Another banger of an episode, really ramping up with the tension and fear you would feel living under an authoritarian regime. The dread that settles in as word of what happened on level 2 gradually reaches Cassian’s group was particularly well done, and the torture scene must be one of the most disturbing scenes in the franchise. The Empire using the dying screams of the children of an indigenous tribe they massacred to torture information out of prisoners… morbid.

It’s an interesting twist that Vel is Mon Mothma’s cousin, she keeps having surprise family members we didn’t know about. I wonder what their history together is like. It also adds to the line in ep 8 about Vel being a girl running from her rich family, since Chandrila is beginning to seem like the planet where all the wealthy and ignorant people are from.

I can imagine that the dinner scene, where Vel gets asked why she hasn’t got a husband yet, is an awkward real life conversation many a lesbian has been subjected to. Any gay representation is of course a positive, but it’s good that the showrunners haven’t just thrown it on the surface (a la The Rise of Skywalker) so it’s there, instead going in-depth into the complexities and downsides of Cinta and Vel’s relationship. I hope we see more of them since, as a big lover of Kanan and Hera, possibly doomed wartime romances are very much my thing.