Major Spoilers for Andor Season 2.

Incredible.

I could probably end the review there. I won’t. But that is the tldr.

The most recent episode block of Andor season 2 is out (episodes 7-9). In previous weeks, I have had a few nitpicking complaints. Nothing major, just small things that didn’t quite work. Not this week. These episodes were amazing.

One Year Later

Episode 7 was primarily spent establishing the new status quo and building up the main events. The Rebellion has come a long way since the last arc. They have a full-blown military operation on Yavin 4 now, the same operation which features in Rogue One and A New Hope.

I was a little surprised when they opened on the planet. I don’t know why, I knew it was coming. I guess I thought it wouldn’t appear until after Mon Mothma’s speech. I thought they’d initially be on Dantooine, which is said to have an abandoned rebel base in A New Hope.

Regardless, I loved it. It was great seeing the base in its early days, with some parts still in construction. They also had a brief scene with a ‘Force Healer’, which Cassian thinks is superstitious nonsense but appears to work.

It’s always interesting to see Force-based religious groups and customs outside of the Jedi and Sith. Rogue One had a bit of that as well with the Guardians of the Whills. I also liked the small detail that the healer was a cook who had some force sensitivity, not a trained Jedi or practitioner.

This is the first major reference the show has had to the Force. It makes a lot of sense to have it occur on the Yavin 4 base. I can’t imagine the Empire, still paranoid about the Jedi, is overly tolerant of any force-sensitive practices.

Cassian and Bix

Episode 7 also has Bix and Cassian living together on Yavin 4. They’re happy together, but there is some growing tension. Cassian increasingly wants out of the rebellion and is actively avoiding the leadership role that the rebel generals are forcing on him.

Luthen’s paranoia and heartless plotting, meanwhile, is putting him at odds with both Cassian and the Alliance more broadly. This is a big part of Cassian’s own problems. From the start, his relationship with Luthen has been strained. Later, in episode 9, Cassian notes that Luthen has burnt a lot of bridges.

It makes sense, Luthen’s covert approach to rebellion is less suited to the open approach of the Rebel Alliance proper. Even though this is what Luthen was working towards.

This, presumably, is why the rebellion wants Cassian to step up and assume a leadership role. They probably want him to take over more of the intelligence operations (in Rogue One, he’s introduced as Captain Andor of Rebel Intelligence).

Cassian, in turn, wants to leave and have a proper life with Bix. This ultimately prompts her to leave at the end of episode 9. She thinks Cassian needs to commit fully to the rebellion and doesn’t want to be the reason he leaves.

I’m not sure if Bix will appear in episodes 10-12, but I wouldn’t be surprised if she doesn’t. Leaving might be the only way her character survives, since she’s not in Rogue One. It is slightly heartbreaking that she says they can be together after the war, when we know that Cassian dies in Rogue One.

Ghorman

Meanwhile, Cassian and Wilmon return to Ghorman to avenge Ferrix by assassinating Dedra Meero. We haven’t seen the Ferrix characters talk much about their home world this season. It was presumably persecuted after the uprising last season. So it seems important that the characters are actively seeking revenge.

They’ve yet to get it.

Their trip to Ghorman coincides with Ghorman Massacre. This event has long been established in Star Wars lore as the key inciting moment that prompts Mon Mothma to openly declare the formation of the Rebel Alliance. But it’s never been seen before.

It featured in episode 8 and was brutal. Most of the episode was spent building up the tension to an immense level. It’s not often that a film or TV show gets an emotional response from me, but this one did. I could feel my heart thundering in my chest.

Even knowing what was going to happen (because I know the broader lore), the build-up was terrifying. The episode plays into this. Characters slowly figure out what’s happening but are unable to stop it. The former Ghorman Rebel leader, for instance, realises the Empire has been baiting them to begin a destructive mining operation and desperately attempts to stop his people from walking into a trap.

The subsequent fight, an incredible action scene, demonstrated more effectively than all recent Star Wars media that the Empire is evil. They often get depicted as incompetent and cartoonishly evil. Not this time.

Seeing the Stormtroopers emerging from the mist, to prevent the Ghormans escaping, might be the first time that Stormtroopers have actually appeared scary and intimidating (and Stormtroopers should be intimidating).

The Empire goes on to deliberately kill their own troops, sending green recruits into the crowd and then sniping them, as a staged justification to begin the massacre. And when the fighting begins, the Ghormans are overwhelmed and unable to escape. Resistance proves futile.

