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I kinda felt like there was a lot of filler. They didn't need to spend an hour of the first two episodes focusing on drama within the group of dipshits who presumably
spoiler
will get used by the empire to justify the genocide of Gorman.
I thought Cassian would step in as leader of that group of idiots and turn them into something useful, but now that he hasn't, I think you're right. They're exactly the idiots Dedra needs.
If that was what they were setting up, they could have done more to characterize them, show us what tendencies or how their lack of ideology makes them susceptible to manipulation, the message I got was just "look at these paranoid, incompetent, trigger-happy, overly-dramatic idiots.
Like there's historical examples to draw on for what Dedra is planning, from the IRA assassinating their own after British intelligence fabricated evidence others were traitors to Russian police having SR assets on payrole who participated in assassinations to get in with SR groups and identify them in the 1800s, to the FBI's varied tactics to destroy or render groups ineffectual that would all be more interesting than some group that's easily manipulated because they're just a bunch of morons.
Agree it was a slower part of the first arc, but I don't think they're filler. They're a microcosm of the current issue with a disunited rebellion. With that in mind, they're likely going to play a part in convincing our other players that it's time to come out of the shadows and take the risk of becoming a single fighting force; you could already see how frustrated Andor was with Luthen to have to deal with them at all.
To your other point, I won't be surprised at all if they end up as Dedra's reliable rebels (good thought... it hadn't occurred to me), but they could just as as easily be dead by this time next week, as I guess we're getting something of a time jump between each arc. In either event I don't think "tangential to the overall progress of the Galactic Civil War" is narratively the same thing as "filler."
I thought the reason we spent so much time with the stupid rebels was to really make sure we knew how dumb they are. This will be so that there's no question why they screw up a mission on Ghormon. I imagine an ISB intermediary supplying them with a lot of explosives and telling them to blow up an Imperial target, but the ISB ensuring the group ends up blowing up civilians instead.