Recap / Andor S1E10 "One Way Out"

ONE WAY OUT!

"How long we hang on, how far we get, how many of us make it out, all of that is now up to us."

— Kino Loy

Cassian and Kino set their plan into motion. Cassian breaks a water pipe just before the guards bring Ulaf's replacement. They jam the descending lift and attack the guards, who attempt to fry the shift in turn — but the water on the floor fries the electronics instead. Cassian takes out the guards on watch and the prisoners of 5-2-D escape and arm themselves. Cassian and Kino make it to the command center and force the engineers to cut the power facility-wide. Kino gives a speech over the intercoms, rallying the prisoners on other floors towards an escape.

Meanwhile, Mon discusses ideas with Davo Sculdun, who tells her that he is capable of discreetly moving money around for her ends. In turn, he asks to lay the grounds for a Chandrilan marriage between their teenage children, which she coldly declines. Luthen meets his ISB mole, Lonni Jung, who tells him that Dedra is looking into "Axis". He tells Luthen he intends to resign from the ISB, but Luthen won't allow it. On Ferrix, Cinta maintains her stakeout as Maarva's condition continues to deteriorate; a doctor is called in for her after concerned neighbors get word she's stopped taking medication.

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Tropes:

• Actor Allusion: When Kino takes over the prison intercom, the vocal filter lowers his speaking voice to an even lower and more booming echo that makes him sound almost exactly like Supreme Leader Snoke, the other character Andy Serkis played in Star Wars before Kino.
• Appeal to Force:
  • When Kino and Cassian break into the control room, they demand the head technician to "turn it off", referring to the electrified floors. The technician tries to stall, saying it "could mean so many things", so Kino shoots a second-in-command. The other deputy immediately offers to turn it off.
  • Right afterwards, Cassian asks the deputy to shut down all the power, not just the floors. The deputy starts to complain that it's all hydro, and it'll take months to get it back up again, so Cassian simply holds a gun to his head. He complies by saying that it's the head technician who has the keys.
• Arranged Marriage: Sculdun reveals that in exchange for his financial help, he wants to introduce his son to Mon's daughter. He insists it's not a formal proposal but his intent that they honor Chandrila's custom of arranged marriage is clear. Mon, having personal experience of how it can lead to an Awful Wedded Life, quickly shows him the door rather than force her daughter into the same process. However, Sculdun correctly states that, despite her antipathy, she is considering it.
• Badass Bystander: Ulaf's replacement, who just arrived and had no part in planning the uprising, grabs a zap rod from the guard who's escorting him and shocks him.
• Battle Cry: "One way out!" becomes a rallying cry during the successful prison break.
• Call-Forward:
  • Cassian tells Kino that he would rather die attempting to take the Empire down than not. He will meet his end helping to deal the Empire their biggest blow yet.
  • Kino tells the other prisoners to "climb," just like K-2SO told Cassian to climb shortly before his death. Also doubles as a Call-Back since Nemik said something similar shortly before his death as well.
  • Shortly before escaping the prison, Cassian says "Come on, let's get out of here!" with a similar tone and inflection to the way he said those exact words while escaping Jedha in Rogue One.
• Crippling Overspecialization: The security forces in the prison are focused almost entirely on the electrified floor and remaining insulated from the prisoners through extensive use of automation and recruiting other prisoners as authority figures. This overconfidence in the system leads to a gross understaffing of physical guards and sloppy training for actual emergencies. After shorting out the flooring through breaking the water pipes, the first group suffer numerous casualties due to environment disadvantage and being unarmed, but once they push past the four guards and raid the weapons vault, they easily start liberating all the other sections. More guards are shown hiding from the breakout than try to contain it.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: Once the prisoner revolt gets underway, the Imperial guards are almost instantly overwhelmed. This is in spite of the fact that for the first few minutes the prisoners had no weapons except for the small parts they had stowed away to throw at the guards on the upper floor and a plan to neutralize the electrified flooring. Once they actually got hold of a supply of blasters, most of the guards abandon the fight and hide themselves away, giving the prisoners free run of the facility.
• Distracting Fake Fight: Xaul and Taga stage a fight as the new prisoner is riding the lift, and the scuffle and other inmates trying to pull them away distract the guards enough to allow Andor and Birnok to make a run for the lift.
• Do Not Go Gentle: Early in the episode, while trying to convince Kino to join the breakout, Cassian says that he'd rather die trying to take the prison guards down than die giving them what they want. Kino repeats the line in his Rousing Speech.
• Dramatic Irony:
  • Cassian has been Right Under Their Noses pretty much the entire time he's detained on Narkina 5, and manages to escape the prison before the ISB even realizes they had him all along.
