Andor S2E10-12 Review | "Make It Stop," "Who Else Knows?" "Jedha, Kyber, Erso"

"Every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end."

Diego Luna as Cassian Andor in Andor Season 2’s finale. Image credit: Disney

[Welcome to Decoding TV’s coverage of Andor Season 2! For each of Andor’s four 3-episode drops, we’ve been running recaps by Dan Gvozden, plus a bonus podcast episode. If you’d like to support what we’re doing here, please consider becoming a paid subscriber. The review below contains spoilers for Season 2, Episodes 10-12 of Andor.]

Following up on the previous batch of episodes was always going to be an impossible task for showrunner Tony Gilroy and his team of creatives. Not only had the narrative of the entire season been building to the massacre on Ghorman and Mon Mothma’s point-of-no-return speech, but the spectacle of both events surely couldn’t be matched or repeated, if only for budgetary reasons. The reception to the episodes was just as monumental, with episodes eight and nine debuting in the top ten, highest-rated individual television episodes in IMDB’s history.

These three final episodes, directed by Alonso Ruizpalacios and written by Tom Bissell, act mainly as a means to emotionally conclude the stories of the lead characters that audiences have followed throughout Andor by exploring their motivations and challenging them to move on to the next stage of their personal rebellions. More than anything, this batch serves as a transition to the events of Rogue One, which, in the typical Star Wars style of telling stories backwards and out of order, recontextualizes the film as the true ending of Cassian Andor’s lifelong growth into the “messenger” that the galaxy called him to become.

Your mileage may vary depending on how much you hoped for the conclusion of Andor to be purely self-contained or to escalate events beyond what came before. Still, for many, these concluding episodes will evoke feelings of inevitability and the question, “Haven’t we seen this before?” This does not diminish their impact, stellar production, or entertainment value. These episodes begin with a heist/assassination mission in an Imperial hospital that de-emphasizes the series' richly explored focus on spycraft and instead uses the adventure to frame a series of revelatory flashbacks. The subsequent story is an escape-the-planet rescue mission that could have come directly from the script of Rogue One, if only for its focus on the unique partnership between Cassian and K2SO.

But it’s also important to note that the stakes of these missions decisively shift away from Andor’s focus on the birth of the Rebellion to their future mission to stop the Death Star, perfectly aligning with Cassian’s mission in Rogue One and successfully closing the gap in the timeline. It all feels so familiar, and Andor has always thrived on not feeling familiar. But perhaps that’s a reminder that the fight against fascism requires unending vigilance and that surrendering for even a second risks allowing further encroachment by illiberal forces (or a second Death Star).

Equally valid, in the case of any rebellion, it can be impossible to identify the inception point through which each victory arrives. Do we need to experience more stories about how the Rebellion received the plans to the Death Star? I don’t think so. However, the answer that Rogue One provided is further complicated here. The world of Star Wars feels richer for it, particularly due to the skill of this writers’ room, even if it cuts against the standalone nature of Andor.

But if Disney considers telling the story of the many Bothans who died to get the plans for the Second Death Star, it should trigger some serious red flags.

It’s only in the final half hour that Andor finally leverages its two seasons of detailed character study to deliver an understated emotional gut punch that reorients the entire series around Cassian Andor and properly defines his role in saving the galaxy and the personal value of his self-sacrificial mission, which only fulfills itself in the final moments of Rogue One, as he stands on the beach with Jyn Erso and embraces his fate. I’ll get into the details of the final image of this series later in the recap, but it reopens a long-standing conversation about the order in which Star Wars is best experienced. While this finale to Andor is touching on its own, it takes on an entirely different context in the wake of the events of Rogue One.

Each of the final moments with the main cast of Andor is equally understated, to the point of feeling anti-climactic. This isn’t an episode full of big speeches from impassioned characters, except for an audio recording of Karis Nemik’s (Alex Lawther) manifesto about the impossibility of their struggle. Even when called to speak up to defend Cassian in front of her fellow Rebel leaders, Mon Mothma sits in silence, only to later quietly approach Bail Organa on his behalf. Instead, each character silently grapples with how their actions over the past two seasons have shaped their destinies. The script, actors, and camera seem to break the fourth wall, looking both at the audience and into the future, as the weight of what’s to come hits us all at once.

A great deal of ink will be spilled to describe how Andor leveraged the history of modern fascist movements to create a timeless antiauthoritarian story that often feels like it is commenting directly on the events of the contemporary world. I’ll leave that to other excellent historians to outline the specific details of how Andor does this so well, but I felt it appropriate to acknowledge its boldness. In an era where major news outlets and opposition parties in the United States won’t dare even to utter the word “fascist,” Andor doesn’t just assert the need to punch Nazis; it underlines how essential it is to fight back against those who aid in the eradication of our shared human liberties, while also asserting the necessity for that fight to be one full of love, companionship, and a clear-eyed focus on what it means to be victorious.

The most anti-war film of all time, Come and See, wouldn’t allow its war-ravaged, shellshocked, suicidal, orphaned protagonist to imagine undoing the events of World War II by killing baby Hitler in his crib. I believe that when faced with the same decision, baby Sheev Palpatine wouldn’t be spared by the characters of Andor. I don’t want spend too much time praising Disney, whose stances against anti-democratic forces and in support of human rights seem to align only with their pocketbooks. However, the specificity and moral grayness of Andor’s depiction of the fight against fascism is genuinely surprising and represents the kind of bold, political, artistic scream needed to shock the conscience of America that we need in our most treasured pop culture franchises right now.

