We’re still all soaking in the importance and impact of the latest three episodes of Andor, and along with the devastation of Ghorman and the fate of some key characters there’s also a speech which ranks high among the most important of the era; that of Mon Mothma. Genevieve O’Reilly and Tony Gilroy look at the speech, one that echoes down the timeline for its bravery and insight.
“I believe we are in crisis. The distance between what is said today and what is known to be true has become an abyss. Of all the things at risk, the loss of an objective reality is perhaps the most dangerous. The death of truth is the ultimate victory of evil. When truth leaves us, when we let it slip away, when it is ripped from our hands, we become vulnerable to the appetite of whatever monster screams the loudest.”
“What took place yesterday… was unprovoked genocide. “Yes, genocide! And the monster screaming the loudest, that we helped create, the monster who will come for us all, soon enough, is Emperor Palpatine.”
Chatting with Nerdist, Genevieve explains how she knew this was a key and pivotal scene.
Nerdist: We get the final product, which has the directing, the editing, the music. We see how the episode plays in the context of the whole season. But did you know while you were filming “Welcome to the Rebellion” that you were part of something really incredible?
O’Reilly: Yeah, “I did” is the very short answer. I remember receiving the script, and it comes off the back of episode eight, which was the Ghorman Massacre, so I always knew that we were driving to this point for Mon. I always knew that this was her zenith as a character, if you will. So when the script landed, it was everything I hoped for as an actor.
Because even before you get to the speech, it allows for such nuance of character of a woman. You get that scene with Luthen at the beginning of it. You get to understand fear. You get to see the tectonic plates shifting underneath all of them. You get to see these many facets of rebellion are conflating, and we’re coming to a very important point. You see the fear amongst all these groups. You see the fractures, the fissures within the idea of rebellion. You see that it’s not linear. You see that it’s all very fragile.
Speaking to The Hollywood Reporter, Tony Gilroy had this to say about the speech.
“The really sorry truth about the about this question — and we get it a lot — is that peace and prosperity and calm are the rarities. Those are rarities throughout the last 6,000 years of recorded history. You could drop this show at any point in the last 6,000 years, and it would make sense to some people about what’s happening to them.”
Continued Gilroy: “I mean, the control of truth has always been a scabbard of power. Power dictates the narrative, and always has tried to always do that. Look at what the Empire does to Ghorman with their propaganda campaign. The very first scene [in the season] that Krennic has where he talks about Ghorman, that’s based on the Wannsee convention — the convention where the Nazis got together and planned the final solution over a business lunch. You could say all this about the Gulf of Tonkin — which got America into Vietnam — or you could say the burning of the Reichstag [which paved the way to the Nazi’s rise to power], or you could say the sinking of the Lusitania [which pushed America into World War I]. You go all the way through history, and power is the control of truth. So I think with that speech, we were looking to be timeless and classic.”
Entertainment Weekly spoke to Genevieve O’Reilly about the speech, a gift for the actress she’d long waited to deliver.
For O’Reilly, it was the realization of two decades of work portraying this character. “It was everything I was hoping for,” she says. “That’s like the best gift you can get as an actor. She speaks to how important the Senate is to her. You can see that it’s like her church. She reveals so much and then she calls out some really brutal truths.”
“That was everything I really wanted to do,” she adds. “I knew that that would be important to fans. I knew it was also really important to me for her. That’s the fulcrum of who Mon Mothma is right there. And so I got to stand up for her in that moment. That was really important to me, and I hope it means something to people because it felt really great to be able to give her that voice.”
Nerdist also look at how ‘Welcome to the Rebellion‘ stands shoulder to shoulder with Star Wars Rebels season three episode ‘Secret Cargo‘.
In the Rebels episode, the Imperials learn of Mothma’s whereabouts. She then becomes the titular secret cargo for the Ghost crew. After evading Imperial forces, Mon Mothma has the task of going to Dantooine, site of an older rebel base. This is the planet Princess Leia gave Tarkin as the location of the Rebel Base in A New HopeOpens in a new tab. Leia did this knowing it was no longer the Rebellion’s primary HQ. This is also the fateful moment when Tarkin destroys Alderaan instead. Once arriving in orbit of Dantooine, Mon Mothma makes another broadcast. This time, uniting the various rebel cells into what we know in the original trilogy as the Rebel Alliance.
Andor never shows Mon Mothma connecting with the Rebels crew of Hera, Zeb, Chopper, and Ezra Bridger on the Ghost. However, Andor does pave the way very clearly for those events to happen. Of course, it would have been nice to have a cameo of the Ghost crew, or even just a mention. The connection we did get was only a very subtle one. But between episode nine of Andor’s second season, and the Rebels episode “Secret Cargo,” together they form a full picture of Mon Mothma’s brave decision to leave her comfortable life behind and become the figurehead of freedom in the galaxy. Genevieve O’Reilly portrays Mon Mothma in both Andor and Rebels, and these episodes both show how she’s perhaps the galaxy’s true greatest hero.
