi doesn't check off any fanservice boxes with me.  

But, oh no, what if some people enjoy Luthen being a Jedi because it is fanservice to them? Doesn't that make it vacuous and bad?

No.  The only relevant questions here are--does Luthen being a Jedi fit with what we know of him, is it thematically relevant, and would it be poignant?  And the answer to *all* of those questions is yes.  Every hint we've been given here is a hint that Luthen is a Jedi, so of course it fits.  It's intensely relevant to the theme of fascism in the show to address the  genocide of particular a religious group.  And it would be intensely poignant for a victim of such a genocide to have to hide everything they are (every day a performance), to do that right under the Emperor's nose on Coruscant, and to do all of that while organizing the rebellion that will eventually defeat the Empire.

Lastly, I think that the second season will be about Cassian having to take over Luthen's role in the Rebellion.  I think seeing him in the Aldhani heist and the prison break, we can see his ability to organize others and to calculate opportunities, and to plan.  So we can see that already he can do these things.