EPISODE 10: “Make It Stop”

One of the most frequent recurring visual motifs throughout this season of Andor is a flashing red light, which often opens each new episode with an air of mystery and suspense. The flashing red inherently signals that something is going wrong and elicits emotions best captured by the recurring Star Wars joke quote, “I’ve got a bad feeling about this.” Any further significance connecting the flashing red lights of Luthen’s signal to Cassian, the electrified floors of the Narkina 5 Imperial Prison Complex, the comms device in the safehouse, or any of the other half-dozen or so appearances is currently beyond my comprehension.

Either way, this episode begins with another similar appearance of a flashing red light, this time in Kleya’s secret office at the back of Luthen’s shop for rare artifacts. They are being signaled by Supervisor Jung, their spy within the ISB, for a sudden and panicked meeting in a relatively public park on the upper levels of Coruscant. The two, sensing that something could be seriously wrong with the situation they are walking into, prepare for the worst and what it would mean to finally flee Coruscant. Luthen acknowledges the situation isn’t perfect, “I think we used up all the perfect,” and that they’ve genuinely lost all control over their engagements with the Empire that they once had. The Rebellion has grown too large for any certainty, and any engagement could be their last.

Jung walks quickly out of the ISB headquarters, past squads of stormtroopers, and nervously sits next to Luthen on a bench in a poolside plaza. He tells Luthen that Dedra Meero contacted a friend of his in Tactical the previous night to assist her in assembling a team on Coruscant. Jung believes her intent is to use that team to come after Luthen, but he was unable to obtain any additional information because he feels that he’s been “burned.” Jung claims, “I’ve figured it out. I know what we’re chasing,” but before he reveals anything more to Luthen, he demands that he get security for his family. Luthen lightly implies that he will provide for them, if only to get Jung to talk.

It turns out that Jung has had access to Dedra Meero’s private storage records for a year and didn’t tell Luthen out of fear that he’d force him to use it immediately. Instead, he waited until this moment to spend two hours digging through her files, knowing that it would likely expose him as a spy once he did so. He found a wealth of information valuable to the Rebellion, but none of it more critical than the revelation that the Emperor’s energy program is a lie, the rebellion on Ghorman was a front to cover up the mining of kalkite, the Imperial presence on the planet Jedha isn’t about partisans but rather the acquisition of kyber crystals, and that “Orson Krennic has been building a secret weapon for over a decade.” I don’t think I have to spell it out for anyone reading this, but he’s not talking about a moon, but a space station—the Death Star.

He asks Luthen where they might go to escape the Empire and relay what he found. When Luthen tells him, “Yavin,” it’s the first time we see him begin to acquiesce to the reality that the army of the Rebellion might now be the next stage of the frontier, despite having held out for as long as possible to continue operating his clandestine missions from the shadows. But his promise to Jung, a loyal and self-sacrificing member of the Rebellion, amounts to nothing more than comforting words to a man at the end of his usefulness. The show cuts away before their conversation ends, but when it returns to the plaza, we see a silhouette of Jung’s body, sitting alone on the bench. The truth is evident before any confirmation is revealed: Luthen has shot Jung in the heart. Luthen’s true motives for killing Jung are never clarified—whether they be purely utilitarian, driven by fear for the safety of the Rebellion, or an act of mercy—but his unexpected death, coupled with his pleading, reminds us of Luthen’s cutthroat tactics.

Together, Kleya and Luthen review the information they just learned from Jung, including the name “Galen Erso.” Luthen wants her to memorize it so she can flee Coruscant and inform the leaders on Yavin while he stays behind to destroy all evidence of their work. She protests but ultimately relents and leaves to arrange for her departure to Yavin. Luthen quickly returns to his shop and opens a canister of what appears to be molten metal. He pours the metal over his communication devices and the rings he and Kleya use to store information and codes. However, seconds later, before he can destroy all evidence of his work, the chime of his shop’s front door rings. He walks out to answer it, puts on a fake smile, and opens the door before we can see who it is.

It’s Dedra Meero, just as Jung warned. She feigns interest in the shop, “I’ve passed by here many times. I’ve always wanted to come in.” Neither drops their guise and Dedra’s true intentions, as a customer or otherwise, remain opaque. Their conversation, too, could be interpreted as one between a dealer and an interested buyer, or between two people trying to discover the other’s next move playfully. Dedra asks if all the pieces are authentic, and Luthen responds, “At the moment, only two pieces of questionable prominence are in the gallery. Any guesses?” I’ll give you two: Dedra and Luthen. When he shows her a crystalline ceremonial dagger, she again asks, “Is it real?” He coyly responds, “We still don’t know. The tension mounts.” No kidding, Luthen!

