Tay Kolma Death, Mon Mothma Dancing at Wedding explained
Spoiler alert: This article contains spoilers for the first three episodes of season 2 “Andor”, which now streams on Disney+.
Welcome to the rebellion, Mon Mothma.
The senator of Genevieve O’Reilly’s Senator received an abrupt awakening for the harsh reality of organizing an uprising during the season 2 premiere of “Andor.” In the first three episodes, MON organizes a lush wedding for her young daughter Leida (Bronte Carmichael) for the son of Shady -Kingman Davo Sculdun (Richard Dillane). In season 1, Mon and Davo negotiated a deal to give her a loan so that she can lead money to the rebels in exchange for arranging the wedding of Leida. Everything becomes complicated when MON’s old flame Tay Kolma (Ben Miles), a rich banker who is packed in the scheme, asks cunning for a bribery to keep his business standing up and to remain silent about the financial arrangement.
In the midst of the chaos of the wedding, her daughter who despises her husband despise that she has an affair with Tay, Mon is confronted with a terrible decision: Pay Tay of … Eliminate him with the help of Luthen Rael (Stellan Skarsgard). Ultimately, MON cannot run the risk that Tay will ruin her rebel plans, so Luthen organizes a plot with his spy Cinta Kaz (Varada Sethu) to kill him. A disguised Cinta presents itself as Tay’s new driver and beats him at the end of the wedding, probably never again. During all this, Mon has a few drinks and dance the night away to a number of fluctuating wedding melodies, but O’Reilly explains how there is a lot of her thoughts during the slots scene.
It seems that while the relationships of Mon suffer with her family, her ties with the uprising become stronger. Where is she at the end of her daughter and husband?
What is extraordinary about those first three episodes is that they are a lens in her family culture. It is such an interesting piece that I never expected to explore within “Star Wars” – this complicated family dynamics and relationships. The mother-daughter scenes are beautiful and heartbreaking, and the scenes with her husband feel so real. There is a moment when it really shifted what I might have thought they were. He gives a speech at the wedding and you think they might be happy at some point. Their choices and ideologies bring them far apart. In the scene just before the wedding, her daughter is brutal for her and it makes it very clear that she is taking oppositional choices for what her mother has done. It’s pretty painful.
Then you have Luthen there at the wedding, and her friend Tay, who has been such an ally in season 1. He was so helpful in bringing everything together, and now he is a bit frayed around the edges. He is a bit loose and he will be this threat. There is that scene with Luthen where he really calls her on her perhaps romance of what this rebellion is and that she can have everything. But of course she can’t. He calls on her about that and she tacitly agrees that her friend will be killed. It chases her forever. That is a very important threshold that we see her taking that choice, that rebellion comes first.
What goes through the head of Mon while she dances wildly?
At that time she is struggling with the demons in her. She uses the facade of this cultural celebration to release her body in a certain sense to prevent her from screaming. The only two people who really know what’s going on are the audience and Mon Mothma. For everyone, to that lens, she just got a bit messy at a wedding. But we understand that she is struggling with the chaos in her own head.
Which music played during the dance scene? Was it the same song we hear in the episode?
That was also in season 1. That piece of music that I think was in the borting scene in season 1 and also in one of the party scenes of Mon Mothma. This is like the mega hit mix that we have. It feels like it is part of the cultural material that galaxy at that time. She can really release herself in it. You can feel that collision of old and new in those scenes with that speech ski run with that real gauche piece that he gives as this performative gift. You can feel her winding in against this gaucheheid. That crescendo of that dance piece really enables us to witness what it releases in this episode. To dance like Mon Mothma, and to struggle her from the structure of that calm aesthetics was such a gift.
There are other dead in the premiere -episodes, but Tay’s stands out as one of the most surprising. How does that stay with Mon?
Rebellion has many faces. Each is important and painful, but they are different facets of that one idea. Tay’s murder chases her forever, because she understands that she is a part of it. It just breaks that romantic idea that you could get so far into rebellion and have no blood on your hands. That was her childhood friend. It breaks a little deep into her. It is important to show that everything comes with a costs for all these characters. It all requires courage, but it doesn’t come free. It is all intertwined with pain. Rebellie is not beautiful.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
