PEOPLE HAVE TO KNOW ABOUT SPOILERS
In this, as they say, the penultimate episode of Andor’s first season, the many threads of the show begin to weave back together in preparation for the finale next week. Everything converges around Maarva, whose death robs Andor of my favorite performance (and perhaps her opportunity to live the rebellious words she spoke early in the season), but provides the perfect reason for all eyes to return to Ferrix. Cassian will no doubt return to say farewell to his mother, and his broken community will be waiting there for him, alongside the ISB.
Maarva’s death works very much like death in the real world: it should come as no surprise, but somehow, it does. Maarva has been sick for the entire series, her stout heart and love betrayed by her very human body. After watching the episode I realized that her death arrives at the most convenient moment for the show’s plot…but while watching? It felt like a story interrupted, ended too quickly, taken away from us. Parental deaths abound as motivating factors in fiction, but still, this really made me feel it. I guess that’s just love. Nothing you can do about that.
The loss of Maarva is really lent weight by none other than aging, sweet-boy B2EMO. Bee-Two is the Pixar in Andor. He’s so plain vulnerable. If something bad happens to that droid, I don’t know if I’ll be able to handle it. I know he’ll probably die of old age, he can barely leave his charging station, but I would never consider him an acceptable loss.
Speaking of acceptable losses?
Luthen Rael’s journey into darkness continues as Tony Gilroy puts an extra fine point on just how justifiably paranoid Saw Gerrera is. In Rogue One, Saw’s ranting about lies, deception and spies feels like a new note being played on the Star Wars piano, one big character trait to define him to the audience. Here, we see that his sense that the Rebellion is full of deceit is fully and completely borne out by the behavior of his own allies. Luthen is ready to send an ally to the slaughter to protect his source inside ISB and protect his own identity.
Tony Gilroy’s dedication to the idea that moral compromise is required to defeat the evil of the Empire is also present in Mon Mothma’s season-ending decision. Will she use her own daughter as a bargaining chip to protect her financial support of the Rebellion? Only here to goes Gilroy sort-of soften the blow, by showing Mon’s daughter Lieda as enthusiastic about the conservative “old ways” of Chandrila, which include arranged marriages at around 14 years old. Mon is horrified by her daughter’s love of customs she abhors; even as that very love might make what she is about to do less painful for her daughter, somehow.
That’s a lot to chew on. And there’s a lot more. Syril’s hilarious phone call from Morlana One. Eedy Karn’s bedhead. Bix Caleen’s shattered state of being. Vel impatiently confronting everyone on Coruscant. Kleya’s steadfast secrecy at the gallery of antiquities. While there are some threads of Andor that we may have to wait for (Cassian’s sister on Kenari?), everyone else seems to be coming together for a heartbreaker of a big finish.
For all the deliberate pacing and menace and melancholy, this episode of has a few moments that cut closer to the traditional Star Wars cloth than usual. I really loved those two moments in particular.
One is Luthen’s confrontation with an Imperial cruiser. It was (dare I say it) a fun moment where we get to see a spaceship go Darth Maul on some TIE fighters and watch Luthen outmaneuver a tractor beam. Look at Andor over here, selling LEGOs!
The second is one of my favorite scenes in the entire series. Andor and Melshi (who remains a sparkling call-forward to Rogue One) make a run for a Quad Jumper (a nice nod to The Force Awakens), deciding that the garbage will do. They are caught in a sticky bio-net by two Narkinans. The Narkinians appear gruff, dangerous, more Peter Jackson than Jim Henson. Their dialogue implies that they believe the potential theives are blaming the Empire for everything.
Until it as revealed that they, too, hold the Empire accountable for just about everything that had been done to their planet. The two of them, one speaking in a fun, pirate-y dialect and one silently waiting to use his knife-hand, deserve their very own series, they’re a trip.
But more than that. This is one of the moments where the lighter, gentler themes of Star Wars emerge. There is surprising kindness to be found. The weird are not the bad. Scob the Empire! say these whackadoodle puppets. Run for it!
Plus, it’s a moment where Andor shows, however briefly, two friends in trouble. Star Wars is as much (maybe moreso!) about friendship as it is about family. Friendship in Andor is generally dangerous, guarded against or avoided. Here, two men who just met rely on each other, bond, and get out of a scrape together. It feels like Han, Luke, Chewie and the droids in the Ewoks net; or our heroes stuck in the trash compactor; or Rey and Finn running for, well, a Quad Jumper. Even if by the end of the episode Cassian and Melshi have parted company, we can see their connection. That is very old-school Star Wars.
I have a suspicion that we won’t be getting a triumphant Season Finale but a bittersweet set up for Season 2. It seems unlikely that Ferrix is about to kick out the Empire all on its own. Still, Gilroy and Co. have a knack for paying off our patience, and I’m sure the tense return of Cassian to his home planet will provide pleasures and pain aplenty.
Good luck, Cassian. You’re going to need it.