Then, Dedra reveals a strange case and suggests that she might have an item he would be interested in. She pulls out a “vintage Imperial starpath unit,” the same one that was instrumental in Luthen’s first meeting with Cassian back in Season 1 and was lost in a firefight with the Pre-Mor Enforcement team. Its appearance convinces Luthen that she’s no longer just appearing as a potential customer in his shop. Right on cue, Dedra cuts to the chase, revealing that she’s dreamt of this moment for years, “and here you were, all that time, hiding in the shelter of Imperial peace and quiet.” The two trade verbal spars, with Dedra labeling Luthen as an agent of chaos and Luthen pointing out how “confident and terrified” she is. The Rebellion has outgrown her grasp, and as disgusted as she might be with Luthen, he tells her that “there’s a whole galaxy out there waiting to disgust you.”

Dedra intends to bring him in and torture him until he reveals the Rebellion’s secrets, but she notices a fire at the rear of the shop. Luthen turns away as she screams at him to turn back around. He doesn’t, and slowly reveals the ceremonial dagger in his hand, now dripping with blood. He falls forward, knocking over an artifact, mortally wounded. She screams for a med team, as her mission will be an utter failure if he dies. The squad of Imperial troops waiting outside quickly rushes in, straps him onto a futuristic stretcher, and loads him into a transport as Kleya looks on.

The Imperials scan everything inside the shop, collect Luthen’s dagger, and discover his weapons and destroyed comms devices. News of Dedra’s raid on Luthen’s shop and Jung’s death reaches the ISB and Partagaz, who informs Supervisor Heert (Jacob Beswick), who leads the investigation into Axis and has been suspicious of Dedra’s activities. He immediately departs for the hospital, where they will attempt to revive Luthen.

Back at the safehouse, Kleya processes the attack on Luthen and considers what she must do to continue their mission. The remainder of the episode unfolds with her preparing and executing a plan to remove Luthen from life support in an Imperial hospital, preventing them from torturing him for the information he entrusted her to deliver to the Rebellion. Intercut throughout this narrative, the episode flashes back to reveal how Luthen and Kleya first met, formed a bond, and ultimately how she dedicated her life to aiding Luthen in his subversion of the Empire’s conquest of the galaxy.

Some twenty years (or more) ago, we join Luthen, a de-aged Stellan Skarsgård, in the belly of a transport ship, where he appears to be a sergeant in the Imperial army, shortly after the dissolution of the Republic. The ship is empty, save for him, and has landed on an unspecified planet. Outside the ship, we hear the screams of people suffering at the hands of blaster fire. Luthen appears to be in shock, as smoke and debris are launched through the open bay doors. He quietly pleads, “Please stop. Make it stop.”

One of the soldiers in his company returns to the ship and informs him that the Captain is looking for him. Luthen concocts an excuse, as the soldier reveals that they managed to clear out a basement of about fifty people. The soldier retrieves a high-powered weapon that resembles a flamethrower and turns Luthen’s radio back on, which he sharply notes had been switched off. Luthen is clearly attempting to distance himself from the actions of his teammates. Whether this is the first time he has participated in an order to massacre innocent people or not, this seems to be the pivotal moment that has awakened Luthen to the horrors of the Empire, just as Syril experienced before his death on Ghorman and Finn experienced in Star Wars: The Force Awakens.

Then Luthen hears a gasp from behind a storage grate on the ship. He quickly pulls it open, armed with a knife, and discovers a young girl whose clothing and hair suggest she’s a more primitive native to the planet he’s landed on. It’s a young Kleya. He tells her to be quiet as the ship's captain returns to retrieve Luthen so that they can begin their next attack on the native people. Luthen orders him off the ship, suggesting, “I’ll be right behind you,” and turns back to extend a warm hand to Kleya.

We rejoin Luthen and Kleya on another part of their travels together, seemingly a few months later. They’ve changed their names—“Kleya” and “Luthen” are revealed as false names—and they bounce off each other to barter with the more primitive locals. When a shopkeeper asks if Kleya is Luthen’s daughter, he hesitatingly says, “Yes.” As they walk away, Kleya asks Luthen if she’s meant to pose as his daughter now. “When it is useful,” he replies. “We’ll be whoever we have to; it won’t always be up to us. I’m Luthen now, you’re Kleya; everything else is up for grabs.”

The two continue bartering in a cliffside town overrun with Imperial stormtroopers. The previous night, an Imperial sniper was attacked, but a merchant tells Luthen and Kleya that “they keep finding people who did it.” The troopers drag a group of chained locals, including children, into the public square. Luthen tries to get Kleya to leave, knowing what’s about to happen. Instead, she approaches the men and children lined up for execution by firing squad. Everyone looks away as the stormtroopers kill the natives, but Kleya keeps her eyes fixed on the murders. She rejoins Luthen and begs him to start fighting back. He urges patience, which further infuriates her. However, he lays out his entire philosophy to her:

“We fight to win. That means we lose, and lose, and lose, and lose. Until we’re ready. All you know now is how much you hate. You bank that, you hide that, you keep it alive, until you know what to do with it. And when I tell you to move, you move.”

He pauses and shouts at her, “MOVE!”

We rejoin Luthen and Kleya several years later. They have cleaned up and are wearing expensive clothes, indicating their successful partnership and ability to assume roles within increasingly upper levels of this galactic society. They sit in a riverside restaurant overlooking a beautiful city and a bridge that resembles the Ponte Vecchio in Florence, Italy. Their attention is focused on the fifty Imperial soldiers and transports that patrol the bridge. Luthen offers Kleya an opportunity to abort their mission, the success of which will mean they must flee this planet and leave their comfortable lives behind. He tells her, “You need to know you are making a choice. I lived most of my life without ever realizing that was a possibility.” It’s a version of the same speech he gave Cassian Andor at the end of Season 1, but he’s less assured of his role as a mentor and what it means to invite someone so young into a life that he only recently discovered at a much older age.

