A Complicated Ending For A Complicated Show

This post contains spoilers for all of “Andor” season 2.

I wonder sometimes how we would view the first decade of Disney’s ownership of Star Wars as a whole if it weren’t for “Andor.” The sequel trilogy, which started strong, ended with the most universally disliked film in franchise history. A new streaming era on Disney+ kicked off with a fantastic spin-off in “The Mandalorian,” then slowly devolved with less stellar entries like “Obi-Wan Kenobi” and “The Book of Boba Fett.” I like “The Bad Batch” and “Tales of the Jedi” as much as the next guy, but the flagship Star Wars stories just started to seem like bad bets. And then “Andor” arrived in 2022, and as far as I’m concerned, none of that other stuff really matters.

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It may seem like I’m being hyperbolic, but bear with me. “Andor” is over now, with the final three episodes of season 2 hitting Disney+ this week, and I am in mourning. We truly may never see its kind again, and that’s not meant as a dig on the larger franchise. It’s just a fact that shows of this caliber, granted this kind of budget and creative freedom, in one of the biggest genre franchises in the world, with every single piece of the production firing on all cylinders, don’t come around often. I don’t think it’s absurd to say that we are leaving a golden age of Star Wars, simply because “Andor” was a part of it.

The final arc of “Andor” season 2 has given us plenty to chew on. This is not a simple show, and it does not have a simple ending. The last few episodes may leave you feeling unresolved, incomplete, and antsy. But that was always part of the point.

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It’s worth mentioning, even though this point has been discussed at length, that “Andor” was originally conceived as a five-season extravaganza, which was then cut down to just two 12-episode seasons due to budget and scheduling constraints. As a result, season 2 covers four years, with each three-episode arc showing a brief, pivotal moment for Cassian Andor (Diego Luna), Bix Caleen (Adria Arjona), Luthen Rael (Stellan Skarsgård), Mon Mothma (Genevieve O’Reilly), Dedra Meero (Denise Gough), Syril Karn (Kyle Soller), Vel Sartha (Faye Marsay), and Kleya Marki (Elizabeth Dulau).

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Eight characters may seem like a lot to list out, but each is a key piece of the show’s main cast. And of course, that’s without mentioning the supporting characters, all of whom are written with the same care and attention to detail. While each arc has its own primary storylines, the main threads of season 2 stay consistent. The Empire continues to approach completion of the Death Star program, which requires cataclysmic mining operations on the planet of Ghorman. The Rebel Alliance grows larger and more organized, eventually establishing a permanent base of operations on Yavin IV. And things on Coruscant get increasingly scary, forcing Mon Mothma to flee the Senate for good after giving a speech condemning Emperor Palpatine.

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After the explosive crescendos of episodes 7-9, which see Syril killed, Ghorman massacred, and Mon Mothma delivered to Yavin, “Andor” season 2 chooses a much more intimate story for its final three episodes.

The initiating action of the final act of “Andor” occurs when ISB double agent Lonni Jung (Robert Emms) tells Luthen about the Death Star. He doesn’t know its name, only that it is an incredibly powerful weapon, and that all of the mess on Ghorman, as well as other major Imperial initiatives, have been part of the project. Luthen kills Lonni and relays the information to Kleya, with the two planning to escape Coruscant for good, but Luthen is caught by Dedra while destroying evidence in his shop.

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Though he tries to kill himself to avoid betraying the Rebellion, Luthen is stopped just in time and rigged up to life support at an Imperial hospital. While recalling how she first came to meet Luthen through a series of flashbacks, Kleya sneaks in and kills him, then escapes to their usual safe house. After receiving a distress call from her on Yavin, Cassian, Melshi (Duncan Pow), and K-2SO (Alan Tudyk) journey to Coruscant to save her, facing off against an Imperial S.W.A.T. team in the process.

In the end, the group returns safely to Yavin, where Kleya struggles to contend with a new life without Luthen in it. Cassian sets off on the mission that leads him to “Rogue One,” following intel that Luthen died to secure. Far away on the farming world of Mina-Rau, we get a final shot of Bix (and the abandoned B2EMO), who fled the rebellion at the end of episode 9 because she feared Cassian’s love for her would push him away from the cause. In the show’s final twist, it’s revealed that she was pregnant upon her departure, and she watches a beautiful sunrise with her and Cassian’s child.

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“Andor” is about many things simultaneously, with each character and storyline adding more depth and complexity. But to sum up the ending succinctly, it’s a show about the endurance and perseverance necessary to truly resist oppression. It’s a show about how fascism functions, and about the necessity — both material and spiritual — in fighting back against it. It’s about the countless ways in which imperial systems demean and destroy life, and the countless more in which the human spirit barricades itself against those attacks.