  • Last episode, Cassian plans the prison escape openly in the cells because he knows that nobody's listening — the guards don't care enough about them to listen in. When Kino and Cassian break into the control room, the head technician is barking orders to the guards below — who have been either killed or subdued. No one is listening to his commands.
    Head Technician: 5-5, 5-3, 5-6, burn a firewall around it. Fry the whole level. Make the epicentre 5-2.
    Kino: Too late. There's nobody there.
• Everyone Has Standards: Mon Mothma has struggled with the underhanded tactics of funding the Rebellion all through the show thus far, but she hits her first unquestionable limit when Davo Sculdun proposes an Arranged Marriage between his son and Leida as business terms. She doesn't even miss a beat before coldly ordering him out of her home.
• Failed a Spot Check: The guards overlooking the room when bringing in a new prisoner don't notice Andor running back into the main room completely soaked in water or see the water slowly flooding in behind him. They also don't hear the rather loud rushing of water coming from the broken pipe in what is otherwise a silent room.
• Failsafe Failure: The guards' primary method of stopping a breakout, the electrified floor, is neutralized by Cassian when he manages to cut open a water pipe and flood level 5 (though one unlucky prisoner gets stuck on the floor and fried when they hit the switch). When Cassian and Kino capture the prison control room, they cut power to all floors in the facility, enabling a mass-breakout of the entire population.
• Fate Worse than Death: After finding out that they are never getting out of prison, most of the prisoners decide that they would rather revolt and risk execution than continue as slaves for the Empire.
• Fiction 500: Implied with Sculdun, who is so disgustingly wealthy that money is literally meaningless to him. This is why he's less interested in her credits than he is in her daughter's betrothal to his son, which will provide political clout and a noble pedigree he cannot simply buy.
• Foreshadowing:
  • In Episode 8, Cassian observed that the guards are obviously shorthanded when they have to delay taking him into the workroom so that a guard can come racing in from another level to give them the minimum number of guards needed for their protocol. A key reason why the escape in this episode is successful is because there are so few guards that once the prisoners find a way to negate the electric floor, they are quickly overwhelmed.
  • As the members of Cassian's block are getting ready to start their shift, Kino tells everyone that he is now considering himself a dead man walking to get everyone in the right frame of mind for the breakout. At the end of the episode, Kino reveals that he can't swim, meaning he knew all along he was never getting out.
• Freeze-Frame Bonus: A metallic headdress resembling the one Padmé Amidala wore in Attack of the Clones is glimpsed in Luthen's establishment.
• Get Out!: When Mon Mothma learns that Davos wants their children to meet, likely to set up an Arranged Marriage for them, and won't take anything else for his financial help, Mon immediately says, "Tay will see you out," refusing to discuss the matter further.
• Good Is Not Soft: Luthen is unquestionably on the side of good, but he's well aware he needs to use harsh methods to properly fight the Empire, such as sacrificing Anto Kreegyr's rebel cell to prevent the ISB from discovering he has a mole in their ranks.
• Great Escape: Cassian and Kino lead their floor in rebelling against the guards and seizing control of Narkina 5. Once they have the control room, Kino makes an address to the rest of the prisoners, encouraging them to join them in escaping.
• The Guards Must Be Crazy: We now fully see how undermanned, under-trained and complacent the guards in the prison are. They are reliant on the electric floors and physical separation from the prisoners and they have no plans or training on how to deal with a riot that they cannot stop by frying an entire room. When the revolt starts, the guards start shooting at the prisoners rather than retreating to the control room and sealing away the area. Once the the factory control room is breached, the prisoners have full run of the facility. There are no secondary security doors or checkpoints and the weapons are just stored on wall racks rather than in a secure armory. The people in the main facility control room do not figure out what is going on until armed prisoners just stroll into the room and seize control of the entire building.
• Heroic Sacrifice: Kino Loy leads the prison break, galvanizing the inmates on every level to rise up and directing them to the exit, knowing he himself can't escape the prison because he can't swim.
• Heroism Motive Speech: Luthen gives one to Lonni, even if it is particularly cynical and veering closer to a Motive Rant. It is the longest we have ever heard Luthen speak, and his words summarize every gray action he has done so far.
  Lonni: My sacrifice? It means nothing to you, does it?
  Luthen: I said I think of you constantly and I do. Your investment in the Rebellion is epic. A double life? Every day a performance? The stress of that? We need heroes, Lonni, and here you are.
  Lonni: And what do you sacrifice?