But Kleya is headstrong and agrees to continue with their mission. He hands her a device, a trigger for an explosive, and tells her to, as Emperor Palpatine famously instructed, “Do it.” He informs her that this time the trigger and explosive are real, suggesting that he’s tested her before with less lethal results. He instructs her to look directly at him as she pushes the button. The bomb goes off, everyone in the restaurant screams, and then he allows her to turn and look at the remains of the bridge, vehicles, and men. “We’ll be leaving now. We made our choice.” They flee the restaurant.

In the present, Kleya retrieves several hidden items belonging to her and Luthen from the safehouse apartment, then marches through Coruscant, past fully armed stormtrooper squads, and directly to the hospital where Luthen is being kept. Inside, Dedra stands outside the hospital room where Luthen is hooked up to a device that is keeping him alive and breathing – let’s call it a “beskar lung.” She’s impatient about how long it will take to gain access to Luthen, enough that she threatens a doctor to move all her critical patients as the ISB takes control of the floor.

Kleya enters the hospital with her hand wrapped in a bloody bandage. She navigates the hallways and into a locker room, where she uses a device to dig through several units until she finds a yellow nurse’s uniform to disguise herself. As she walks through the various wings of the building, filled with alien patients floating in bacta tanks, she peers through the entirely transparent walls across the courtyard. She watches Supervisor Heert take an elevator to the floor where Luthen rests, accompanied by an Imperial Marshall. Heert and his men confront Dedra about how she timed Luthen’s arrest with his day off. Despite her assertions regarding her successful outing of the Axis cell operating on Coruscant, they are there to arrest Dedra.

Meanwhile, Kleya steals a small alien patient in a wheelchair to use as cover for accessing the hospital's upper levels. She wheels the befuddled alien past several checkpoints before abandoning it to sneak up a flight of stairs in her socks, while it sings a song from below. As the only other person who knows Jung’s secret, she takes a greater risk with each step she takes closer to Luthen. An Imperial officer confronts her; she lies and ultimately shoots him as he approaches. After that, she’s on Luthen’s floor, and her goal is within reach, although it is behind the watchful eyes of many armored soldiers.

She pulls out a similar explosive device to the one she and Luthen used to destroy the bridge and triggers the explosion of an entire bay of transport ships at the base of the hospital. The stormtroopers and officers race to the elevators and stairs to respond to the attack as she walks past them, blasting a few on her way. Moments later, she enters Luthen’s room. It’s silent, but the eerie sounds of his assisted breathing, which played over the show’s title card, are as loud as those of Darth Vader. She looks down at the man who was not only her savior but also became a father to her, and without hesitating, reaches up, unscrews his attachment from the breathing device, and allows him to breathe one last time. Kleya gazes down at his face, tenderly kisses his forehead, and a single tear runs down her cheek. She leaves the room.

Luthen’s lifeless body lies prone on the table as troopers rush after Kleya, reminding us that he finally gave “everything” to the cause of the Rebellion.

EPISODE 11: “Who Else Knows?”

Allow me to start this episode recap with an apology for overlooking a key detail from the last batch of episodes that essentially sets up the return of a significant player in the final two episodes of Andor. Before the massacre of the Ghorman people, there was a sequence that detailed the Front’s assembly of weaponry to defend themselves against the Imperial troops. We see Vel searching through some blasters until she uncovers one with a blue handle and unique Pre-Mor insignia. She asks whose gun it is, and a man raises his hand. That man was unrecognizable to me, given his various hairstyles and minor role in Andor Season 1 and Rogue One. However, he’s none other than Ruescoot Melshi (Duncan Pow), whom Cassian met in the Narkina 5 prison and would go on to join him for his final mission to Scarif to secure the Death Star plans.

That gun, the AD-616K6KA, has undergone an extraordinary journey, one that roughly parallels Syril Karn’s. The weapon was originally Syril’s and was issued to him as part of his role in the Preox-Morlana security service. However, during the shootout involving Cassian, Luthen, Syril, and the other Pre-Mor troops, Cassian held Syril at blasterpoint and took his weapon. He then brought the blaster with him to Aldhani, which put him in trouble with his new rebel teammates, who became immediately suspicious of his allegiance to their cause. This is where Vel encountered the weapon for the first time. Amusingly, when Cassian talks to Arvel Skeen (Ebon Moss-Bachrach) about the original owner of the gun, he tells him, “Didn’t get a name.” That’s right. Not only does Cassian not know Syril’s name, but he also held Syril at blasterpoint with his back turned to him. So, when he asks Syril, “Who are you?” he’s genuinely asking. He’s never seen Syril’s face before.

In the aftermath of the Aldhani heist, Andor takes the money they stole and hides away on Niamos. He places the pistol alongside his weapon in a secret box stowed away in the ceiling above the shower in his hotel room. However, when he gets arrested and imprisoned, the stash remains hidden in the hotel room until he escapes and retrieves it. Cassian then gifts the blaster to his fellow prison comrade Melshi as a parting gift. This is how the pistol ends up with Melshi on Ghorman and is recognized by Vel. Where it goes from there, only time will tell. The ultimate poetic justice would have been if Carro Rylanz used Syril’s gun to kill him, but upon revisiting the scene, it’s clear that isn’t the case.

