First appearance: Episode 1. Scene: Morlana 1 brothel.
Of all the characters in the series Cassian is the one with possibly the single most profound character development in terms of how much they themselves change from first to last appearance. When we first meet Cassian he is what Tony Gilroy calls a ‘roach’: as far as he could possibly be from the hero he is by the time of Rogue One, where he is a multi-skilled agent who is ready to give everything for the cause. Instead, the man in this opening scene comes over as a scrappy and shady individual who can take care of himself in some ways but who has hints of a rich and troubled emotional life under a very cool and reserved surface appearance.
There’s a sense of mystery about Cassian in the opening shots as he moves through scenery that is visually reminiscent of something like Blade Runner. The red light district aesthetics, the rain, the grounded and realistically edgy dialogue with the hostess and two Pre-Mor guards in the brothel, the way the series very quickly reveals that this is indeed a brothel and that our protagonist is there looking for a girl from Kenari. The atmosphere is seedy beneath the expensive veneer and also a bit threatening.
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Very little is given away about Cassian by the dialogue, until his own revealing line: “I’m looking for my sister”. This is when he’s given no choice but to reveal the truth because the hostess is by then suspicious that he’s ‘trouble’ in some way, and she is protective of this girl - whoever she is - even though she’s apparently no longer working there. This reticence turns out to be very typical of Cassian. He’s emotionally reserved and generally only likes to reveal his feelings and the facts associated with them to those he’s close to, and not always then - as his coming scenes with Maarva, Bix and Brasso will show.
Already he’s giving the impression that he has a troubled past. Not just the fact that he’s looking for what is presumably a sister he has lost contact with in a brothel, but the fact that he seems to be only there at all because of a tip-off from a ‘friend’. We get the sense that he is in self-preservation mode in some ways but also that there’s an innate sadness in his story, if this is where he thinks his sister might be. That she’s a sex-worker who has to go with men like these two idiots who are already deciding that they want to be a problem for the physically unimposing stranger who they call “a little thing” and “Scrawno”.
Rather infamously, the series never presents a resolution to this search. Gilroy defends this by saying that the absence of his sister and the terrible guilt about leaving her behind that day feeds into all of Cassian’s later hatred of abandoning people. It’s a trait that carries right through to Rogue One where even the novelisation, written years before Andor, mentions his haunted aversion to leaving people behind.
Yet there’s not enough information in the scene to draw too many conclusions about Cassian’s character on a first watch. I remember that I did enjoy his defiant glare at the PreMor guards and the hint of flirting with the hostess with the ‘I don’t have a girlfriend’ line. Tiny little intriguing crumbs; but the scene in the brothel finishes with us having more questions than answers, much like the case for Cassian himself as, expressionless, he sets back out into the rain to head for his borrowed ship.
But coming back to the scene after seeing the whole journey is fascinating as you can now see the aspects of Cassian’s character that will help shape his journey. He will change a lot, but the changes are based on what we are already getting glimpses of here. His loyalty to his family, his dogged determination, his instinct for secrecy and self-preservation. At the moment it’s focused in a very self-centred way but as the circle of people and things he cares about expands outwards he will be ‘coming home to himself’ in the same way that he encourages the engineer Niya to do in his first scene of season 2.
I’m going to include what happens next though as it’s the ‘inciting incident’ for the whole plot. When the guards come from behind to shake him down, Cassian doesn’t exactly choose to fight - he’s kind of forced to. He’s given no choice, in a way, and yet he also DOES have that choice, and in the same paradoxical way his story will unfold over the series: he’s a reluctant hero, but if forced to use them he has fight-winning natural talents and learned skills and will absolutely follow events through to the best and most logical conclusion. As the second guard, begging for his life, finds out to his cost: Cassian is someone who would prefer not to kill but who absolutely will if he sees that as the only way. As Gilroy wryly puts it, he’s good at doing the math.
It’s undoubtedly a line through to Cassian’s first appearance in Rogue One, where he unhesitatingly kills a man who is on his own side… because there is no choice. But by that stage it’s no longer just about saving his own skin, but preserving information that will save countless others. He’s burning his decency for someone else’s future and is willing to burn his life for a sunrise he’ll never see. But at the moment, he just wants to escape arrest for a double murder. We will later find out that he’s already been imprisoned before. His absent sister is just one in a whole string of losses.
The very first shots of Cassian show him walking in to the Morlana 1 leisure district over a causeway. It’s visually striking but I think there’s some archetypal symbolism here too. A path across water is one often associated with change and transformation, crossing from one life to another. It’s both a liminal space and a rite of passage. Water makes frequent appearances throughout the series and film, particularly in rainfall - and this whole sequence also takes place in a storm. There’s a particularly ominous/portentous rumble of thunder when Kravas says “You killed him!” and Cassian reflects for a few seconds on the signifance of that. He’s crossed a bridge, as it were. He runs back across the causeway but just like his journey to the leisure district , it’s a path from which he cannot deviate and running back across does not erase everything that happened and what seems to be something like only 20 minutes. The choices that he made, those that were made for him, and all the choices in between.
His journey has begun, whether he likes it or not.
