Do you ever think about the lines
"Your father would've been proud of you."
Because the first thing I thought, and thought for a long time, about that line was that freudian thought that eeesh that's an awkward Oedipal line to end the entire film on and why would they do that.
But I was thinking of Cassian's line as a part of a text and not a line that says something about his character. And that's where I got it wrong.
Because what does "your father would've been proud of you" say about Cassian Andor in that moment?
Not that he's trying to console Jyn in her last moments. Not that he's trying to reassure himself that their deaths are worth it. But that he has complete and unflinching faith in the fact that they accomplished the goal Galen set for them.
In other words, that he trusts Jyn unconditionally.
And it's consistent all the way through Scarif, because
when they get to the file room and they're going through hundreds of thousands of files, she stops and says "stardust! That's the one" and he goes "How do you know?" and she turns to him and she smiles and says "because it's me!"
And he just smiles softly and genuinely at her, like of course this is true and of course that's Jyn, like it's a second name.
And it doesn't seem like a big thing because we've heard her dad call her stardust so many times. In her past, in his message to her, when she meets him again. And oh what a brilliant bit of writing that Galen used Jyn as a ploy to say stardust-stardust-scarif-stardust as a hint to anyone finding the message, like a code, and just disguising it in Jyn.
But we were with Jyn all those times and Cassian never was. He's never met Galen. He's never heard him speak or talked to him. He's never seen the message because he dragged Jyn out of the temple before she could pick it up.
He just trusts her words as Fact because she said so.
He sacrifices himself for her on that belief, gets shot, probably breaks his back, and still climbs up a karking tower to have her back carried by that faith, in the trust that what Jyn says is true.
And it's so powerful, because when he tells her on the ship to Eadu that he isn't the one she has to convince, and that it's good to know that Chirrut believes in her he's speaking the truth.
He trusts her immediately about the message, and he's angry and disappointed that she doesn't have it on her because he knows his superiors aren't going to take her words for it. They aren't going to believe what she says like he does and Chirrut does, and so he keeps it to himself, because either way Draven has him tied hands and feet to the fate of a killer, even though he doesn't want to kill Galen.
And at Eadu he didn't feel free to act on the trust he's always felt in her.
But then the Alliance turn out to be cowards and betray all the people who've sacrificed themselves and their clean hands for the Rebellion, and Jyn becomes this new shining symbol of a Rebellion to Cassian, like she did to Chirrut and Baze and all the others.
He declares openly he believes in Jyn and he just never looks back.
And so when he asks her, half dead and in So Much Pain, if she thinks anyone got the plans, if anyone is listening, because they can't see the fleet or the gate for the atmosphere, and they don't know if anyone is alive up there to receive it or if Bodhi got the message to listen through, she says "yes" and he just trusts her.
So while Jyn's first true words to Cassian are "Trust goes both ways"
Cassian's last words aren't random or empty condolences for her sacrifice, for their sacrifice. They're not the pat on the head to a daughter who was only the tool of her father.
Cassian's last words to Jyn, in the true nature and code of a spy, are an answer to her: "I know. And I always did."
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titsay
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