  Luthen: Calm. Kindness. Kinship. Love. I've given up all chance at inner peace. I've made my mind a sunless space. I share my dreams with ghosts. I wake up every day to an equation I wrote 15 years ago from which there's only one conclusion: I'm damned for what I do. My anger, my ego, my unwillingness to yield, my eagerness to fight, they've set me on a path from which there is no escape. I yearned to be a savior against injustice without contemplating the cost, and by the time I looked down there was no longer any ground beneath my feet. What is my sacrifice? I'm condemned to use the tools of my enemy to defeat them. I burn my decency for someone else's future. I burn my life to make a sunrise that I know I'll never see. And the ego that started this fight will never have a mirror or an audience or the light of gratitude. So what do I sacrifice? Everything! You'll stay with me, Lonni. I need all the heroes I can get.
• He Who Fights Monsters: Luthen is fully cognizant that he's resorted to the methods of the Evil Empire to fight them and tells Lonni as much.
• How the Mighty Have Fallen: In just a few minutes, the Imperial guards go from being the unseen arbiters of life and death in the prison, to pathetically hiding out in a locked storage room with terrified looks on their faces, trying desperately not to be noticed by the freed inmates.
• Improvised Weapon: The prisoners don't have weapons. They have lots of tools and pieces of whatever they've been assembling, though.
• Know When to Fold 'Em: The remaining guards wisely decide to hide away once the prison break is truly underway. They know that they don't stand a chance against five thousand angry men, some of whom are now armed with blasters.
• The Man Behind the Curtain: The voice behind the prison intercom is revealed to be a rather skinny, nerdy-looking guy with a somewhat nasal voice, using a voice filter that lowers his speaking voice to an intimidating boom.
• Mauve Shirt: Xaul and Birnok, both members of the prisoner floor crew who were identified by name and given a fair number of lines in previous episodes, are both shot dead by the guards during the breakout.
• Meaningful Echo: Early in the episode, Cassian says to Kino, "I would rather die trying to take them down than giving them what they want." Later, when Kino is making an announcement to the whole prison, he says the exact same line.
• The Mole: ISB Supervisor Lonni Jung is a spy for Luthen and has been for six years, alternating between passing information to him and receiving information that will further his career and thus his value to Luthen. Doing what the ISB does has taken a toll on his conscience, and he wants to retire, passing Luthen information on Dedra and her Aldhani investigation as his final service. Unfortunately, Luthen has no intention of letting him go.
• Near-Villain Victory: The prisoner revolt almost fails in its first minutes. The guards are able to stop the prisoners from climbing up onto the broken elevator and out of the factory room. However, they fail to spot Cassian climbing and he is able to kill the guards and clear the way for the rest of the prisoners to take over the prison.
• The Needs of the Many: Lonni Jung warns Luthen that the ISB know about Kreegyr's planned power plant raid, and are setting a trap for him and his men. To his shock, though, Luthen refuses to call the raid off, pointing out that it would let the ISB know they have a leak, and he considers the lives of 50 men a price worth paying to prevent that.
• Oh, Crap!:
  • The look on the guard's face when the Big Red Button that controls the electric floor stops working.
  • Mon Mothma is quietly appalled when Skuldun finally makes it clear that the price of his unofficial banking system will be an arranged marriage between his son and her daughter.
• Poor Communication Kills: When the prisoner revolt starts, the guard in the 5-2 control room has a chance to yell into the intercom and warn the main control room and put the entire facility on alert. Instead, he vaguely says that they are having a problem. This results in the guard in the main control room thinking that he is talking about the water leak and treating it as a less-than-serious technical issue. The guards in the main control room still have no idea what is happening when Andor and Kino capture them.
• Railing Kill: During the prison break, Melshi runs a floor down and shoots a guard at the top of the elevator, sending him tumbling over the railing.
• Red Herring Shirt: Lonni was a minor recurring character in previous scenes set at the ISB, barely more than an extra. This episode reveals he is The Mole for Luthen, and responsible for much of the intel Luthen uses for his goals with the Rebellion.
• Resignations Not Accepted: Lonni Jung wants to leave the ISB to spend more time with his new daughter and to be free of the mounting stress of being Luthen's mole. Luthen pressures him into staying in place by tacitly threatening the daughter. Luthen also points out that the ISB is unlikely to let Jung just resign and they would be very suspicious of his supposed reasons for quitting.
• The Reveal: The ending reveals that Lonni Jung is Luthen's mole in the ISB.
• Rewarded as a Traitor Deserves: Inverted. The prison doctor that broke rank and informed Cassian and Kino in the previous episode of what really happens to people who finishes their sentences and how Level 2 was fried is seen among the prisoners escaping Narkina 5.
• Rousing Speech: Kino delivers one to spur the other levels into action, and although he needs a Get A Hold Of Yourself Man from Cassian, he's visibly amplified and outraged in its delivery as he discards whatever nervousness he was holding onto.
