Are These Guys Republic or Separatist Officers?

Something weird is going on in Andor! A ship crash lands on Cassian's home world. The crew is wearing Separatist insignias, but Maarva calls them Republic officers. So are they from the Republic or the Confederacy of Independent Systems? Is this a mistake or a mystery to be revealed down the line? Let's speculate!

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[TheLiamster]

I think it’s a hijacked ship. In the Clone Wars, the Separatists managed to hijack a Venator so it makes sense that they could have hijacked a much smaller frigate

[drewdaman]

The other question is that in the flashbacks it looked like the mining accident had already happened on Kenari (which may have killed the adults), but when Andor’s transportation contact was researching Kenari he read that it was an Imperial mining location that had the accident. Did the empire absorb all the history of the Republic and changed it to the Empire?

[CommanderJeph]

I'll be honest, I'm so used to seeing the CIS logo on droids and vehicles that seeing it on a organic being definitely made my brain not register that it was the CIS logo.

[ilariodinicola]

It is more simple than that, the scene is set before the secession of the cis from the republic. That’s why in the later flashbacks, we see an older but still a teen Cassian during the Ferrix invasion, in which we had clone troopers placing it around 19BBY

[neofulcrum]

This was throwing me a loop for a good minute

[myriadmediamusings]

I was amusingly watching your old Dark Forces Lore Play that had the level on Fest, and I laughed at how they changed up Cassian's homeworld as him lying about Fest as his homeworld.

Though I doubt we'll get answers, I do rather like the idea that this could be a Republic ship doing shady things.

[bowl-of-petunias]

I kinda figured the officers were undercover who got shot down and Maarva caught the distress signal and followed for salvage. It felt like a botched version of what happened in Catalyst.

[timefly]

The ship and officers had CIS insignias, Maarva references the Republic, and the planet itself supposedly suffered a mining disaster under the Empire (but it seems to have happened before we see Andor as a child). So there's definitely something weird going on. For now I will give them the benefit of the doubt and say it's part of the plot and not just a writing / costuming error.

[ericeilersen]

I love the black ops team idea! Attempting to frame the Separatists as bio terrorists has Palpatine’s fingerprints all over

[NiqDucoteArt]

Thank you! I was VERY confused by this cause I noticed the symbols. Would be interesting to see if this moment gets revisited.

[runningthemeta]

I didn’t even realize that the symbol wasn’t the republic logo. But now that I see it I think it might be a black ops group that was in disguise as separatist. I think something like this has happened several times in Star Wars and even in real life.

[philipcao]

It's also possible in my opinion that this flashback scene takes place a few years before the Clone Wars, and the Separatists are not a thing yet. So these guys were working for the Trade Fedaration perhaps and at the time the Trade Federation was still a member of the Republic. So Federation represantatives counted as represantatives of the Republic as well.

[eeklarthing]

Maarva and Clem had gas mask things which suggests that they knew the ship was contaminated with some kind of bio-weapon

[Ken-]

I immediatedly thought of the crash on Honoghr which devastated the planet (with a lot of help from the Empire) as mentioned in the original Thrawn Trilogy. Which I guess shows my age and the age of my fandom haha.

[sipope]

I thought they were Separatists. Once crashed i figured the Republic would be turning up.
I didn't think of them being Republic in disguise or undercover

[hw]

I watched these flashback scenes again with the closed captioning on. It looks like this:

1. This is a Separatist ship that was shot down by a Republic ship. You can tell by the arch frames in the corridors of the ship that this isn't an Imperial ship.
2. The Separatist ship may have been carrying a top-secret Imperial weapon of some kind that they stole. This is suggested by the command center that Kassa found where the control panels look Imperial in design.
3. Maarva and her partner are simply scavengers. They may have tracked the battle between the two ships.

[bangarangjack]

I thought it was the imperial science officer logo but I didn't look closely at it and it does look more like the separatist

[conorb]

I really hope we get answers to this, either through continued flashbacks or Cassian finding out about the event while looking for his sister!

[starwarsnerd]

I wonder if Marva referring to "The Republic" was a misdirection and this is shortly after the rise of the Empire. Cassian would have been around 6 or 7 at the end of the Clone Wars, in the flashbacks he looks around the same age if not a bit older. Marva might be one of those Separatist holdouts who sees little difference between the Empire and the Republic, and because the change is recent she just refers to them interchangeably. (Or maybe she's just a criminal/scavenger who sees any galactic authority as basically the same). This tendency of referring to the Republic and Empire interchangeably would also explain why it's said the colony was destroyed in an Imperial mining accident, but in Cassian's youth the mining equipment looks all old and rusted. (Though it's also possible the Empire returned to the world later to try mining again and that's when the accident happened.)

[mare]

I have a third option. Those were CIS soldiers on a republic ship that they stole, maybe? They were being chased after and crashed. Chased by who? The republic or Maarva? One of those or both? I don't know but it's certainly a mystery that I hope has a resolution eventually