With apologies to anybody hoping this prequel present may squeeze in a season 3 earlier than the occasions of Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Andor has reached its inevitable bittersweet conclusion.
Even the title of the final episode of season 2 now on Disney+ — “Jedha, Kyber, Erso” — reminds us of the tragic film narrative in retailer for Cassian Andor (Diego Luna). That checklist (a planet, a crystal, an engineer) is what sucks Cassian, together with reprogrammed Imperial droid Okay-2SO (Alan Tudyk) and Andor’s outdated jail buddy Melshi (Duncan Pow), into the hunt for these all-important Dying Star plans, at the price of all their lives.
So now we have now an entire narrative, the longest unbroken one within the Star Wars franchise; name it the Dying Star trilogy. Andor ends minutes earlier than Rogue One, which itself ends minutes earlier than the 1977 film now often known as Star Wars: Episode IV — A New Hope.
That is numerous knowledge tapes to absorb without delay, so here is a Yavin-style debrief that may deal with your greatest burning questions.
What occurs to Cassian subsequent?
Get pleasure from your final ever stroll, Captain Andor.
Credit score: Disney+
As his present ends, Captain Cassian Andor, Head of Insurgent Intelligence (his full title, solely utilized in Rogue One) is on his technique to meet with a supply named Tivik (Daniel Mays) on a deep-space buying and selling outpost known as Kafrene. Cassian is aware of Tivik already, from a while between the present’s BBY time jumps — so don’t fret, you did not miss him in Andor.
Tivik is without doubt one of the informants that Basic Draven (Alistair Petrie) positioned contained in the more and more paranoid crew of rebels led by Noticed Gerrera (Forest Whitaker) on Jedha. The data he’ll solely give to Cassian is that an Imperial pilot has defected with a message from Galen Erso, engineer of a weapon that Tivik reveals for the primary time is a “planet killer”: the Dying Star.
The assembly does not go nicely, as it’s possible you’ll recall. Tivik is so anxious he attracts the eye of Stormtroopers, and his damaged arm means he cannot climb out of their dead-end assembly place. Cassian is compelled to kill Tivik together with the troopers — his most morally compromised motion but.
On the identical time, Draven sends Melshi to extract Jyn Erso (Felicity Jones), daughter of Dying Star engineer Galen (Mads Mikkelsen), from an Imperial work camp on the planet Wobani. Andor meets Erso again on Yavin IV, then takes her to Jedha for a fateful assembly with Noticed. The defecting pilot introduced a message from Galen Erso, who reveals he is put a flaw within the Dying Star.
That flaw can solely be discovered within the knowledge tapes housed on the Imperial planet of Scarif. Which is the place Cassian and Jyn die, courtesy of a Dying Star assault, having transmitted the plans that can discover their technique to Princess Leia (Carrie Fisher), and in the end save the Riot in A New Hope.
Was there a budding romance between Cassian and Jyn on that Scarif seashore as they confronted their doom, or only a shut friendship? It is nonetheless an open-ended query, however Andor provides us motive to suppose Cassian really had the love of his life on his thoughts as he was vaporized by the explosion.
What occurs to Bix?
Credit score: Disney+
On the very finish of Andor, we see Bix Caleen (Adria Arjona) again on the farming planet of Mina-Rau, the place she and Cassian lived in the course of the first three episodes of Season 2. Seems this was the key location the place she fled a 12 months earlier than, BBY 2, to cease getting in the way in which of Cassian’s important work for the Riot.
Not very secret, in different phrases — suggesting that she was torn about her selfless act, and wished Cassian to seek out her simply. This provides contemporary poignancy to what Vel (Faye Marsay) tells Cassian within the last episode of Andor, that he ought to look her up. He guarantees to take action after his subsequent mission (sob!).
As she searches the sky for a love who won’t ever return, Bix additionally has the present’s last shock in her arms: her youngster, and sure, undoubtedly Cassian’s. We do not know something concerning the youngster, not even its gender, so it is doable it is a character that can crop up in future Star Wars leisure.
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For now, consider the scene as mirroring the ultimate shot of Rogue One. The kid in Bix’s arms, just like the Dying Star plans in Leia’s arms, supplies a brand new hope.
What about Cassian’s sister?
Earlier than his last fateful stroll on Yavin on the finish of Andor — throughout which he sees the Power healer one final time — Cassian has a dream the place he sees his long-lost sister as she was again on his house world, Kenari. Your entire narrative of Andor started with him chasing down studies of a Kenari lady on the economic planet of Morlani.
So, has he discovered her or not?
Provided that Cassian simply helped rescue Luthen’s assistant Kleya (Elizabeth Dulau) and her very important data on Erso, and provided that we realized Kleya (in season 2, episode 10) was discovered by Luthen as a conflict orphan on an unnamed planet at across the identical age as Cassian’s sister, you could be forgiven for pondering they’re one and the identical. However that is not the case.
