Just can't stop thinking about the show since I watched One Way Out last night. Like, I think this show really succeeds where other Disney projects have faltered in showing how domineering, oppressive, and yet arrogant the Empire was. In something like A New Hope they can achieve that effect simply through the presence of stormtroopers, dialogue from characters, and the imposing threat presented by Star Destroyers, the Death Star and Darth Vader. But in all pre-OT shows and movies, including Rogue One, this fist of the Empire is really shown at a similar surface level. You have some smatterings of the Empire pushing people around, executing them, and characters talking about how bad things are but you can only get away with that for so long. We've already had the basics established by A New Hope and in the filmmaking time since then we've all exposed to visceral and impactful depictions of hardship and oppression through TV and movies or another. The suffering of the galaxy deserved a more real look and this show has been delivering that so well. This is the first time a Star Wars project feels like it adds scope and emotional context to the struggle from Rogue One to Return of the Jedi. That alone makes this show a triumph in the Star Wars canon to me.
I also can't stop thinking about the prison break arc in a wider sense. From a personal perspective, both my parents lived in Romania under totalitarian rule. My mom managed to leave the country with her family under the pretext that my grandfather would get improved medical training in the states and come back. My dad was forced to stay and was in the capital during the Romanian revolution. So the point of this is how quickly rebellion can spark and spread under the right conditions. Which is encapsulated by this arc perfectly. The inmates have been intimidated into compliance and strict obedience so that there's no thought that escape is possible. All it took was one inmate leaking that the prison executed an entire floor of inmates and it sparked a total revolt and escape. Just reminded me of what I learned about the beginning of the Romanian revolution. The people were oppressed for well over a decade and the trigger of the revolution was relatively miniscule. The Romanian secret police were trying to evict a well loved Timisoara priest from his church, and a mob formed to protest his eviction. From there the crowd grew enflamed and it snowballed into a nationwide revolt through word of mouth (since the government was restricting communications at the time) the whole thing lasted a little over a week and ended with the execution of the dictator and a change in government. I think all the set up and all the displays of the prison control were so effective at laying the tinder down for the fire that would start when Kino and Andor learned they were never being released. I know the personal diatribe was unnecessary but it's all I can think about after watching the episode. How quickly a revolution can start in the most dire of circumstances. Helped the episode resonate with me that much more even though my only personal experience was watching my parents' tears as they watched a documentary about the Romanian Revolution.
] was pure Star Wars.
