Andor Gave Us One Of TV's Best Monologues

And what did you sacrifice? >> The best TV monologue in recent memory starts with 9 seconds of silence, and silences are as much a part of this speech as the words.

>> Calm. Kindness, kinship. Love. >> If you stretch out the waveform of this 1 and 1/2 minute monologue, you can see how Stellan Skarsgård weaves silence into the dialogue written by Beau Willimon and Tony Gilroy. [music] Taken together, it makes up about 35 or 40% of the speech's duration, but of course,

the quantity isn't as important as the distribution. Skarsgård is using silence as a rhythmic tool, a way to clarify and emphasize. [music] A monologue this rich is all about rhythm. Every line, almost every word holds intellectual and emotional weight. to make sure everything hits, Skarsgård controls the

momentum, building his argument to a crescendo of one word. >> Everything. >> That's the short answer to Lonnie's question. The monologue preceding is an elaboration of what that everything is.

To provide a little context, Skarsgård is playing Luthen Rael, leader of a covert network of rebels fighting the Galactic Empire. Lonnie is Luthen's mole at the Imperial Intelligence Agency.

After six long years undercover, Lonnie is exhausted and scared and wants to quit, but that would be a great loss to the rebellion, and Luthen is here to persuade him to keep going. For the first time in their relationship, Luthen is revealing his face to Lonnie, a risk and more importantly, a sacrifice to

achieve a greater goal. This monologue is, of course, about sacrifice, but it also is a sacrifice, a sacrifice of anonymity, protection, and a little bit of control. When Lonnie asks him that frustrated impertinent question, you can see Luthen in these 9 seconds of silence, first absorbing that

impertinence, somewhat offended, then realizing as Willimon says that to keep Lonnie on side he's going to have to give of himself. So, this is not a prepared speech and Skarsgård's using the silences to communicate [music] that as well. You get the sense that Luthen's thought about this stuff but never

really articulated it and speaking of thought aloud, we all know this feeling, gives it a reality it didn't have in your mind. You can see the weight of this reality literally weighing down Luthen's shoulders.

>> I've given up all chance at inner peace. I made my mind a sunless space. I share my dreams with ghosts.

>> These final words echo into the silences and Willimon has written these sentences so that they end with the most evocative imagery, sunless space, like the sunless space where Luthen is confronting Lonnie, level 331 by the looks of it, which is deep in the bowels of Coruscant where the sun's light can't reach.

Ghosts, like the ghosts of Krieger and his crew, fellow rebels whose lives Luthen is sacrificing to save Lonnie's position.