The task facing any prequel is to make what we know to be inevitable feel suspenseful anyway. We’ve seen the victories and tragedies that are coming, we’re familiar with them, we’ve taken them into account when watching the prequel in the first place. But a good prequel makes you feel hope where you know there is none, and loss when you already know what you’re losing. In the end it uses our foreknowledge as leverage, forcing us to face the truth when we’d rather not believe.
That’s what makes this episode of Andor so devastating. From the moment it begins, it’s clear things will go poorly for the Ghor, as the Empire’s agents tear down barricades in the town square only to erect them around their headquarters, turning it into a fortress. When the people stream in to reclaim their public space, chanting “We are the Ghor! The galaxy is watching!”, it’s not like we’re under any delusions about what might happen to them. When the Ghor begin singing their planetary anthem, over and over, it’s the sound of a dying nation, a people on the verge of genocide. They will be murdered with impunity before the eyes of millions. As we in the real world have learned to our horror and shame, it can happen even here and even now.
Andor has always been ruthless about death, whether on a wide scale, as during the prison break in Season 1, or on a more intimate level, as any number of supporting characters could now attest if they were still breathing.
But this is more than that. We know that the Ghor are going to die, because we know the Death Star gets built, and we know the mineral deposits that will break up the planet when mined must be key to its construction. We know that no matter what Cassian and his allies do, there’s no stopping what’s coming. But even that knowledge can’t extinguish the hope for something better. That’s where the show really gets you.
The Ghor have a surprising sympathizer in this episode, though: Syril Karn. Syril is a born lackey, a bootlicker, a perfectly suited authoritarian toady, but there are lines even for him. He’s now realizing — because he willfully allowed himself to believe otherwise before now — that the Empire, the ISB, even his girlfriend Dedra Meero have all been lying to him.
So he does something truly shocking: He frightens Dedra Meero, badly. He in fact assaults her, choking her, and he’s very clearly capable of killing her if she doesn’t finally tell him the truth. So she does. She wasn’t having him feed the insurgency in order to lure in outside agitators like Luthen’s deadly viper assassination squad, as Syirl been led to believe. The armada of mining ships he’s seen landing around the planet was her real concern all along, They weren’t there to prevent a rebellion, they were there to incite one. Now, as a result, everyone on the planet is marked for death. It’s too much for Syril, who dumps a devastated Dedra and leaves her here, mouth agape, as he storms into the square. She’s too slow to have her minions stop him from going.
Once outside, Syril watches stormtroopers gather. A contingent of young soldiers in straight-up 2020s American riot gear gets sent into the angry crowd to deliberately provoke a confrontation. Between the setting in a busy public square at the foot of a monument, the atmosphere of impending doom, and Syril’s little-boy-lost affect, it’s all favorably reminiscent of “Baelor,” the infamous ninth episode of Game of Thrones’ first season. As things get progressively bloodier, the camera swirls around him — he’s at the center of a maelstrom and something terrible’s on the wind.
The end result is grim. Dedra gets a call from her boss, Partagaz, that once again shakes the seemingly unshakeable woman. Hanging up, she gives the order to the Imperial thugs on site for the task: Fire at will. An Imperial sniper takes out one of the young soldiers out on the street. His comrades naturally believe it was the Ghor and open fire on the crowd. The whole thing becomes a bloodbath.
Cassian winds up being there primarily to bear witness. He’s never able to keep Dedra in range long enough to get a clean shot; she ends the episode alone in her top-secret communication chamber, clawing at her uniform, hand trembling, as if the horror of what she’s presided over at this zone of interest has finally sunk into her body itself.
Is it that, though, or is it simpler? Is Dedra Meero experiencing actual grief over Syril, who doesn’t make it through the day alive?
Cassian Andor remains cast as the supervillain in the hero narrative Syril had in mind for his life. Helping Dedra hunt for Andor had given his life purpose, but now he’s found out he’s been lied to, he’s broken up with the only woman who ever cared about him, and the ideals of justice and order he thought he was fighting for have been revealed to be simple, stupid barbarism. Fueled by all that, Syril runs in from out of nowhere and assaults Cassian after spotting him in the chaos, attacking him with a ferocity that maybe only Dedra, as of a few minutes earlier, knows he’s capable of.