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Perhaps the most interesting piece of this final arc is how it centers Kleya more than any other character. Cassian gets his big final moment in “Rogue One,” and the Rebellion achieves its first major victory in “A New Hope.” Luthen is dead, Syril has been unceremoniously killed, and Bix is gone. Vel’s big arc occurs earlier in the season. That leaves Kleya — someone who has given her life, heart and soul, to the cause, but who can’t seem to conceive of the next stage. Much of that is grief at Luthen’s passing, a man who was like a father, brother, and best friend to her. But it’s also a bigger idea — the anxiety of putting all the pieces on the table, of actually beginning to construct the future you’ve spent years planning for.

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That future is the other big idea at the end of the show. We know that Cassian, Melshi, K-2, and numerous others won’t live to see it. But Bix will. Her and Cassian’s child will. Vel, who lost Cinta (Varada Sethu) early in the season, offers comfort to Kleya on Yavin. Life itself, the show seems to argue, is the victory, and all who survive the fight must embrace it.

You may notice that I haven’t mentioned one of the eight characters I named as the core cast of “Andor,” and that’s Dedra Meero. Along with her boss, Major Partagaz (Anton Lesser), Dedra gets a brutal bit of poetic justice at the end of the show. At one point during the final arc, we see Partagaz listening to an excerpt of the season 1 manifesto written by Nemik (Alex Lawther). When one of his subordinates comes into the room, he comments that the manifesto is growing in popularity, and that the ISB has been unsuccessful in stopping its spread.

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Partagaz is called to a meeting, presumably to review the botching of Luthen’s capture. This is also a moment when the subtle methods of the ISB are starting to look rather vestigial in the face of an operational Death Star. Seeing the writing on the wall, Partagaz chooses to end his own life. Perhaps there’s even some guilt there, but that’s giving him an awful lot of credit.

Dedra, meanwhile, is pinned with a file’s worth of insubordinate activity, all stemming from her obsession with Luthen. Orson Krennic (Ben Mendelsohn) even accuses her of being a rebel spy. Her fate? Waking up in the same kind of electrified prison complex that Cassian escapes from in season 1. Perhaps this is a prison specifically for former high-ranking Imperials, or maybe the Empire simply isn’t concerned with her spilling what she knows to other inmates now that the Death Star is ready to go. Either way, she ends the show having lost everything — Syril, her career, and her role in the Imperial machine. It’s almost as if even those aided at first by fascism cannot escape its unquenchable thirst for blood and bodies.

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In the best art, form works in tandem with content. Such is the case with “Andor” season 2, which, in its decision to jump a year between each arc, makes itself into a story fundamentally about the effects of time on movements, relationships, and individuals. We see so many stages of Cassian and Bix’s romance, of the Rebellion, of the Empire’s erosion of civil liberties. Many forget that the Imperial Senate is not formally dissolved until “A New Hope,” with Tarkin marking the occasion himself. “Andor” season 2 shows that oppression and resistance are both processes that take time, but that doesn’t remove urgency from the act of rebellion.

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There is so much darkness in this show, but it returns time and again to moments of hope and joy. When we leave Cassian at the end of episode 9, he’s devastated by Bix’s departure. But when we catch back up to him a year later, he’s formed a new kind of home with Melshi and K-2. The boys’ night poker scene doesn’t erase his sadness, but it shows that if the spirit is resilient, as Cassian’s is, there’s always someplace new to find refuge and support. The power of the rebellion in “Andor” is its ability to hand off the dream from one person to the next. No matter how many people the Empire slaughters, more will take up the fight.

Lore fiends and superfans will be glad to see a number of core “Andor” characters surviving the end of the series, leaving the door open for return appearances down the line. Vel, Kleya, Bix, Mon, Wilmon Paak (Muhannad Bhaier), and others all make it through. And while the ever-churning content mill of Star Wars will surely bring some of these characters back in novels, comics, or future shows, “Andor” leaves a message in their unresolved stories: Many will die, but many will live, and it’s the latent potential of an unknown but hopeful future that gives a tragic show (Cassian does eventually die, after all) an optimistic finale.

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We know that Bix was right — that Cassian has a crucial role yet to play. We know that the Death Star is ultimately destroyed, and that the Empire falls. But beyond that, we know simply that life persists because it must. “Freedom is a pure idea,” Nemic writes in his manifesto. “It occurs spontaneously, and without instruction.”

The fight, the sacrifice, the pain, the grief … it’s all essential. It is both righteous and necessary to sustain a hopeful vision of the future. But there’s also something sublime about that future, present in the sunrise Bix watches with her baby in her arms. Where George Lucas’ original “Star Wars” used a twin sunset as its prevailing image, “Andor” chooses to end with the dawn, the return of light. And whether or not we ever see these characters again, whether or not Disney ever gives us something even close to “Andor” in the next 20 years, this show has lifted Star Wars to a height that, in my estimation, nothing prior has ever come close to.

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