#steela gerrera

Thank you for the Ask! It’s such a good monologue. Here’s the whole thing:

Saw is not a character I was familiar with before Rogue One and I’ve had some catching up to do with his backstory regarding his sister, Steela. But even without that knowledge this a powerful call to revolution from a man who has tasted loss and sacrifice many times already.

The memory of the first encounter with rhydo is presented as something romantic, in the broad sense, in that it breaks the monotony of a terrible life for the young Saw: it might be dangerous but it’s new, exciting, and the promise of deadly danger has allure because he’s living a life that already seems like death. The language emphasises the dull monotony: “…back and forth until all you could remember was back and forth” - repeated words, repeated actions. So why not go out with a bang, as it were. “You could feel your skin coming alive” gives me that sense of transforming into something new and full of vitality. This promised life will probably be a very short one, but it’s exciting. Yes, maybe it’s crazy to want to embrace something that is going to kill you. But if it strengthens the resolve to fight, it’s something Saw welcomes and for all his faults he’s very honest about this both for himself and his followers

The second part of the monologue leans into the idea of the Rebellion as a family, and there’s a forward echo here I think to Rogue One - Cassian’s “Welcome home” to Jyn and Baze calling Jyn “little sister”. Saw’s love for Steela has become weaponised, in a way, by his relationship with the rhydo (I’m slightly holding back from calling it an addiction as I think it’s unclear as to whether it is that or not). It allows him, in his view, to become the weapon against the Empire that he thinks is necessary to destroy them. He then launches into selling young Wilmon a full and very seductive view of sacrifice. It reminds me in some ways of Cassian’s monologue to Niya at the start of ep 1 but while that one was a gentle reassurance based on shared experience and imagery of coming home to yourself (that family idea again) Saw instead sells violence as a romantic means of transformation. The unloved cannon fodder who will not live to see victory become transcendent as an explosive weapon: transforming the galaxy through self-sacrifice in a way that sounds so incredibly exciting and alluring to Wilmon that he removes his mask and breathes in the ‘freedom’. It’s anarchic and dangerous and alluring, and he’s swept up in a moment that could - in another set-up - have him head straight off on a suicide mission. Radicalisation at its most powerful.

I love the way Wilmon is used here because this encounter is part of his education into the rebellion, in the same way that Cassian had encounters with many different kinds of rebellious figures in Season 1 (Gilroy nicknames that season ‘The education of Cassian Andor’). Some assumed that Wil would stay with Saw after this, but a year later and he is instead working closely with Luthen - impatient for action and frustrated that on Yavin “all we do is wait”. So that right there is the Saw influence, I think. He’s kind of following in Cass’s footsteps but is a few years behind in terms of temperament.

VS

ROUND #1