"I want what you want. I sense it. I know it."
"They made a mistake. A man who was just released on [level] four ended up back on [level] two the next day. Word got out on the floor, and then they killed them all."
— Doctor Rahsiv
Dedra tortures Bix on Ferrix to get her to talk about Cassian and "Axis". Dedra presents her findings to the ISB; outside, she is accosted by Syril, who professes his admiration for her.
Mon's pleas to stall the PORD fall on deaf ears in the Senate. Tay informs her that her fundraising efforts have run into a roadblock and that she might have to work with a wealthy "thug" from Chandrila to get it papered over. Vel, who turns out to be her cousin, pops by for a visit before returning to Chandrila.
On Narkina 5, Cassian tries to foment dissent among the prisoners, especially after he notices something amiss among the authorities. During a shift change, they learn that an entire floor was fried by the highers-up. When his teammate Ulaf suffers a debilitating stroke, the arriving doctor euthanizes Ulaf and informs them that the mass murder was due to a mixup: a man who was supposed to be "released" ended up on another level. Realizing the uselessness of cooperation, Kino tells Cassian what he knows about the prison.
Tropes:
- Awful Truth: No-one gets released from Narkina 5. Prisoners that are let go from a floor are simply shuffled into a work crew in a different facility, to live out the rest of their days among the population (and likely get worked to death on projects requiring less precision than the Narkina 5 work). Learning this is what leads to everyone on Level 2 being killed off. When Kino is informed by a reliable source, he immediately begins collaborating with Cassian to plan an escape.
- Beneath Notice: As Cassian says in his Title Drop: "Nobody's listening". The Empire cares so little for and thinks so little of their slave laborers as long as they meet their quotas, they don't even bother with Sinister Surveillance. At the end of the episode, Cassian and Kino find out the other reason the Empire doesn't bother watching them; "released" prisoners are simply returned to the labor pool in a different facility, so there's no escape or release. Everyone in the Narkina facilities will either be worked to death, commit suicide from despair, or be executed.
- Bookends: The prison segment of the episode first begins with Cassian asking Kino about the amount of Imperials on each floor. The very last scene of the episode has Kino relaying that information to Cassian after reaching his limit.
- Break the Cutie: Dr. Gorst tortures Bix until she is left with a Thousand-Yard Stare.
- Brown Note: In the past, The Empire implemented a Final Solution against the Dizonites, a sentient species that inhabited the planet Dizon Frey. The Empire had wanted to set up a refueling center there, which the Dizonites had taken opposition to. As they were all slaughtered by the Imperials, which was recorded for "posterity," they gave out a unique screech, a sort of "choral, agonized pleading." When Imperial officers were monitoring the recordings remotely, they were all later found huddled underneath their ship's bridge. Due to its value as a torture device that left no physical marks, the Empire modified it a little and made sure to include a section with the children be the one they used in torture. Dedra claims repeated exposure can cause permanent damage.
- Cool Aunt: Vel brings her niece Leida (actually her first cousin once removed, but Leida calls her auntie) gifts whenever she comes and visits.
- Despair Event Horizon: Kino reaches his after Ulaf's death and learning that the prison is a life sentence with no possibility of parole, and starts giving Cassian information about the prison.
- Does This Remind You of Anything?: Kino Loy's growing dissatisfaction with the prison and the realization that his role in it ultimately means nothing, culminating in him telling Cassian crucial information on the Imperials guarding Narkina 5, feels like watching a 9-to-5 worker gradually reaching his breaking point with his job's stagnation and ultimately snapping and Going Postal.
- Don't You Dare Pity Me!: Ulaf gets angry at Cassian and the other workers at his table when they try to help and cover for him, as he is very close to the end of his sentence but is losing his physical and mental faculties due to old age and, presumably, sheer exhaustion.
- Double-Meaning Title: The episode's title, while referring to Cassian's Title Drop within the prison, also refers to Mon Mothma's attempt to call out the Empire on their overreach.
- Dramatic Irony: Perrin asks whether Vel will be looking for a husband when she returns to Chandrila, and praises the fact that she "hasn't gone political", unaware that Vel is already in a relationship with another woman, and deeply entangled with the Rebellion up to an including physical violence against the Imperial military. Mon even smirks a little at Perrin's remark about marriage.
- Everyone Has Standards: Try as he might to keep his doubts at bay, Kino is deeply unsettled by the strange events on Level 2, and when the truth is revealed about what happened, he's visibly seething with cold fury and doesn't hesitate to provide Cassian with info on the guard population that he'd previously refused to divulge.
