In the Flesh: Andor s2e03 'Harvest'

“NIAMOS!” cry the guests at the Mothma-Sculdun wedding as they swirl and gyrate on the dance floor in the wake of the nuptial vows, their delicate scalloped gowns and flowing sleeves giving them the appearance of ornamental koi in motion. The thumping bass and one-word chorus, the name of the planet on which Cassian was arrested for walking around back in season one, makes it feel like some Chandrilan version of the Macarena. To drop a club banger into the middle of one of the tightest and most thrilling episodes of science fiction television ever made is an audacious creative move, but at this point it feels like Gilroy and co are incapable of missing a shot. ‘Harvest’, the capper to the first of the three-episode blocks in which this season is slated to drop, is up there with any of the best thriller film or TV ever made. Stormtroopers dying of grain entrapment, Syril’s mother Eedy (the great Kathryn Hunter at the top of her game) at the family dinner from Hell, a savage fight to the death between Bix and repugnant sexual predator Lieutenant Krole (Alex Waldmann) — ‘Harvest’ is wall to wall with moments that would individually define a hundred lesser shows.

Even the quieter material, like Tay Kolma’s second drunken attempt to blackmail Mon Mothma and the Rebellion, sings with menacing tension. This guy we met as a clean-cut businessman with budding Rebel sympathies has been hollowed out by a little financial misfortune into a boorish, selfish lush, a phenomenon familiar to anyone who has organized with the rich before. There’s a surprising amount of depth on that front, especially in Mon’s desperate, patently false whisper of, “I don’t understand” when Luthen Rael (Stellan Skarsgaard) floats the idea of having Tay killed. “How nice for you,” Luthen replies through a smile like a death mask’s, refusing to permit his fellow Rebel the comfort of feigned ignorance. These people are serious. They aren’t putting together a debate society for preppy young rich kids, they’re building an armed revolution, and no banker’s midlife crisis is gonna get in their way. It’s a version of the same mistake the repulsive Lieutenant Krole makes with Bix, assuming she’ll go along to get along, that the extortionate price of her safety is one she’ll suck it up and pay. Some things are worth a moment of violence and terror.

And terror is what we get. Bix’s fight with Krole is so tense and visceral it feels more akin to Dan Dority and Captain Turner brawling in the thoroughfare on Deadwood than anything Star Wars has touched on before. The sound Krole makes after Bix brains him with a wrench is spectacularly awful, a gut-churning squeal of animal agony bubbling up every time he catches his breath. Cassian’s asymmetrical attack on the Imperial inspectors, Brasso’s desperate speeder flight from capture and his betrayer Kellen’s (Ryan Pope) quick, horrible smile, all of it is intercut with and soundtracked with the instrumental version of ‘Niamos’ and the sight of Mon Mothma drinking herself numb and throwing herself into the dance with her daughter’s wedding guests. This woman who has seen her friend and one-time suitor turn on her, who knows he’s going to die because of her decision to inform Luthen of his actions, whose neofascist daughter threw her best attempt at a gesture of real love back in her face, gives her broken soul over to a crowd-pleaser and dances it out. We end mid-twirl on a sudden cut to black, the song broken off with ruthless precision, condemned to spin on desperately through a facsimile of a life, thoroughly rehearsed and so empty even Perrin is beginning to sense something out of place.