If Not For You

Andor Season 2 Episodes 10-12 "Make It Stop" "Who Else Knows?" "Jedha, Kyber, Erso"

MAY THE SPOILERS BE WITH YOU

And so we come to the end of Andor, a show that was, in the final estimation, very much like it’s beloved Luthen Rael. It showed restraint and discipline. It was doggedly, even pridefully, itself to the end. It made choices for what it saw as the greater good (read: unlocking Star Wars from its usual storytelling modes), even if sometimes those things weren’t pretty (read: incidents of sexual violence and torture). And now that it’s gone, one can only hope its sacrifices will have been worth it.

Because to my eye this fourth arc of Andor Season 2, its final arc, did make sacrifices to remain true to its vision. Instead of attempting to match the ambition of the Ghorman Massacre, or give the audience a showy send-off, Andor’s finale was elegiac. Andor did not take a victory lap, even though it’s one of the most critically-acclaimed Star Wars projects in years. Andor could have gotten away with a big surprise, or a major cameo, or a gimmick, even treated itself to a big moment of emotional release. Instead, it treated the audience as if we were standing on the platform of a train station, watching as the show waves back to us from an open window of a car, slowly vanishing into the distance.

We’re given episodes that focus on the last days of Luthen Rael, his capture, his death, and the mission to ‘rescue’ him from the Empire by turning off his iron lung, and the effect he leaves behind. And we’re given one last mission for Andor himself, to extract Kleya, alongside his Rogue One cohort - scene stealing K2-SO and Melshi. They’re episodes structured like a relay race, a chain of possession, key information that flows from the secret files of Dedra Meero, to informant Lonni Jung, to Luthen, to Kleya, and finally, to Cassian Andor.

Partly, I think this is because that’s just the taste of Tony Gilroy and his team. They are more interested in character than spectacle. You can almost feel them waiting for the pop culture bean counters to step in, shocked that they’re getting away with foregrounding scalding psychological examination on the set of a massive hangar filled with X-Wings. (Apparently, we have Kathleen Kennedy to thank for that.)

But also, going out with a bang would have been redundant. The series finale of Andor isn’t really “Jedha, Kyber, Erso.” It’s Rogue One. Rogue One has the catharsis you’re looking for: Andor offers something else. There’s no point in spending budget and time on flashy battles when that budget has already been spent.

Speaking of budget, one Joe Biden was known to say “Don't tell me what you value, show me your budget, and I'll tell you what you value.” Andor budgeted the last twenty minutes or so to bringing its characters into alignment with it original text. It acts like a Rogue One prequel for about as long as is necessary.

It commits far more of its resources to the fates of Luthen Rael and Kleya Marki. By allotting the series’ time this way, Tony Gilroy and Co are telling us what they value: counter-culture above monoculture, the outsider more than the Admiral. Even in a show about building a Rebellion, Andor sides with those unsavory elements that the Rebellion itself would disavow. Andor spies (pun intended) an organized military, with a top-down structure, with a jaundiced eye. If you have nostalgia for Yavin from being a kid and seeing it in A New Hope, Andor isn’t interested in cultivating that feeling.

Instead, it admires and celebrates Luthen Rael, even as it portrays him of assassinating his own loyal informant. Where a show with a simpler heart might have shown the Rebel Alliance outgrowing Luthen’s underhandedness as a kind of moral progress, Andor sees their treatment of Luthen as easy posturing for those who have benefitted from the loss of this man’s soul. Easy to preach goodness, Andor seems to say, when you never had to get your hands dirty.

But, Luthen, in the end, is victorious….because he’s become irrelevant. His information has been passed on, the Rebellion exists everywhere, without him. (Even, chillingly in ISB Chief Partagaz’s office, as he listens to none other than Nemick’s manifesto before taking his own life). Even when he’s finally exposed by Dedra Meero, in her moment of supposed triumph, he tells her that she’s too late. (It’s analogous to how Cassian responds to Syril Karn. It’s not really ‘who are you?’ but it’s certainly a moment where Dedra is reminded that she’s far smaller than she imagines.) By denying her the contents of his head, by killing himself, he wins the battle with her for good. One wonders if he would approve of Kleya’s plan to play Metal Gear Solid at the hospital, putting her own critical information at risk. I’m sure he would call it sentimental, too risky. But, as he says himself, they’ve “used up all the perfect.”