Either way, this has been a long way to say that Melshi has returned for this episode, alongside a few other Rogue One favorites, for a two-part rescue mission that highlights the specific joys of that film’s ensemble cast adventures. But first, we return to the hospital as the Imperials try to determine what happened to lead to Luthen’s death. The Medical Director Recklaw (Timothy Bentinck) is furious about the disturbance and violence at his hospital and the Empire’s lockdown of his facilities. Imperial Supervisor Heert threatens to arrest him if he further slows down their investigation and demands that he provide the hospital's security logs. With the security logs secured, Heert pressures a talkative comms officer to review their security footage, where they find an image of Kleya posing as a nurse.

Back at the ISB headquarters, Krennic looks through glass into an interrogation room where Dedra sits. We never see his eyes, as they remain cut off by the frame, but his grimace reveals his state of mind. He turns off the room’s surveillance, enters, and begins to berate Dedra with questions. He labels her a Rebel spy and pries for information about who she might have leaked details regarding the Death Star to. He tells her about Jung’s access to her CERT and how they discovered she had been scavenging information on Galen Erso, Eadu, Jedha, and two years' worth of background on the Death Star’s construction.

He menacingly places a finger on her head as he circles her. She admits that she is a scavenger but suggests that without her work, and despite the efforts of Krennic and his men, they would have never found Axis. It was one of Krennic’s men who tortured an informant to death after he pointed a finger at Luthen, ultimately leading to her discovery of his deception. Regardless, the error lies with Dedra because she confronted Luthen alone, allowing for mistakes, and his assistant Kleya is now on the run. In the end, Dedra essentially repeated Syril’s mistake, but on a larger scale, by taking on a personal mission alone. She allowed her form of justice, revenge, and vanity to cloud her judgment, compromise her mission, and land her in prison.

Kleya returns to the safehouse and uses a pipe to open the concrete wall, revealing several pieces of a communications device. She assembles it and uses it to transmit a sort of Morse code signal. Back on Yavin IV, the Rebellion has fully established its base, complete with a hangar full of X-Wing fighters and dozens of pilots, engineers, and soldiers. Wilmon returns from the hangar to find Dreena in his tent, upset about something she discovered hidden under his bed. It’s a comms device that’s been chattering.

We return to Cassian’s home on Yavin IV, where he plays a tabletop game with K2SO and Melshi. Like poker, they keep increasing their bets according to their confidence in their various pieces. K2SO becomes upset by the illogical actions of his friends, proving once again that he’s the anti-C3PO: “The chances of you making a bid of that scale are not statistically measurable.” He’s not quite the calculator of risk that C3PO was and can’t speak Bocce, but like C3PO, he also had his head messed with enough to change allegiances in this ongoing war. (Remember when C3PO’s head got put onto a battle droid’s body in Attack of the Clones and he tried to kill Jedi while spouting one-liners like “Oh, I’m quite beside myself”?)

The game quickly ends when Wilmon shows up to inform them of his findings. They swiftly decide to rescue Kleya from Coruscant, despite the possibility that it could be a trap and K2SO’s reminders that the rules prohibit such actions. Together, they register themselves to test pilot a U-Wing and blast off for Coruscant, breaking seventeen… no, eighteen orders in the process.

Meanwhile, on Coruscant, Supervisor Heert enters the ISB building and shows Partagaz a holographic image of Kleya. Krennic orders him to distribute the image as widely as possible, but if he isn’t successful in finding her, he will have his name added to the “ever-lengthening list of names in the ISB Death March.” Partagaz and Krennic acknowledge the tremendous pressure they are under to deliver for Emperor Palpatine. Krennic is leaving for Scarif to attempt to finish his delayed Death Star project and reduce any leaks about its existence to the wider galaxy. As he departs, Partagaz wishes, “Best of luck to us both.”

With his search for Kleya underway, Heert decides to visit Dedra in her prison cell. He informs her of Luthen’s death at the hands of Kleya. She tries to pin the mistake on Heert, who was “Jung’s best friend,” as he pressures her to tell him why Krennic’s project is so important. Regardless, he needs her help, as he assumes her knowledge of the Axis project could provide him with the guidance he needs to find Kleya. He’s right, of course, because she immediately remembers that in the old Axis files, they found a radio on Ferrix with old frequencies—precisely the ones that Bix used to communicate with Cassian from Ferrix—which could help them identify how Kleya hopes to communicate with the Rebellion. From there, Heert travels to Luthen’s shop and discovers that his data and contacts were destroyed, but that his radio survived.

Cassian, Melshi, and K2SO enter Coruscant’s orbit, with Melshi reflecting that he’s never been to the planet. K2SO proudly reminds them, “I’ve been to Coruscant, I was in a parade there once.” They then launch into the city, weaving through buildings like the mountains of Ghorman before landing outside the safehouse building. The Imperials, too, jump into action with two teams of elite soldiers flying to the building as Partagaz directs them from the ISB headquarters.

