I was impressed with how Coruscant is depicted in these episodes. The rich and glamorous Coruscant — where the galaxy’s most powerful mingle — is on display here, as society’s elite gather for the annual party season, celebrating the Senate’s new members. But we also see another side of the planet, as Cassian and Bix lay low in Luthen’s safe house, a bare-bones high-rise apartment in one of the city’s more quotidian corners.
The views through their windows are spectacular, but the surrounding neighborhoods are grayer and colder, filled with funky little markets and the Coruscant version of bodegas. It feels like a real place, and not the glittering digital creation that George Lucas introduced in the “Star Wars” prequel films. That realness only adds to the urgency of these rebel missions. These physical spaces, populated by actual people, are what the resistance is trying to save.
This is also true of Ghorman, which is very different in reality from the cutesy tourist film we saw last week. In the past year, the propaganda propagators in the Empire’s Ministry of Enlightenment have successfully rebranded this highly civilized and formerly wealthy planet as an unruly, ungrateful realm, where violent thugs run amok. Across the galaxy, the “Star Wars” version of cable news pumps out stories about those dastardly Ghor.
The reality is more nuanced. Luthen sends Cassian to Ghorman to assess whether the rebels are far enough along to merit support. What Cassian finds is a broken planet, with a resistance too eager to believe what they hear from their inside sources. They do not realize that their main source is a plant. It’s Syril, who has been allowing the Ghor to spy on him, posing as a sympathizer in order to feed them only information the Empire wants them to have.
So Cassian returns to Coruscant to tell Luthen to abandon the Ghorman cause. Instead, Luthen changes tactics, sending in Vel and Cinta, who help the rebels hijack the imperial transport in that exciting climactic sequence. Cassian’s warning about the Ghor’s readiness proves prescient, though. Vel and Cinta give the group strict instructions to leave their weapons at home, but one rebel’s hidden blaster goes off during a hairy moment, killing Cinta. Vel rails against the offender, saying her lover was the kind of warrior the Ghor rebels are trying to be and that her loss is both incalculable and stupid.
To be fair to the Ghor, they are confused and scared, stuck in a fight they never picked. Their planet used to be a center for fashion and a tourist hot-spot drawing people who bought souvenir replicas of the planet’s spiders. They remember the incident 16 years ago when Grand Moff Tarkin landed a star-cruiser on a group of peaceful protesters, back when such an act had consequences, no matter how powerful the perpetrator.
