longer.blue

Indulge in 8000+ characters of some tin-foil conspiracy about a show that is MADE of conspiracy. --- Luthen isn't dead. It was a long planned contingency. This was all one big scripted faked death organized by 3 people in Luthen's network. There is a number to details around his death to all read to me like the writers were planting some leads for the audience to chew on for a theory. I want to work backwards here. From the end to the start. --- 1) "Are you sure he's dead?" Starting from when Cassian meets a clearly grieving Kleya and says this line. Why would Cassian have ANY reason to doubt Kleya in that state? Not only is she a grieving mess, but also after using the most secret of secret messaging systems. Andor has a lot of reasons to never trust Luthen's words...but ALWAYS trusts he has a plan that he's not telling people. --- 2) That hospital is SUSPICIOUS. This is the longest point so buckle up: I know this show has be iconic for giving great writing to minor roles throughout the show, and usually it's the make a point towards a greater theme. But this hospital is full of characters that seem *odd* to give screen time too unless it was meant to be a clue to the audience. Everyone we saw was in the position to "cover up" Luthen's death. The first character, with the Doctor who was in charge of the floor Luthen was on. She clearly protested the Imperial take over of her floor, with HER patients. This, on it's own, seems normal. She was in the right to protest, but even bringing it up in a Coruscant Hospital, a planet who's population clearly is the MOST aware of the tightening police state of the Empire, you'd think she'd know where arguing with ISB would end up. She's also the one who would have been in charge of setting up Luthen's life support machine and allowed basically NO ONE ELSE inside. This is the 1st point of "Cover" to a Faking Death scheme. Then we get a 2nd character, the hospital owner. Again, he protests the Empire's actions in HIS hospital. I would go as far as to say he MADE A SCENE to assert this point. He managed to bluster and bully his way right up into the face of the ISB agent running things, and only backed down under threat of direct arrest. Even if, again, he's in the right, he again should be someone completely aware of what happens to people who defy the ISB. Still, he achieved something: He made a SCENE. He DISTRACTED. He BOUGHT TIME, and...he has all the power the owner of a hospital would have over his own hospital. This is the 2nd point of "Cover" to a Faking Death scheme. The third character is the man running the Hospital Security Cameras. He's introduced rattling off details on what the security system can and can't do. What the cameras can and can't see. He does it with such practiced detail, with such clear and concise reasons. Budgets, preferences from doctors, patient privacy concerns. Some systems are broken or buggy. On top of that, he tries a bit of disarming raport with the ISB officer talking about his cousin trying to join the ISB: Which is a GREAT play to imply: "Yes I'm loyal to the Empire." And when he's told to shut up and do his job, well, that means he doesn't have to mention anything that the ISB agent doesn't explicitly ask for. The man running the security cameras has 100% power to show the ISB ONLY what he wants to show them. This is the 3rd point of Cover to a Faking Death Scheme. These three people alone have ALL THE POWER to arrange someone to "die" and have all the details covered up. Three is just tiny enough a network for Luthen to vet and trust everyone involved and plan it for YEARS. Plus, that ol' genre savvy classic: We never saw what they did with the body. We can get into how all of this would make Kleya's role of breaking into the hospital easier as well, but we'll come back to that. Whew! That was a lot! Luckily the next point is brief. --- 3) If Luthen's plan was to die, he'd be instantly dead. This point is simple and...I think EVERYONE should find THIS point compelling on it's own: Why would a man who has hardened military experience, dubious morals, genius level subterfuge, access to cutting-edge spy tech... ...just "lethally wound" himself instead of killing himself outright!? If ANYONE would know how to KILL HIMSELF instantly, it would be a man who just HOURS earlier, quietly killed a long-time contact on a public park bench in the capitol city. The man KNOWS where to put the blade and how to end it quickly. It just doesn't add up. A man so careful, so paranoid, so completely aware of how the Empire acts...would not know how to kill himself instantly if he wanted to... Unless the plan was to get taken to a hospital! He knew the Empire would want him alive and take him to a hospital urgently, and even the Empire has little control of how a Hospital acts to save a life in an emergency. There's no time to plan when you have minutes to act on saving a life. Also: Remember how much Luthen insisted HE goes back to sabotage the equipment, like he NEEDED to be there. --- 4) "Is everything...real? Now we get narratively meta... the clue to the audience and Luthen's masterful test of Dedra's awareness of his plan. Dedra Neero: "Is everything...real?" This conversation has a LOT TO UNPACK, so we need to have some quotes. Luthen: "At the moment, only two pieces of questionable providence in the gallery...any guesses?" Dedra, clearly clueless about this question, just lets him continue... Luthen immediately goes for an antique knife, a Nautilan Bleeder. "I thought this was a fake." (Interesting choice of words...) "Probably ceremonial. Only three others have ever been found." "Is it real?" "Heheh! We still don't know! The tension mounts!" (Which is my fate if we never get another Gilroy Star Wars production that answers this.) --- Now that is most of what I have directly tied to if Luthen faked his death to escape inevitable Empire capture. There's so much here that seems too convenient for Luthen. But I have one final note to touch on: Did Kleya know? And did Luthen count on Kleya doing what she did? Considering this episode flashes back and forth to their past and showing 1) how important it is to walk away, and 2) Luthen lies. Points towards Kleya knowing the plan: She was aware of a bag in the safe house that conveniently had everything she needed to break into a hospital and cause a chaotic explosion. She knew all the interior and security of the hospital, faced away from cameras as much as possible. She knew exactly how to turn off a Life Support system without breaking it. Her ability to set explosives on multiple vehicles would have been facilitated by a security camera operator on the inside. Points towards Kleya not knowing the plan: Obvious one: Her grief was about as genuine as you could get. No need to act fake tears when alone in a room. Her hospital infiltration had some mild set backs. Her first plan with the wheel chair didn't work. It's possible she had a plan B ready the whole time though. He avoidance of cameras wasn't perfect. So given all this: I'm left with one possible theory in regards to Kleya: Kleya had explicit contingency orders from Luthen: If he is ever incapacitated while under arrest by the Empire...finish him off. Kill him. To that goal, Kleya succeeded in her mission. However...her success in that mission does not need her to know that the death was fake all along... Luthen had the funny sci-fi life support machine pulled. He acts out a little "blehg, I am dead" grunt, and the machine makes the flat-line noise. Luthen is officially *dead*. But because of the 3 members of the Hospital Staff we discussed...even that could be fake right in front of Kleya. Because Luthen's death was not just the hospital "failing to save him" but "an assassination by a rebel insurgent", less scrutiny is placed on the hospital staff by the ISB. Luthen needed HER to believe he was dead as much as the Empire.