Cassian and Melshi leave K2SO with their U-Wing to keep the engine running and manage the comms. As they enter the building, the Imperials land and initiate a sector comms scramble, which prevents them from communicating with K2SO. Nevertheless, they ride the elevator to the floor where Cassian used to live. They exit the elevator, blasters drawn, as Cassian is hit with a wave of nostalgia and memories of his life with Bix. They quickly rush down the hallway and knock on the door to the safehouse, expecting to find Luthen. Instead, they find Kleya, who remarks, “It would be you, wouldn’t it?”

On the ground level, the Imperials use their comms device to transmit signals to Kleya’s communicator. The radio’s signals allow them to determine what floor she’s on, as one of their squads is led by an enormously tall, mustachioed Sergeant Gharial (Andrew Brooke). Meanwhile, Kleya tells Cassian all the details that Luthen asked her to relay to the Rebellion, as she does not want to travel with them to Yavin and is unaware of their impending discovery by the Empire. Cassian tries to convince Kleya to join them, admitting his past mistakes of running away and abandoning Luthen’s cause. While they argue, K2SO realizes that the comms have been shut down and uses his Imperial design to eliminate several of their remaining soldiers and pilots. However, the soldiers remain on Cassian and his team's heels after realizing they went to the wrong floor to find Kleya. The episode ends with them correcting their mistake and slowly inching their way down the hallway toward the outgunned team.

EPISODE 12: “Jedha, Kyber, Erso”

This episode begins right where the previous one left off, as Cassian convinces Kleya that traveling to Yavin won’t be the end of her journey but a way to keep Luthen alive. The Imperial troops make their way down the hallway and activate the lights at the ends of their rifles, with Supervisor Heert trailing behind them. Everyone is caught off guard as Melshi steps into the hallway and directly into their line of fire. He quickly runs and hides from their sight, which prompts the soldiers to call out a search warrant before throwing a stun detonator through the saferoom’s doorway. A shootout begins, but the detonator knocks Kleya out and partially blinds Cassian.

But it’s K2SO to the rescue! He grabs a rifle from a downed soldier, plows down the hallway, blasts the troopers, and picks up Heert to use as a shield, his body limply ragdolling as he throws Gharial against the wall with a deadening thud. “Cassian, I’ve cleared the path.” They race down the hallway, down the elevator, and out of the building, where Cassian takes a moment to look back at his former apartment, as if leaving his home, a part of himself, and Bix behind. They board the U-Wing with the injured Kleya and fly through Coruscant while avoiding other patrol ships. K2SO remarks, “I assume any doubts about my value have been erased.”

Meanwhile, on Yavin IV, a dressed-down Mon Mothma, General Draven, and Bail Organa – who must have escaped from Coruscant – speak to Saw Gerrera through a hologram to his hideout on Jedha. They are frustrated because he has been attacking Imperial transports, jeopardizing not only his men but also those on Yavin IV. However, Saw is deeply distrustful of them and has devolved into an even more unstable version of himself, perceiving conspiracies everywhere. He accuses them of having Rebellion infiltrators and spies in his ranks, which Mon quickly denies. “If only you could fight as well as you lie,” he reports, hesitating, with nothing more to say, as a moment of sadness, doubt, and terror crosses his face before he ends the call. Bail calls him insane, but Draven reminds him, “He’s not. We’ve been probing his team for over a year now.”

Just then, the Mon Calamarian Admiral Raddis (James Henri-Thomas) enters the hall to inform them that the missing U-Wing, the ship Cassian stole, is about to land. I had hoped we’d see how the Mon Cala and their advanced fleet of warships joined the Rebellion, but I’m sure that story will be told elsewhere. The Rebels scramble squads of soldiers to meet the ship when it lands, unsure of its cargo. X-Wings engage the U-Wing from the sky, as K2SO offers them a friendly wave from the cockpit. But when the ship's doors open, the tension is diffused, at least momentarily. Kleya is rushed off to the sick bay, and Draven dresses them down and orders K2SO to shut himself off.

He then escorts Cassian before the council, who demand to know why he broke their rules and jeopardized the Rebellion again. He admits that he did, in fact, rush off to save an old friend, Luthen, who is now dead. However, the result brought him to Kleya, who told him the full details of Luthen’s spy deep within the ISB and his knowledge of how the Emperor’s energy project is just a cover for a weapon that connects the mining on Ghorman, the Empire’s occupation of Jedha, and someone named Galen Erso. They don’t believe him, specifically because of his connection to Luthen, whom they deeply distrust.

Here, Cassian’s role as a “messenger,” as conveyed by the Force healer, and as someone who has acquired pain and meaning through various adventures throughout his life, comes into full view. He understands the good and bad of Luthen’s methods, but he is uniquely experienced enough, with relationships whose tendrils snake through every facet of the growing Rebellion, that his final act is as an expert witness to Luthen’s legacy. “I don’t know if what he told me was true or not, but it is insulting to hear him run down by people who have given a fraction of his sacrifice to his Rebellion,” he tells them. The last time that Cassian even spoke to Luthen was a year ago, “When he had [me] rescue Senator Mothma from the Senate,” he reminds the council. “Duly noted,” Bail adds, reminded that it was one of his hired men who tried to have her killed.