And who would have thought that the series finale would make Kleya its central character? That’s a bold storytelling choice, a gift to this actor, and again, shows where the show’s true sympathies lie. With those who sacrifice, who stand to lose, who have lost, who lose and lose and lose until they win.

It’s also interested in those who think they’re winning, until they finally lose. (That’s really the story of the Empire, isn’t it? Hubris.) Dedra Meero follows the very type of Imperial Starpath Unit (is it the same one?) that Cassian bargains with Luthen for during their first meeting, all the way to the door of the Gallery. If she was our hero, it would be her Sherlock Holmes moment, finally cracking the code. Instead, it is the moment of her undoing. The Empire has no use for ambitious people, free thinkers, independence, even in its own service. And isn’t it too familiar to see the foot soldiers of fascism bear its costs in a way it’s the dictators do not? For The Emperor to enjoy immunity, and for Dedra to end her story crying in prison, defeated not by Rebels, but by her own authoritarian order.

The show is named after Cassian Andor, though, not Luthen Rael or Dedra Meero. So what is the show’s final assessment of Cassian himself?

First, the show views its great hero as a not-so-Great Man. So many series’ main characters are chosen, special, have powers that other men don’t possess. An abundance of pluck, of charm, of strength. Cassian doesn’t have those things. He’s sincere, but he’s not a wit. He’s skilled, but not to some superhuman degree. He is principled, but only to a point. He’s chosen the Rebellion over Luthen, for example, but when it comes down to it, he disobeys orders and stands up for Luthen. And the implication that the Force itself might have some plan for Cassian isn’t something he seems interested in wrestling with.

If anything, the creative team leaves quite a lot of Andor’s story incomplete. We’re taken back, momentarily, to the show’s inciting element: Kassa looking for his missing sister. He still dreams of her, of course he does, but we know, he never does find her again. A lost refugee, a family broken up, by the tragedy of war.

And then there’s a the beautifully drawn final moment, a kind of Twin Suns moment, where we see Bix on Mina-Rau, B2-EMO happily playing nearby, holding Cassian’s child. Somewhere, in this great Star Wars universe, is a young man who is alive during the rise of The New Republic, born to these two.

The story will continue, and some good has come of this, but Cassian will not know it. He never meets his child, or sees Bix again. We get closure that he is denied. Because, in a story as grounded as this one, there will be no deus ex machina that intervenes and comforts our hero. He doesn’t know what’s coming, we do, and that’s really our burden to bear, not his.

Andor himself is unlike Luthen, and unlike Bail Organa, and unlike Mon Mothma, in one key way: he is not ideological. He believes the Empire is harmful, and cares about the people close to him. But he does not write Nemick’s manifesto, or run the Axis Network, or lead the Rebellion. He is a restless man, and just a man, complex and unsettled. He believes the Empire must fall, but tries to step away from the fight multiple times, not seeing himself as essential. He’s told the Force may be guiding him, and scoffs at the notion. He loves Bix, but is willing to respect her decision to let him go. Whenever he is told he must do something, that there is only one way, that he has no choice, that's where he bristles most. He follows his instincts, to kill or show mercy, to survive, and trusts himself above all others.

Perhaps that’s what makes Cassian who he is. Beyond his original trauma, the loss of his family and connection to his homeworld, he carries with him a kind of indignation that he is never able to set aside. One that Maarva discovered when he was just a boy, destroying a room out of rage. He will not be contained. Cassian Andor will fight, he will even kill, he will run into the most dangerous place on Coruscant to save the day. But he defers to no one. He doesn't respect rank. He works with the Rebel Alliance because he believes it will win, and that’s what he wants: it’s his personal cause. One gets the impression that if the Rebellions goals did not align with his, he would simply leave. He’s not an institution builder or a true believer or even an antihero.

Cassian Andor does not want to feel good about himself. He does not want to please anyone else. He wants be true to himself, even when it is inconvenient. Even when it is inconsistent. Even as he marches, steadfastly, to his end.

And there’s a word for that kind of person.

That kind of spirit.

A Rebel.