There’s a near-horror moment in which a Ghorman rebel tries to crawl away from a terrifying Imperial droid, only to be thrown across the plaza. Normally, when fictional characters get thrown across a room, they walk unscathed. That did come into my mind when the robots started chucking people, but no. This character hits the ground and dies instantly.

Then there’s Syril, who discovers at the last moment he’s been played. He gave the Empire his complete loyalty and believed everything he was doing was for law and order. Only to discover that the Empire is objectively evil and he’s been an unwitting accomplice to the massacre. He’s left standing in the square, his world falling apart, unable to help the people he’s hurt.

In that moment, Syril finally has another encounter with Cassian, whom he hasn’t seen since the start of season 1, but spent a long time searching for (Syril blamed Cassian for ruining his life on Morlana). Betrayed, desperate and confused, Syril unleashes his rage on Cassian, inadvertently preventing Cassian from assassinating Dedra. At the end of their fight, when Cassian doesn’t remember him, Syril starts to lower his weapon, only to be unceremoniously shot by the Ghorman leader he had manipulated.

It was an incredible performance by Kyle Soller and a fitting, if devastating, conclusion to Syril’s story. Syril was dealt a rough hand, but still believed in law and duty and wanted to do something meaningful. The Empire used that ambition to make him unknowingly commit atrocities. It seemed like a proper character study of how oppressive regimes work.

His story stands in contrast to Dedra Meero, who, despite her obvious reservations, knowingly participates in the massacre. Even after Syril, her partner, runs into the crowd, she gives the order to begin, presumably knowing that Syril will be killed. She may think she has no choice or that service to the Empire is too important. That’s another element of oppression, and it makes the character irredeemable. Dedra will probably get killed in the final bloc of episodes, perhaps killed by Cassian.

And that’s just episodes 7 and 8.

Mon Mothma

Episode 9 focuses on the political fallout and Mon Mothma’s denouncement of the Emperor in a senate speech. It’s another amazing episode, with a huge amount of tension leading up to the speech. It’s also an amazing performance by Genevieve O’Reilly (all of the performances are amazing).

Afterwards, Cassian helps her escape the senate building, marking their first in-universe meeting (they previously interacted in Rogue One). It’s a clash of worlds for Mon Mothma as well. She’s been partially insulated from the realities of rebellion and has never seen anyone get killed. She’s visibly shocked when Cassian kills the multiple ISB agents sent to arrest her.

As a side note, Mon Mothma’s escape and speech were also covered in Star Wars Rebels. In that show, the Ghost crew is instructed by Bail Organa to assist Gold Squadron in escorting Mon Mothma to Dantooine, where she can make a second speech proclaiming the start of the rebellion.

Episode 9 integrated the two versions in a fairly seamless way. Rebels didn’t show her escaping from Coruscant itself (just the aftermath), so this is the focus of Andor. Luthen discovers that the agents hired by Bail Organa to rescue her from the Senate building are compromised by ISB. He sends Cassian to get her out.

Interestingly, they changed the contents of the Senate speech (Rebels shows it in a brief hologram news reel). I don’t mind the change, though; the new speech is way better. There’s probably an in-universe workaround for the discrepancy. Maybe she recorded another speech in the rebel safe house and sent it to a news broadcaster.

There’s also a brief reference to the second speech (the one proclaiming the rebellion) and a decision by the rebel generals to credit Gold Squadron for her escape, to build up the legend.

At the end of the episode, the show begins putting the Rogue One pieces in place. With Bix gone, the distraught Cassian fully commits to the rebellion. His old prison friend, Melchi, reappears as a rebel on Yavin 4, and K2SO gets reprogrammed to serve the Rebellion (key characters from Rogue One). Based on the trailers, I thought Melchi would appear on Ghorman, but I digress.

Next Week

Next week, based on the trailer, we may see a rebel infiltration/attack on the ISB itself. Dedra Meero will probably get her comeuppance, and I think Luthen will probably get killed as well. Cassian will take on a greater intelligence role. There will also be some reference to the Death Star, with the rebels catching wind of it (again based on the trailer).

It will be interesting to see if Perrin and Leida, Mon Mothma’s family, appear in the final arc. They didn’t know about Mothma’s involvement in the rebellion and had a strained relationship with her. I’m curious to see how they’ve responded to her pronouncement/what happened to them. It’s likely that there’ll be some scenes between Mon Mothma and her cousin, Vel, on Yavin 4 as well.

This has been turned into more of a summary than a review. The episodes were incredible, is the point.

The final bloc of episodes airs next week (it can’t come soon enough!).

-Dexter