Mon Mothma sits silently through the conversation but speaks up when Bail orders Cassian confined to his quarters to allow him to visit Kleya in the infirmary. Draven escorts Cassian there, revealing that Cassian’s embedded spy in Saw’s camp, Tivik, has sent them urgent messages about Saw’s descent into madness. You’ll remember him as the man Cassian kills in cold blood at the beginning of Rogue One when they find themselves cornered by stormtroopers. Evidently, it was this action that prompted showrunner Tony Gilroy to begin questioning the character of Cassian Andor, particularly how he arrived at a place where he would kill his friend, which kicked off the development of the show. Cassian goes to Kleya’s side and admits that she didn’t receive the hero’s welcome he promised her.

Vel is summoned to Mon’s side and learns of Luthen’s death. Mon has an important task for Vel; she wants her to spy on Cassian to “help [her] believe him.” Cassian approaches Wilmon to inform him of Luthen’s death, to which he responds, “He made it worth it.” They embrace, mourning their friend who inspired them to rise against the Empire on Ferrix. Meanwhile, Draven receives a message from Kafrene from someone who won’t talk to anyone but Cassian. It’s Tivik, if you haven’t already figured it out.

On Mon’s orders, Vel meets up with Cassian for a drink and offers a toast to Luthen. “We can’t toast them all, can we?” Cassian asks. “Gorn, Nemik, Taramyn…” Vel somberly recalls. “Cinta,” Cassian adds, and Vel painfully winces before adding, “The Ghormans, Ferrix, your mother, the Danis.” They drink as the rain pours down around them in a blanket that quiets every sound but their conversation. Vel immediately admits that Mon sent her to determine if Luthen’s story is real. Cassian, assuming the role of a speaker for the dead, stands up for Luthen and his sacrifice and notes that Kleya wouldn’t lie about something like that.

Then, as Kleya removes the tubes attached to her arms in the infirmary, we hear a reading from Nemik’s manifesto:

“There will be times when the struggle seems impossible. Alone. Unsure. Dwarfed by the scale of the enemy. Remember this: freedom is a pure idea. It occurs spontaneously and without instruction. Acts of insurrection are occurring constantly throughout the galaxy. There are whole armies and battalions that have no idea that they’ve already enlisted in the cause. Remember that the frontier of the Rebellion is everywhere. And even the smallest act of insurrection pushes our lines forward. And then remember this: the Imperial need for control is so desperate because it is so unnatural. Tyranny requires constant effort; it breaks, it leaks. Authority is brittle. Oppression is the mask of fear.”

Surprisingly, it is Partagaz who listens to the words, as he acknowledges that the Empire won’t be able to contain the spread of the Rebellion. Captain Lagret requests that Partagaz leave the ISB chamber, but allows him a moment alone to collect his thoughts. In solitude, Partagaz sits at his desk and pulls out a blaster. From outside his chamber, we hear the gunshot of his suicide. The stormtroopers standing guard flinch, but Lagret remains still, indicating that not only was he expecting Partagaz’s suicide, but that he, too, has considered that possibility for himself.

Why was Partagaz listening to Nemik’s manifesto? We’ll never know for sure, but we have a few brief insights into his motivations. The moment that comes directly to mind is Partagaz’s scolding of Dedra when she treats her assignment within the ISB as anything more than a job. It could be that Partagaz always had sympathies for the Rebellion but felt that he would be safer within the confines of the Imperial system, just doing a job dispassionately. It could be that, sensing his death at the hands of the Empire due to a series of failed missions, he was finally willing to open his eyes to the enemy, whether seeking clarity for himself or simply wanting to engage with the foe that had defeated him. I’m sure that some will argue that perhaps even Partagaz was a high-level spy for Luthen, though this seems like a stretch.

Vel and Cassian conclude their conversation by discussing Bix. She urges Cassian not to wait too long to reconnect with her, a warning reflecting her regrets after Cinta’s death. Kleya wanders through the rainy camp to meet Vel at her home. She reveals that without Luthen and their mission, she no longer knows who she is. Yet, Vel offers her a moving sentiment: "I have friends everywhere. You’re here with friends.”

Melshi and K2SO are released from prison and return to Cassian’s home, accompanied by General Draven. He relays to Cassian that they received a message from Tivik on Kafrene. Cassian tells Draven that he trusts Tivik, but points out that it could be a brilliant trap. Still, this is enough to convince Draven, who goes to Mon and Bail with Cassian’s thoughts.

Then, in a surprising moment, we return to what appears to be a flashback to Kenari, where Cassian (then Kassa) encounters his lost sister Kerri. However, K2SO wakes Cassian from this dream, adding, “Waking up humans is always confusing. The man you do not like is here.” Bail has come to speak with Cassian, telling him that he changed his mind after speaking with Draven and that “If I die fighting the Empire, I want to go down swinging.” Cassian reflects that he and Luthen would have gotten along better than Bail knows. Bail prepares to leave Cassian’s home but adds, “May the Force be with you, Captain.”