“His sister died on Kenari,” Andor showrunner Tony Gilroy confirmed to Mashable. “Her absence is much more valuable as a motivator” for Cassian, with the intention to give him a “savior complex” that drives him to rescue folks at any time when he can — together with Kleya, a personality Gilroy meant to disclose as the actual brains behind Luthen’s nascent insurgent community.
What occurs to Noticed Gerrera and the remainder of the rebels?
“We’re running on fumes,” Tivik tells Cassian in that fateful assembly at the beginning of Rogue One. He is speaking about Noticed Gerrera’s ragtag operation on Jedha, which receives solely suspicion, not assist, from insurgent HQ on Yavin.
We thought Tivik was simply speaking metaphorically — however now, due to Andor, there is a literal that means too. Noticed is hooked on the fumes given off by rhydonium or “rhydo,” a unstable gasoline for starships, which explains his want for a respiratory equipment in Rogue One.
Noticed additionally seems to be inducting newcomers by making them inhale rhydo, on the grounds that “revolution is not for the sane” and that the rebels should be extra like rhydo themselves — “the thing that explodes when there’s too much friction in the air.”
As loopy as he’s, Noticed shouldn’t be improper: With the fast-approaching completion of the Dying Star, the Riot wants extra friction with the intention to explode it.
We noticed Cassian’s data meet with mistrust on Yavin, the place Senators together with Mon Mothma (Genevieve O’Reilly) and Bail Organa (Jimmy Smits in Rogue One, Benjamin Bratt in Andor). In Rogue One, they’re nonetheless inclined to seize Galen Erso so he can testify earlier than the Senate, which would not have finished any good (the Emperor disbands the Senate in A New Hope). So, Basic Draven goes rogue himself, ordering Cassian to kill Galen.
Noticed dies with a smile on his face, casting apart his oxygen masks because the explosion from the Dying Star’s destruction of an historic metropolis on Jedha reaches his compound. Bail Organa, having gone house to inform his folks of the Dying Star, is killed when Alderaan is the primary to be totally worn out by the planet-killer. Draven, in line with the canon storyline in Star Wars comics, is killed serving to rebels escape from Darth Vader a 12 months after the Dying Star’s destruction.
Mon Mothma survives as Commander-in-Chief of the Riot, coordinating the assault on the second Dying Star in Return of the Jedi. Her well-known line, “Many Bothans died to bring us this information,” now bears much more weight contemplating all of the individuals who died in Andor bringing her information of the primary one.
What occurs to Orson Krennic and the remainder of the Imperials?
“I was due on Scarif two hours ago,” Dying Star director Orson Krennic (Ben Mendelsohn) tells Imperial Safety Bureau honcho Lio Partagaz (Anton Lesser) throughout Krennic’s last dialogue scene in Andor. Scarif, house to all data on the Dying Star, is the place Krennic dies by the hands of Jyn in Rogue One. He lives simply lengthy sufficient to see the Dying Star seem in orbit above the planet.
However Krennic shouldn’t be going on to his doom on Scarif. First comes the scene the place we see him on the finish of Andor, watching the Dying Star’s last element being hauled into place. He is confronted right here by Grand Moff Tarkin (Peter Cushing, or a minimum of the creepy Rogue One CGI model), who takes the Dying Star out from beneath Krennic’s management after its first stay take a look at on Jedha Metropolis.
Krennic then seeks a gathering with Darth Vader, hoping the Darkish Lord of the Sith can intercede with the Emperor; he is determined for Dying Star credit score. However there isn’t a honor amongst Imperials, and a mortally wounded Krennic is worn out on Scarif by Tarkin’s hand. Partagaz, in the meantime, has taken his personal life slightly than resist the Emperor’s displeasure at letting Kleya go.
Syril (Kyle Soller), after all, died again within the genocide on Ghorman in episode 8, deserted by Dedra Meero (Denise Gough) simply as he was beginning to determine what the Empire was doing; Dedra had simply realized concerning the Dying Star herself.
Of the Imperial figures we have been following in Andor, Dedra is the one survivor — albeit in the identical sort of jail the place Cassian discovered himself in season 1. Presumably she stays there for the subsequent three years, throughout which era the Empire wants extra jail labor to assemble the second Dying Star; she could, if she’s fortunate, survive lengthy sufficient to see the Republic based in its ashes.
If Andor and the remainder of the Dying Star trilogy tells us something, then, it is that working for the Empire is unlikely to result in any extra longevity than working for the Riot. In the event you’re heading for jail or an early demise anyway, it’s possible you’ll as nicely be on the aspect of the nice guys.
Andor is now streaming on Disney+.
