From getting her scenes cut in Revenge of the Sith to becoming a lead cast in what is undoubtedly the best Star Wars TV show, Genevieve O'Reilly's Mon Mothma has come a long way. Despite being a Rebel Alliance High Council member, Mon was barely noticeable in the prequels and was overshadowed by Padme Amidala and Bail Organa in the few episodes of The Clone Wars in which we see her.
But Andor forces you to sit up and take notice of this soft-spoken yet strong-willed Senator with irrefutable faith in democracy, who does not shy away from calling a spade a spade, or in her case, a genocide a genocide.
In Andor Season 2, Mon is rescued from the Senate by Cassian (Diego Luna) and taken to the Coruscant safehouse after her open defiance of the Empire in a rousing speech. From there, she is expected to make a stop—about which we find out in Rebels—and then go to Yavin, where the Rebel Alliance is gathering forces.
However, a cut scene would've changed her storyline almost entirely, and left her struggling with even more emotional burden than she already has.
Tom Bissell, who wrote the fourth and final arc of Andor Season 2 (episodes 10-12), recently revealed that Mon Mothma was initially supposed to return to Chandrila one last time before leaving to meet her estranged husband, Perrin Fartha (Alastair Mackenzie). She was to ask him to look after their newly-married daughter, Leida (Bronte Carmichael), and possibly say farewell.
Perrin would have then said, in a shocking revelation, that he was on her side this whole time and Mon could've trusted him all along.
Bissell told Backstory Magazine, "That was gonna be an interesting moment. Tony Gilroy performed it — Perrin just saying, 'I knew what you were up to. This whole time. They talked to me. Every week, they'd interrogate me. I never said a word. You didn't trust me. You could've trusted me.' And the heartbreak she would feel in that moment, of this guy that she'd pushed out, could've been reliable."
Finding this out at a moment when she has already decided to leave, assuming she had nothing more to lose when it came to her marriage, would've made it even more heartbreaking.
"The double heartbreak of her walking away from her life, thinking she's dropping this deadbeat husband who never supported her, and then the double dagger stab... But that's head-canon, that didn't happen."
Does Perrin deserve a redemption arc after Andor?
Andor has repeatedly made it clear that rebellion looks different for everyone. On one end of the spectrum, there is the rhydonium-inhaling Saw Gerrera (Forest Whitaker), and on the other end, there is Maarva Andor (Fiona Shaw), who rebels by walking past the town square where the Empire hanged her husband.
On the surface, Perrin hardly looks like someone who can be trusted with secrets of the Rebellion. A hedonist at heart, he seems content at going about his life with the least amount of inconvenience and discomfort. He refuses to take any strong stance, even when it comes to Leida, and turns a blind eye to the Empire's acts of cruelty.
However, it would've made perfect sense if that was a cover he was using while secretly caring all along. Before Leida's wedding, Mon tells her cousin Vel (Faye Marsay) that Perrin was more open-minded than he seems and does not believe in the Chandrilan tradition of child marriage.
In the show, he is revealed to be having an affair with Leida's mother-in-law, Davo Sculdan's wife, after Mon leaves him. That lines up perfectly with how his character has been portrayed all along. But Bissell's cut scene would've given him a much more interesting and complex ending.
It could've also served as yet another reminder of how the Empire plants seeds of doubt and discord, and how difficult it is to trust anyone when you are part of the Rebellion. While Cassian Andor's story is over in Rogue One, we could see Perrin and Mon reconcile in another medium.
Alexander Freed's The Mask of Fear novel is the first in a trilogy that will explore Mon, Saw, and Bail during the Empire era. Perrin is just as unlikeable in the book as in the show, but maybe that could change after this revelation.