Cassian then waters his plants, indicating that he intends to return from this mission; he’s not bailing on the Rebellion. He dons his outfit from Rogue One and walks to the Yavin base. In a montage, we visit the surviving cast of the show, sending them off on a final note: Melshi is leading a squad of Rebel soldiers, Wilmon eats with Dreena, Mon and Vel share a meal among their people in the mess hall, Perrin drinks his sorrows away in the back of a transport with another woman who is blacked out, and Kleya wakes up in her bed on Yavin. I had begun to worry that Dedra wouldn’t get a proper sendoff, but my fears were misplaced. The show finally returns to her; she’s not wearing her Imperial uniform, cries into her hands, and is revealed to be, as the camera pulls back, held captive in one of the Narkina 5 prisons, likely until the day she is electrified to death.

Cassian continues his walk toward the hangar when he encounters the Force healer, who gives him a knowing glance. Saw stands paralyzed in the window where he will meet his fate in Rogue One, while Krennic observes the final construction of the Death Star laser, which will later trigger his fate high above the surface of Scarif. Cassian boards the U-Wing, where K2SO waits, and tells him to “Get us out of here.” They speed directly into the beginning of Rogue One. Meanwhile, back on the farm planet of Mina-Rau, B2EMO plays with another droid as the camera rises over the wheat fields to reveal Bix.

But Bix is not alone. She holds Cassian’s baby in her hands as she looks towards the golden light streaming through the clouds. She tells the fussing child, “It’s okay,” and smiles. Then, the show cuts to black. Andor is over.

I cried.

As a father who fears the accelerated growth of global authoritarian forces—whose tactics and atrocities have run parallel to the stories in Andor—I can only hope to offer my three-year-old son a future born from the kinds of selfless actions demonstrated by so many of the characters across both seasons of this masterful show.

I could think of no more touching ending to Andor than the retroactive reveal that Cassian’s legacy lives on despite his impending death. For the entire duration of this show, the one thing we thought we knew was that despite Cassian’s sacrifices, his personal journey was one of tragedy and loss. We must assume that he knew nothing of his child’s existence, but the reality is that his life was spent fighting for a better world for his child. Cassian’s journey is recontextualized, and the show's title also takes on a different meaning. “Andor” is no longer one person but a familial lineage that will exist and thrive due to Cassian’s sacrifice. I hope and pray that the creatives at Disney choose never to revisit this story and instead allow the potential of the Andor family, the thing Cassian fought for, to remain infinite and to stand in for the sacrifice of every person who fought for justice in this galaxy and ours.

It’s hard to say if Bix knew she was pregnant when she chose to leave Cassian on Yavin IV, but I’m certain that if she did, it only hastened her decision to leave. If she was convinced that her presence was distracting Cassian from his role in the Rebellion, surely she must have known a child would mark the definitive end for him. Therefore, her sacrifice takes on additional meaning as well, for without Cassian’s involvement in the Rebellion, her child would have had to live a life under the oppressive Imperial regime. As Luthen pointed out, “We fight to win. That means we lose, and lose, and lose, and lose. Until we’re ready.” This is a win for Cassian Andor.

Stray observations:

• In the wake of this week’s episodes, I revisited Rogue One and was surprised to learn that one of Orson Krennic’s final lines, before being killed by his own Death Star’s laser, occurs when he first encounters Jyn Erso. He asks, “Who are you?” right before Cassian shoots him from offscreen, just as Carro Rylanz did to Syril Karn. As George Lucas once said, “Again, it’s like poetry, they rhyme.”

• I suspect many will leave this series asking for answers to the lingering questions and clarity on the many implications the show makes about the actions and motivations of its characters. The biggest of these is likely to be the fate of Cassian’s sister, Kerri. Showrunner Tony Gilroy has said in multiple interviews that it was always his intention for Cassian to never find Kerri and that it was a mystery that he felt better served the story and character by remaining unsolved. The loss of his sister can then explain why Cassian is so driven to save everyone he encounters, including Luthen and Kleya in these final episodes.
  
  I will admit that I’ve spent more than a reasonable amount of time entertaining my theory that there is a familial connection between Kleya and Cassian. When we first meet Kleya as a child, she’s hiding in Luthen’s ship on an unnamed planet we never see. This could very well be Kenari, especially since we know that the native population was wiped out in a series of mining accidents that poisoned the planet, leaving only Cassian’s tribe of children alive. One could argue that in this week’s flashback to Luthen’s time as a sergeant, we are witnessing the Republic/Empire’s eradication of the population of Kenari to reopen the planet for mining, just as they did on Ghorman. Additionally, both actresses who play Kerri and young Kleya look remarkably similar.
  
  However, the timeline doesn’t make sense for this to be true. When we meet Cassian and Kerri, we see that the mining disasters have already killed nearly all the people of Kenari. Then, Cassian is taken from his sister after he boards a downed Republic ship. So, it wouldn’t make sense for Kerri to hide and escape with Luthen while her people are being slaughtered, because they had already died before she was separated from Cassian. Therefore, if you see any articles claiming this to be true, send them a link here and tell them that someone already thought way too much about this.

• Also, no one entered my competition to rename Molotov cocktails for the Star Wars universe. So, I’m going with “Shambo Raavas,” named after one of the leaders of the Ministry of Enlightenment and the Socorran liquor raavas, which is a concentrated extract of zsajhira berries and water from Socorro's neighboring planet, Neftali. Try explaining that to your coworkers at a cocktail party!

Dan Gvozden is a film and comics critic who lives and works in Baltimore. If you enjoyed this review, check out his Spider-Man podcast, The Amazing Spider-Talk.