This article contains spoilers for Andor season 2, episode 9.

Andor episode 8 is among the highest-rated TV episodes of all time. But, for me, Andor episode 9 was the real highlight.

The episode explores the consequences of the Ghorman Massacre, and it's essentially the birth of the Rebel Alliance. This is the moment when Mon Mothma finally calls our Palpatine himself, exposing him as the architect of the Empire's evil. But the scene actually plays very differently to a similar one shown in Star Wars Rebels season 3, episode 18, "Secret Cargo." Why did Andor make such dramatic changes?

Tony Gilroy & Genevieve O'Reilly Understand What Andor Needs

Tony Gilroy and Genevieve O'Reilly explained their process to Entertainment Weekly, revealing this was a deliberate decision. The whole Mon Mothma story was subtly changed; "We are hijacking canon," Gilroy itted, going on to describe the discussion he had with his brother Dan when it came to writing the episode.

"In canon, she's rescued by the Gold Squadron and the speech that they gave in the cartoon, which was a canonical show, [is on that ship]. And Danny's like, 'Do I have to stick to this f--ing speech?'"

Andor episode 8 is a smart way of avoiding the issue, because it subtly focuses on a different part of Mon's story. It shows how she left Coruscant, before she even went to Gold Squadron, and it even nods to the Rebels speech - and pointedly avoids showing it. "In a really sneaky way, we're minimizing what they did in Star Wars Rebels, but we're keeping it consistent," Gilroy pointed out. "We're just saying you don't really know the whole story of what happened."

How Mon Mothma's Speech Took Shape

Mon Mothma's speech is unforgettable, and O'Reilly felt this was her greatest moment as the character.

"It was everything I was hoping for. That's like the best gift you can get as an actor. She speaks to how important the Senate is to her. You can see that it's like her church. She reveals so much and then she calls out some really brutal truths."

"That was everything I really wanted to do. I knew that that would be important to fans. I knew it was also really important to me for her. That's the fulcrum of who Mon Mothma is right there. And so I got to stand up for her in that moment. That was really important to me, and I hope it means something to people because it felt really great to be able to give her that voice."

The speech was originally told differently, with just fragments shown as the story spun out to action scenes. "Tony came into my trailer, and I said, 'It's just extraordinary,'" O'Reilly recalled. "And he just sat there and went, 'You want me to write the whole speech, don't you?' And I said, 'Yes, please, please, I would love that. Write the whole speech'."

The original plan was for O'Reilly to memorize the whole speech and just record a few key scenes. "Then, I went to the director, and the director was like, 'Yeah, let's film the whole speech.' It was such a huge thing to me to give that whole speech. It feels really special." The whole episode was reshaped around the powerful Mon Mothma speech.

I Totally Missed Mon Mothma's Key Moment Of Rebellion

I it that my focus in Andor episode 9 lay upon Mon's speech, particularly the way she calls out the Emperor; this was Palpatine's first failure, because he had always concealed his evil, allowing the public to believe the Empire's corruption was due to a sort of shadow government. But it seems this focus masked Mon's true act of rebellion to me, at least as far as O'Reilly is concerned.

In another symbolic moment, Mon casts aside her senator's robe to don Cassian's jacket as camouflage. "She has been working for the Rebellion deeply and intrinsically, and she's been vital to the Rebellion," O'Reilly explained. "But that is the moment that she crosses that rubicon and she crosses it with Cassian. That felt beautiful, that it is with him, given where we go in Rogue One. But it's that there's no turning back at that point. There is no going back."

This is the moment when Mon Mothma abandoned the Senate, choosing to define herself as a rebel. There's a sense in which that, then, was the moment the Rebel Alliance was born; Andor's key moment, one that initially slipped past me because it's less spectacular but just as significant.

New episodes of Andor season 2 release weekly on Tuesdays at 9 PM EST/6 PM PST on Disney+.