In fact, despite Cassian’s obvious edge in the combat department, Syril gets the better of him and has him at gunpoint by the end of their battle. But Cassian’s baffled question, “Who are you?”, gives Syril pause. Cassian has been on Syril’s mind every day for years and years; Cassian has no idea Syril Karn even exists. Confronted with the meaninglessness of killing a man who can’t understand why he’s being killed — I doubt Syril himself can either by now — the broken Imperial lowers his weapon. He can’t pull the trigger.
But Carro Rylanz can. Earlier, at the start of the ill-fated protest, Rylanz decked Syril on the street, finally recognizing him for the agent provocateur he’d been all along. It was Rylanz who first forced Syril to confront the fact that the “baiting outside agitators” story is obvious bullshit, and that Syril himself played a key role in instigating the series of confrontations the Empire had hoped for, to justify what they are clearly about to do. Now, presented with his own shot at a monster, he doesn’t hesitate, unwittingly saving Cassian’s life by shooting and killing Syril. Cassian and Wilmon stagger away from the scene without a word to Rylanz. Andor takes one final look back in the direction of his attacker, a man he’ll never know now.
Andor makes it to his getaway ship without Wilmon, who stays behind to find his Ghor girlfriend Dreena, but with the shattered remnants of a powerful KX security droid I have a feeling we’ll come to known as Cassian’s gentle-giant Rogue One compatriot, K-2SO. Only as he’s driving away does the gravity of what he’s seen and been through sink in. He listens to Dreena pleading for help, or even just for someone to hear her final moments, on Rebel radio. “If you believe in truth!” she says, “if you have any faith left in truth!…The tyranny we feared is real! It’s here today!” In response, Cassian weeps.
But so does Eedy Karn. Flanked by friends supporting her after her loss, Syril’s horrible bereaved mother wipes away tears as she watches the news from Ghorman, every word of it state-sanctioned lies, every word of it eagerly swallowed down. The righteous have no monopoly on grief, or on the ability to weaponize it. Fascists know you can get people who feel they’ve lost something to do almost anything to get it back, even if you were the ones who took it in the first place.
It’s frankly astonishing how well writer Dan Gilroy and director Janus Metz create a taut and tragic political action thriller, working within the contours of the Star Wars sensibility and aesthetic while making them feel fresh and new. In much the same way that the previous episode recaptured the magic and mystery of the Force, this one conveys the menace of the Empire as though we’d never seen it in action before.
The stormtroopers’ death’s-head helmets are menacing, their meaning plain. When Syril walks into a safe room in the Imperial building only to find it primarily occupied by hulking security droids with their own skull-like faces, his fear is easy to relate to. The TIE fighters screeching overhead once again come across like the cries of the sorcerous Nazgûl in The Lord of the Rings. This is the machinery of death, and not even Syril and Dedra can deny it any longer.
But the superb costuming and sound design put a new spin on the look and feel of the Rebellion, too, from the World War II–era costuming to the unique and unsettling noise of the airhorns the protesters blow on their way to the plaza. Syril and Cassian’s brutal, sloppy fight scene is unique in the entire history of the franchise, a Duel of the Fates set in a hotel bar with glassware instead of dual-bladed lightsabers, thrumming with the violent energy of a Sopranos beatdown rather than a wuxia showcase. Actor Kyle Soller makes these final moments of catharsis feel appropriately out of control, as if this one man, this fascinating character study in how functionaries function, is a stand-in for a galaxy on the edge.
Moving, beautiful, angry, and desperately sad, Andor has done something very special here. That song is still ringing in my ears.
Sean T. Collins (@theseantcollins) writes about TV for Rolling Stone, Vulture, The New York Times, and anyplace that will have him, really. He and his family live on Long Island.
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