Disclaimer: This post contains spoilers for Andor, specifically episode 10. If you do not wish to be spoiled, please feel free to leave the page. This post will still be here once you've caught up, if you so wish to return (and we hope you do!).
This is gonna be a bit of a hot take, I think, but here we go...
In episode ten of Andor we find out that there is a mole inside the ISB, Supervisor Lonni Jung. Given context from the episode, Lonni joined up in order to be a spy for the resistance, and he's been playing his part well for six years, rising in the ranks to where he is now... But he's recently become a father, and the dangers of what he's doing are pressing on him more than ever. He wants out (reasonable, I think).
He tells Luthen this, that he wants to leave his role with the rebels and leave the ISB and go somewhere and focus on maybe working with his wife's family's shipping business, and to this Luthen tells him 'no'. Tells him his role and his position are too important. Tells him that he's in too deep, and that he can't leave. And during the course of this conversation the topic of sacrifice comes up, and Lonni asks Luthen what it is that he's sacrificed.
'Calm, kindness, kinship, love. I've given up all chance at inner-peace, I made my mind a sunless space. I share my dreams with ghosts. I wake up everyday to an equation I wrote 15 years ago for which there is only one conclusion: I'm damned for what I do, my anger, my ego, my unwillingness to yield, my eagerness to fight. It's set me on a path from which there is no escape. I yearn to be a savior against injustice without contemplating the cost. And by the time I look down, there's 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 I know I'll never see. 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!'
(This bit of his speech was copy/pasted from an article at SlashFilm because it was what I could find of the text.)
I've seen quite a lot of people praising Luthen's monologue, and I can't deny it is a very powerful speech, but... It comes from a place of privilege, and it seems that a lot of people are ignoring that fact.
Luthen Rael is a manipulator, a puppet master lurking in the shadows. In this scene alone, he not only lies to his very precariously placed spy (he straight up said Aldhani wasn't his doing), he coldly makes the decision to ignore the deaths of about 51 people in order to keep from raising suspicion about said spy. And his answer to Lonni's wanting to leave for safety (keep in mind, if the Empire finds out that he's a spy, they'll kill him... and they might just kill his wife and child, too, because they're like that) was to brush it off and tell him that he can't go anywhere.
Luthen, for the record, is not the one in danger there. Lonni and his family are.
Then you go back to the one loose end that could come back to him. He says it himself that he was careless in his move to get Cassian to do the job on Aldhani, and so what does he do? He sends Vel and Cinta to hunt him down. Remember, that's why Cinta is sitting on Maarva's house. She's waiting for Cass to come home so she can murder him so his involvement with Luthen won't get back to him. (Admittedly, when Vel was first given this mission, I was so hoping it was just Kleya being overzealous, but Luthen is apparently, at the very least, aware and compliant in this task if not the one who actively set it in the first place.)
This is not to say that what Luthen is doing is exactly wrong, but he can't exactly be held up as a bastion of nobility for it, either. His sacrifice is his ability to sleep at night, while those he manipulates are out on the lines risking a hell of a lot more. People like Nemik. Like Taramyn and Gorn. People like Bix. People who actually are risking their freedom, their safety, their very lives and the lives of those they love.
Luthen's monologue is amazing. It is powerful and deep, and it does speak of a true sacrifice of the soul. But it is a stance that comes from his place of privilege. His status and his money that allow him to stay out of the light, to pull the strings of other people. To allow people to die for the greater good, seemingly without a second thought. This isn't to say I don't like his character. I do, quite a bit. However, so many people will judge Saw Gerrera for his methods, but in the end, Luthen Rael is no better. And I think that's important to remember that. Do not deny him his demons, do not put him on a pedestal. That isn't what this show is about.
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