It might be hard to remember now, but Andor on Disney+ originally started out as a petty crime drama. Cassian Andor (Diego Luna) gets in over his head he kills two corporate security officers giving him grief. Normally, his crime would be swept under bureaucratic red tape, but the ambitious Syril Karn (Kyle Soller) sees this case as an opportunity to prove himself. Instead, it all blows up in Syril’s face, transforming Andor into the Valjean to Karn’s Javert.
**Spoilers for Andor Season 2 Episodes 7 and 8, now streaming on Disney+**
Andor Season 2 Episode 8 “Who Are You?” finally features the ultimate showdown between Cassian Andor and Syril Karn. Syril eventually gets the upper hand on the Rebel spy, but Cassian says something that makes him hesitate in horror. After two seasons of Andor and their violent coffee shop fight, our hero has no clue who the lowly Imperial agent even is.
“Who are you?” Cassian asks. Syril is horrified and pauses. This gives local Ghor leader Carro Rylanz (Richard Sammel) the perfect moment to kill Syril.
“I feel terribly sorry for Syril,” Andor showrunner Tony Gilroy told DECIDER. “I actually have great affection for Syril. I think Syril is a victim in every way. I think he’s a romantic and a fantasist. I think he could have just as equally gone in many different directions if he’d been shown any place that there was some love or some light.”
Part of the reason why Gilroy feels so bad for Syril is he understands that his attraction to the Empire is born out of his traumatic childhood with emotionally abusive mother Eedy (Kathryn Hunter).
“He craves order, obviously, because he grew up with a sort of alpha predator chaos machine in a box,” Gilroy said. “So I think his need for order and structure is fundamental.”
It’s that hunger for order that sucks him into the orbit of ISB officer Dedra Meero (Denise Gough). Syril is so devoted to her that he’s ignored all the signs that she’s been playing him to infiltrate the Ghorman Front, thus setting them up for destruction. Gilroy revealed that in another universe, Syril really could have allied with the Ghor.
“I think he was happy in Ghorman,” Gilroy said. “I mean, Ghorman, the clothes, the stricture of it, the properness of it. I think Kyle [Soller] really started to feel, look comfortable in Ghorman.”
“I think the fundamental lies that he’s been told from the very beginning, I mean, they’re crushing. No one has played him properly. So I feel terrible for him. And then to stand there and realize that you’ve destroyed something that you didn’t intend to destroy.”
Syril’s last act, attacking Cassian, isn’t just the culmination of years of hyper-fixation on the Rebel. It’s also him saving Dedra from Cassian, who is there to assassinate her. What should be a moment of absolute triumph for Syril is soon transformed into the utter unraveling of his world.
“My god, there’s the thing you’ve been chasing all this time and it doesn’t even know who you are!” Gilroy said. “I mean, the episode is titled, ‘Who Are You?’ for a reason. It’s his episode, so I feel, I have great empathy for Syril.“
Gilroy revealed he also had some empathy for Dedra in this episode. Fans will note that she has her own emotional meltdown during the massacre. Gilroy cheekily said, “Have you met anybody who doesn’t have chaos within them? I never have. I mean everybody has chaos. It might be in small degree, it might be overwhelming, but characters who lack confusion in some element are really sort of tedious.”
Still, Gilroy also pointed to Dedra’s “tactical” brain freaking out in this moment.
“I think she’s really tactically wondering if this is a good idea,” he said. “I think she’s also uncomfortable with not being in charge. I think that’s part of it. I also think that whatever feelings she does have for Syril, she realizes that this is a breaking point.”
“And certainly by the end of the episode when she realizes that he’s dead, I mean, they’ve been together in some weird way for, you know, a while now. He saved her life. They’ve lived together. They’ve turned off the lights together,” Gilroy said, slyly referencing couple’s unconventional brand of intimacy.
And after Andor Season 2 Episode 8 “Who Are You?”, those lights are off forever for one poor Syril Karn.
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