Andor’s lighter on Easter eggs than any Star Wars sequel or spinoff has ever been, and lacking that connection to the Skywalker saga has left some fans grasping for hidden messages after every single episode. The latest example of this is fans asking whether or not Luthen Rael (Stellan Skarsgård), one of the masterminds of the Rebellion, is a Jedi after a key moment in the 11th episode.
So we’re here to explain where the question comes from and do our best to give a definitive answer.
Is Luthen a Jedi?
No. This is a ridiculous theory built on almost nothing, except that he seems to have in his possession something that looks like a lightsaber — and we can’t even be sure yet that’s what it is. (If it was, why would Luthen need to steal Two Tubes’ blaster to defend himself in his confrontation with Saw?) More than just Jedi can carry lightsabers, especially only a few years after a Jedi massacre. Luthen is an antiques dealer, so the idea of him having some rare, borderline illicit weapon is actually pretty understandable. In fact, his ship even has weapons that aren’t that different from lightsabers already, and we’ve never seen a Jedi ship do that before.
Even if he was a former Jedi, how could he hide out on Coruscant? You think the Empire hunted down every Jedi it could across the entire galaxy and missed the eccentric 70-year-old who carries a lightsaber and lives in their backyard? It’s hard to believe, at best.
But wouldn’t it be cool if he was a Jedi?
Absolutely not. Part of Andor’s greatness is that it doesn’t involve any of the tentpole Star Wars topics, while still being deeply about the series’ foundation of Rebellion against injustice. It’s thematically critical to the show that the Jedi stay far away from the Rebellion. Luke may help save the day in the end, but Andor is about the groundwork that built that ending and the countless lives it took to get there.
Easter eggs are often a fun part of the endless labyrinth of franchises and universes that has dominated that last 15 years of popular culture. But the desperate need for everything to connect and for circles to loop neatly back into themselves doesn’t get you great storytelling or meaningful art; it gets you a disaster like The Rise of Skywalker.
So if there’s any justice in the universe, Luthen will keep as far from the Jedi as he possibly can, and no one on Andor will ever even think the word Skywalker.
Austen Goslin
Source link