- Faux Affably Evil:
- Dr. Gorst, the ISB's resident Torture Technician, seems a rather personable fellow despite the unpleasant nature of his work and even gives Bix a friendly wave when Dedra introduces him. But he never shows any empathy for any of the suffering he causes his victims and seems to enjoy what he does. He smiles with wonder as he describes the Final Solution against the Dizonites and leaves Paak and Bix speechless and with a Thousand-Yard Stare.
- Dedra, after several episodes of seeming to be a reasonable Imperial just trying to do her job well, shows this side of herself. After adopting an interrogator's false sense of charm and persuasion when talking to Bix and trying to get her to confess, she reveals as cold, ruthless, even sadistic a personality as one would expect from Imperial officers, putting Bix through Brown Note torture without bothering to learn if it's necessary first and having no objection to hanging Paak as an example after he'd endured the same.
- Forensic Accounting: Even with an allied banker, moving credits to the Rebellion is still dangerous for Mon Mothma, and there's now a 400,000-credit withdrawal in her accounts that she won't be able to explain if and when it gets detected. To cover it up, she's forced to consider a loan from a Chandrilan gangster; as much as she disapproves of Luthen's more brutal activities she knows his goals are aligned with hers, while Davo Sculdun is, in her words, a "thug" (Tay Kolma pointing out he's "the wealthiest thug of them all").
- Foreshadowing: During a shift change, the lights flicker, and the workers are delayed for an unspecified reason. At the end of the episode, Kino and Cassian find out what happened: the guards electrocuted an entire level's worth of prisoners while they were in the bridge for a shift change after they learned there was no release from the facility.
- Girly Skirt Twirl: Leida tries on the dress that Vel brings her and shows it off with a twirl.
- He Knows Too Much: When the prison staff realizes that the prisoners in Level 2 have learned that no-one is ever released and either dies or is moved to a different level, they murder the entire level.
- High-Voltage Death: What happened to all of the prisoners in Level 2 — they discovered that prisoners don't ever get released, only moved to another prison, so they were all electrocuted and replaced with a new, more compliant workforce.
- Hope Spot: Ulaf has only 40 shifts left on his sentence but suffers a debilitating stroke and is euthanized. Kino only has a few months left but finds out that "released" prisoners are simply transferred to other prisons.
- Inn of No Return: In a way. Narkina 5 shows prisoners how many days they have left before their release, but that is a lie. Prisoners are either moved into a different section, one designated for those who have been "released" from their prior sentence, or they die, either via euthanasia, overwork, or electrocution (for any of a number of reasons, from punishment to suicide). When a prisoner who was "released" from Level 4 was accidentally placed into Level 2 of the same building rather than moved to one of the other facilities, people started asking the wrong questions and the whole level was fried to eliminate witnesses. (Even the most generous interpretation would be that the mass slaughter response was to prevent anyone finding out that the prison operators had made a mistake in putting a man back in who'd just been released, rather than just... actually releasing the man they'd accidentally imprisoned again, and then made it policy that, to ensure no-one would ever learn of it, no prisoner would get out alive again.) Unfortunately, they didn't account for a medic-prisoner who might pass the knowledge along.
- Internal Homage: As Bix is being tortured, the camera cuts to the corridor outside of the interrogation room. The door into the room closes shut as the camera pans down and follows an Imperial officer who walks by, which is almost an exact replication of the scene in A New Hope when Leia is about to be tortured for information inside her cell on the Death Star.
- Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Kino has spent previous episodes as The Quisling, keeping other prisoners in line. However, after Ulaf suffers his stroke, we see that he does genuinely care about the men under his care and wants to keep them motivated to work until they get to go home. When he realizes that prisoners aren't being released, just reassigned to other prisons, his faith in the Empire shatters, and he helps Cassian plan his escape.
- Leave No Witnesses: The Empire makes an administrative error, placing a "released" prisoner from Level 4 back onto Level 2 the next day. When those on Level Two learn what happened, they are all killed.
- Make an Example of Them: Paak gets hung in the public square to "remind" the other locals who is in charge after he's tortured into giving up the information the ISB wants from him.
- Mercy Kill: The med tech gives this to Ulaf, partly due to there being no chance of him getting proper care after his stroke, partly in anticipation of Ulaf's entire level, if not the building, being "fried" very soon.
- Make It Look Like an Accident: Discussed by the ISB leadership after they capture a Rebel pilot. After getting good intel from him, they realize that his absence would be noted soon and tip off his cell, so decide to give him the appearance of an accidental death.
- Murder Is the Best Solution: If a floor starts causing problems, the prison staff just murders them all and brings in a fresh batch of convicts to take their place.