  Kino: My name is Kino Loy. I'm the day shift manager on Level Five. I'm speaking to you from the command center on Level Eight. We are, at this moment, in control of the facility. [breathes heavily]
  Cassian: [sotto] Is that the best you got?
  Kino: How long we hang on, how far we get, how many of us make it out, all of that is now up to us. We have deactivated every floor in the facility. All floors are cold. Wherever you are right now, get up, stop the work. Get out of your cells, take charge and start climbing. They don't have enough guards and they know it. If we wait until they figure that out, it'll be too late. (shudders) We will never have a better chance than this and I would rather die trying to take them down than giving them what they want. We know they fried a hundred men on Level Two. We know that they are making up our sentences as we go along. We know that no one outside here knows what's happening. And now we know, that when they say we are being released, we are being transferred to some other prison to go and die and that ends today! There is one way out. Right now, the building is ours. You need to run, climb, kill!
  [prisoners yelling]
  Kino: You need to help each other. You see someone who's confused, someone who is lost, you get them moving and you keep them moving until we put this place behind us. There are 5,000 of us. If we can fight half as hard as we've been working, we will be home in no time. One way out! One way out! One way out!
  Everyone: [chanting] One way out! One way out! One way out!
• Rule of Symbolism: Escaping the prison requires jumping into the water and swimming several miles to shore. A direct overhead view of the prison, with its hexagonal shape and series of bridges, resembles the Imperial sigil. And the prisoners are swimming away from it.
• "Shaggy Dog" Story: Cassian's planned breakout turns out to be this for Kino personally. Because the facilities on Narkina 5 don't house a pool of flight-capable vehicles, the only way to escape is to shut off the hydroelectric power generators and swim to shore. Unfortunately, Kino can't swim, and Cassian gets bowled over into the water before he can try to come up with a solution.
• Shame If Something Happened: As Lonni is riding the elevator to the Coruscant underworld, Luthen congratulates him on becoming a father and compliments his baby daughter, as an implicit threat to Lonni if he doesn't stick with the rebellion.
• Soft Water: The “one way out” is to jump out of the prison and fall a hundred feet into the ocean below, and still be well enough to swim miles to land.
• Stunned Silence: When Cassian and Kino storm into the control room, the head technician turns around and is so shocked he simply gapes for a few seconds.
• A Taste of Their Own Medicine:
  • When Cassian and Kino take control of the command tower, Cassian holds the surviving guards in there at blasterpoint and shouts at them to get on program, just like how they'd ordered him and his fellow prisoners around day in and day out.
  • The guard who enjoys electrocuting and using the rod on prisoners gets killed when the newest prisoner grabs his rod during the start of the riot and tases him.
• This Cannot Be!: When Cassian and Kino march into the prison control center with drawn blasters, the operators seem more confused than frightened, as if what they're seeing is simply not possible.
  Head Technician: You shouldn't be here.
• Title Drop: "One way out!" become Arc Words and a rallying cry for the Great Escape.
• Trap Is the Only Option: Lonni tells Luthen that his enemies know Luthen is planning a raid. Luthen refuses to tip his men off even though the ISB will probably catch and kill them. He reasons that if they don't show up, the ISB will know he has a mole in their ranks.
• Uncertain Doom: The only way out of the prison is to jump into the ocean and swim to the shore. Kino can't swim, and Cassian is knocked into the water before he can do anything to help him. This means that Kino's likeliest fates are to drown or get recaptured and executed, but we don't see what became of him. Also applies to most of the prisoners who are shown swimming away from the facility. Although hundreds if not thousands made it to the water, at the end of the episode only Cassian and Melshi are shown having made the shore, and it seems likely that hundreds of them, including many elderly, would not have survived the fall or subsequent swim to shore.
• Understatement: When the riot is in full swing, one of the guards reports "We have a situation on 5-2-D." Of course, "situation" doesn't begin to describe it.
• We Interrupt This Program: Kino uses the prison's PA system to make a Rousing Speech encouraging all the prisoners to stand up and leave as fast as they can.
• Wham Line: One from Kino that changes everything.
  Kino: I can't swim.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: It's not made clear what happened to the prisoners as only Andor and Melshi are shown to have made it to dry land. Xaul was shot during the riot and Kino was shown not leaving, as he couldn't swim. But three of Andor's allies and the med-tech are last seen inside the prison, looking for an exit, or jumping into the sea.
• What You Are in the Dark: It turns out that Kino knew the entire time that he was probably never escaping as a result of his inability to swim. And yet in spite of that, he helped Cassian lead the prison break for everyone else when he could've just left them to fail.

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