i’m so excited to see how syril’s arc develops tomorrow, because I feel that this truly is what he’s been building towards this whole show. spoilers up to the end of episode six and speculation on 7-9 under the cut.
syril’s whole thing as a character is he’s committed to truth and justice above all else, even superseding direct orders. his boss tried to get him to sweep the corpo’s deaths under the rug but he refused because he felt this burning need to bring their killer to justice. this leads to his fixation on cassian throughout season 1, and informs his dedication to what he feels is a righteous cause. even after he got in trouble for what happened on ferrix, he still remained dedicated to trying to bring cassian to justice for the murders on morlana one, which obviously is what led him to dedra.
right now, with how dedra and partagaz are using him on ghorman, he thinks that the idea is to bring in outside agitators - i can't remember what precisely they told syril, but I assume he thinks it's to lure either cassian or 'axis' to ghorman? obviously he doesn't know about krennic's mining plan, so that must be what he thinks they're doing. but the plan he's trying to achieve is to bring in these outside agitators, and they're just Happening to use ghorman for whatever reason.
but as we saw in episodes 4-6, and as syril has likely noticed (if not in those episodes than in the year between them and 7-9) - the ghorman rebels are incredibly resistant to ‘outside agitators’. well established rebels like cassian and vel and cinta came to ghorman to provide advice and guidance to this comparatively new group of revolutionaries and they scoffed at their every attempt. they were ‘disappointed’ when cass told them to be careful, and their feeling of recklessly knowing better than these outsiders explicitly got cinta killed - from the one kid bringing a blaster after being explicitly ordered not to.
they have no respect for the chain of command, and seemingly have absolutely no interest in tying their struggles to those of the galaxy at large. the ghorman front is interested in protecting the interests and people of ghorman - full stop. the ghorman front is not interested in taking advice or inspiration from outsiders, and they know damn well who those outsiders are. they're taking the "help" from syril because they've looked into him extensively and believe that his background should make him hate the ISB (as it well should, syril is just built different I guess lmao)
and if/when syril finds out how he's being used by dedra and partagaz it's going to, in the words of kyle soller (his actor), cut too deep. syril thinks the end goal is to bring in outsiders and catch them on ghorman, not to commit another massacre of the people of ghorman.
i have 100% confidence that syril is not making it off of ghorman - I just want to know whether he'll die still believing in dedra and partagaz and the empire, or if he'll realize that dedra has just been using him and die a martyr.