- Neutral No Longer: While he spends most of the episode shirking Cassian's attempts at learning more about the prison, warning him to abandon those trains of thought, Kino is visibly uncomfortable when the power goes out and is seething when he learns the truth, to the point he doesn't hesitate to tell Cassian what he needs to know at the end of the episode.
- Not Helping Your Case: When Dedra asks if Karn's stalking her, Karn replies that he knows she works at the ISB Central Office and sometimes comes around to see if he'll see her, which all but tells her "Yes".
- Nothing Is Scarier:
- We don't hear anything of the Brown Note torture that Dr. Gorst subjects Bix to, only Bix's distraught screams in response.
- The execution of everyone on Level 2 is never shown. We only see the power going out briefly when it happens, and only hear about it near the end of the episode.
- Pet the Dog: Kino immediately softens his usual Drill Sergeant Nasty routine when Ulaf has a stroke and appears visibly distraught when efforts to save him turn up in vain.
- Pragmatic Villainy: Dedra refuses to torture Maarva because she's too old and frail to survive. She doesn't have any moral objection to torture and murder, she just thinks Maarva might be more useful alive as bait.
- Rage Breaking Point: Kino reaches his in this episode upon learning that no-one on Narkina 5 is actually getting released upon completing their sentences — to the point where he willingly divulges vital information on the prison to Cassian.
- Released to Elsewhere: In the brutal Penal Colony of Narkina 5, prisoners are kept working in the hope of finishing their sentences and going free. In this episode, it's revealed that "release" simply means "getting transferred to another section of the prison labor system", and prisoners were killed en masse when an administrative mixup caused this to be discovered. Learning that release isn't real causes the former complacent foreman Kino to finally side with Cassian's hope for a prison break.
- Retirony: Ulaf has the fewest amount of days left on his sentence out of anyone else on the level and he and Kino both seem quite happy about it. Naturally, Ulaf's health begins deteriorating rather quickly, eventually resulting in a massive stroke. Played with in that he survives the stroke, but is given a Mercy Kill by the prison doctor when it's revealed he can't be given the care he'd need to recover, and ultimately subverted with The Reveal that the Empire isn't letting any prisoners out alive anyway.
- The Reveal:
- Vel's upper-class background, first hinted at in the previous episode by Cinta, is fully elaborated upon here; she's the cousin of Mon Mothma and a member of Chandrilan nobility.
- The prisoners on Narkina 5 never actually get out — they just get transferred to different facilities, likely full of others who already know the truth, to be worked to death. A clerical error caused someone from Floor 4 to end up on Floor 2, and when he told the others, the prison admins fried the whole level to cover it up.
- Rewatch Bonus: Upon rewatching the episode you can see when Ulaf has his stroke — it's during the scene where he says he's having issues with one of his hands.note
- Screw the Rules, I'm Doing What's Right!: Upon realizing that being a model inmate doesn't actually matter regarding his sentence, Kino decides to stop hiding information about Narkina 5, giving it to Cassian when he next asks.
- Stalker without a Crush: Implied. Syril Karn stalks Dedra Meero by regularly hanging out in front of the ISB headquarters and seeing if she walks by, and she at first assumes he's making advances of a romantic nature to her — but Syril's dialogue more or less indicates that he stalks her because he sees her as possessing the tightfisted and authoritarian values of the Empire, and wishes to be given a larger role in the Ferrix investigation. This does not make her any more comfortable about it.
- Title Drop: After Kino rebuffs Cassian's attempt at gathering information for escaping the prison for what is clearly not the first time, Cassian starts to plead and try to convince Kino that nobody's listening to them individually until he's howling at the cellblock that "Nobody's listening!"
- Torture Technician: Dr. Gorst has particularly cruel methods of torturing his prisoners to get them to talk. He's very good at his job and disturbingly, both not sadistic yet still upbeat about it. He just seems really fascinated by what sound waves can do to the human psyche.
- Tranquil Fury: At the end of the episode, Kino tells Cassian that there are "never more than twelve" Imperials on each floor at a given time with quiet, yet obvious rage in his voice.
- We Have Reserves: The prisoners are very expendable. If any of the floors start to become troublesome, they will all be exterminated by electrocution and (presumably) replaced by more prisoners, ignorant of their eventual fate.
- We Will Use Manual Labor in the Future: Lampshaded by Cassian, who points out to Kino that prisoners are cheaper and easier for the Empire to replace than droids. (This being the Empire, it's also quite possible that to Palpatine, the cruelty is the point.)
- Wham Line: "Never more than twelve." By finally answering Cassian's persistent question about the number of guards, Kino signals he is Neutral No Longer and that Cassian's gained an important ally in whatever prison break he's got planned.