Cassian’s final scene: In the series, he’s walking again - but this time he’s not skulking, hood up in the rainy night. He’s walking upright, full of acceptance of his journey and full of purpose, nodding to the Force healer who so unsettled him the year before. He knows now that he is fighting for the right reason. In his very last scene of all - in Rogue One - he is of course dying for that same right reason: the hope of bringing about a better galaxy for all those he loves and even beyond. He’s gone from self-centred to the ultimate version of selfless. That opening walk into destiny ends here, but what an inspirational and moving journey it’s been.
TLDR: Cassian’s journey from self-centred thief to selfless hero begins on a rainy night on Morlana 1 and the clues to the steps he will take along that journey are already in place.
Namaygoosisagagun First Nation/Collins has burned to the ground. The entire community is nothing but ashes after being quickly consumed by wildfires. They did not have any support from emergency services, and no one offered aid. The community saved themselves by escaping into boats because no one came.
Mishkeegogamang and Cat Lake have lost power. Families are ending up in shelters with nothing. Armstrong, Lac La Croix, Whitesand, Gull Bay, Lac des Mille Lacs are currently in the fires path and all members are being evacuated.
All this loss, all this devastation, and it was entirely preventable.
After steadily underfunding wildland firefighting and purposefully excluding Indigenous wildland firefighters and Indigenous wildfire organizations from wildfire operations, firefighter training, decisionmaking, and resource exchanges, in 2025, Doug Ford slashed the forest firefighting budget.
It's hard to ignore his decision to cut funding and leave us out of adequate fire training (even though we've lived with forest fires for thousands of years—far longer than settlers have been in Canada—and made sure fires like the ones we're all seeing today were prevented through kinisitotēn) when, despite making up less than 5% of the population, we account for 42% percent of all wildfire evacuations in Canada.
And when we are successfully evacuated, we face discrimination and racism—like Kashechewan—because it's always been easier to blame us than it is to blame the true culprit: denialism, corportate greed, and colonization.
The people of Collins and every other impacted community deserve better.
Right now, the AFN is currently accepting donations to help Collins First Nation. If you're able to, please consider donating.
ONWA (Ontario Native Women's Association) is another great place to donate to. They have outreach vans going to motels and inns and offering food, water, resources, and cultural support to those impacted by the wildfires.
Other places to consider donating to are Mikinakoos Emergency Fund, Red Cross, True North Aid, Indigenous Climate Action. You can also send donations directly to Whitesand First Nation via e-transfer ([email protected]) and they request that you add your full name in the e-transfer comment section to receive a tax receipt.
*Before sending money, verify that the appeal appears on an official First Nation, Tribal Council or registered charity channel.
If you can't offer financial support, please consider donating items of need. Moontime Connections is currently accepting drop-off donations. If you live in the Thunder Bay area, Namaygoosisagagun Health Office is also taking in donations! They can also bemailed to Superior Inn Hotel & Conference Centre at 555 West Arthur Street, Thunder Bay, ON, P7E 5P8.
genevieve o’reilly getting a part in revenge of the sith that eventually got cut and 20 years later giving us one of the best performances I’ve ever seen out of star wars is the greatest comeback of all time
finished building mon’s limospeeder with legos! i’ve never built a lego set before and they’re equal parts fun and frustrating. the one drawback is that there’s no way to quickly get cassian in and out of the driver’s seat without partially disassembling the roof portion, so they’ll just have to both be in the back seat. 👹
you can purchase the instructions for the custom set here.
Woody Crumbo aka Woodrow Wilson Crumbo (Native American-Potawatomi, 1912-1989, b. Lexington, OK, USA, d. Cimarron, NM, USA) - One Blue Deer, Paintings: Airbrush and Tempera on Paper
Nor is she a seductress in any kind of negative or manipulative sense - she has a mutual relationship with a powerful man who then breaks up with her, and afterwards she keeps protection against him in the form of evidence that the relationship existed. She HAS blackmail material, she even waves it at him threateningly because he treated her like shit, but she never even uses it.
Irene Adler is not a thief, femme fatale, or blackmailer. She's just a cool lady that wants to be left alone.
@delphi-star You do recall correctly!! She does not give a shit about that man! She's happily married! She tipped him for being a witness at her wedding!
If your Sherlock Holmes adaptation has a character whose identifying qualities are that she is a seductive criminal in love with Holmes, you have created a character that is basically the literal opposite of Irene Adler and you should name her something else.
She's also -- and I cannot stress this enough -- from New Jersey. IMO this is the single most important detail missing from all the adaptations -- IRENE ADLER IS FROM NEW JERSEY.
Please just once in my life I would like to see this adapted faithfully it would be the funniest fucking thing ever.
Blackout poetry exists on a dual axis from "banal" to "insightful" on the input side and "kind of deep" to "incredibly fucking dumb" on the output side, and while taking something banal and producing something kind of deep is well and fine, for my money taking something insightful and rendering it incredibly fucking dumb is where the real art is.
#i stuck the word 'banal' in there twice specifically so that 'anal' would be low hanging fruit#but i genuinely did not anticipate 'banana' --@prokopetz
kianamaiart
turnnoffyourmind
dailybridgerton
ellievsbear
blakekathryn
