#i can never decide if the point of this scene is that the brain is quicker than the calculator#or that they’re going to die anyway so they might as well jump with incomplete calculations#but at any rate #cassian is good at math#do you ever think about this boy from a war zone. this boy who’s been fighting since he was six#do you ever wonder what his education was like#do you ever wonder who taught him to calculate hyperspace jumps and reprogram droids#do you wonder how much he taught himself#and how much he learned from people who are lost to him#are there weird gaps in his knowledge because his schooling has been a chaos#and other areas where his knowledge is exceptionally in-depth (tags via @chamerionwrites)
*points emphatically* THIS!
So, this scene was the one that made Husband, Best Friend, and I all make very uncomfortable noises at the screen.
Because Cassian Should Not Have Been Able To Do That.
Long story short, Star Wars ships have a thing that don’t let them jump out of a planetary gravity well. It’s the same thing that keeps them from being ground to bits by planets being in the wrong spot and inconsiderate comets. So, along they way of brainstorming why Cassian’s ship might not have had that thing and how it might have worked we came up with my favorite headcannon: Cassian Andor is a Secret Math Savant.
Secret even from himself. He has no idea that other people can’t just…see how the hyperspace route is supposed to go. That most people can’t reprogram combat droids quickly enough to neutralise them. He and Kay have deeply mathematical conversations that he never realizes are strange. It’s something he picked up, its useful for a spy to know these things, it’s something everyone picks up, and he never has anyone tell him how extraordinary his skill is.
(If he had been born in a different time, a different place, he may have been the Galen Erso of the story. But he was never allowed the luxury of being bad at lying)
That is a fascinating head canon! I honestly missed this when this scene went by, except for a vague “hey, I thought you couldn’t jump from a planet, oh well, guess you can when it’s super important.” And then I got distracted by Jyn and Bodhi’s passionate speeches. But I really like this! I wonder, did Cassian just go ahead and disable the part of the ship that stops gravity-well jumps? Like just decided he didn’t need that and didn’t bother to discuss it with anyone, maybe figured that personal modifications are pretty common anyway, but never mentions it so no one can say “holy hells, you got rid of what?”
I, too, believe that both Cassian and Jyn would have weirdly specific educations given their backgrounds: just super in-depth in some areas and completely at a loss in others. For example: I figure Jyn knows a weird amount of history, because Saw had a love of ruins and liked killing the Empire with archaic means, and also talked a lot about former revolutionaries. She’s probably also pretty good with electronics and basic (read: explosive) chemistry, because she made a lot of IEDs. But reading/writing? Takes forever and she gets impatient with punctuation.
I hadn’t really thought about what Cassian might be missing, though. Sure, math savant and skilled liar/manipulator. But probably doesn’t know much history that isn’t “and this is how the Empire did this terrible thing,” and since he spends all his time in populated areas, maybe does not know much of natural history/outdoor survival either (what the hell is that mound covered in crawling bugs over there? you can fish with a bent paperclip and a spool of thread? is that snake venomous?) Not much use for spies in the wilderness, so I’m guessing he’s not a big camping guy.
I always thought that this dialogue was kind of a juxtaposition of K2 yelling about precision when what was really needed in the moment was organic intuition or a leap of faith. But considering the ship can escape the gravity well AND his pal sitting next to him is a reprogrammed, repurposed Imperial security droid, Cassian might just be some sort of secret engineer.
A Force Sensitive Phasesixer 