I’m talking, of course, about Bix Caleen. Andor’s second season has struggled mightily with Bix’s story, pushing hard to make her matter as something more than Cassian’s inevitably lost love interest, a character never mentioned (let alone seen) in the film that depicts his death. And in that effort, I’d argue, it’s ultimately failed. Adria Arjona has given a winning performance, and she and Diego Luna have invested the duo with great chemistry. But Arjona has been hampered at every point by the time-jump structure of season two, which rips Bix away from us every time we seem to be getting a handle on her. With Cassian, Mon, and Luthen, we can follow them through the jumps because we’ve seen enough of them to imagine the silhouette of their character, even when the show deliberately obscures it. But Bix has always been just far enough to the side that her decision at the end of this episode—to leave Cassian so that he won’t choose her over the Rebellion—feels less like an act of agency and more like she got to that page of the script and said, “Welp, I guess I’m out.”
It doesn’t help that the tragedy of Bix’s departure doesn’t even get to be the final moment of the block, which is instead reserved for another instance of prequel business: the reactivation of K-2SO. Don’t get me wrong: I like K’s presence in Rogue One just fine; on the wide and mostly intolerable spectrum of Star Wars droid comedy, he comes in firmly on the higher end. (I am curious as to how he’s going to fit into Andor‘s final run of episodes; the show hasn’t really had to reckon yet with the fact that it and Rogue One have notably different tones, and having Alan Tudyk quipping along, enjoyable as it is, is likely to make that contrast very clear.) But watching Cassian go from genuine anguish at losing the love of his life to shruggingly moving on to the next point on The Big List Of Stuff We Have To Set Up in, like, a minute leaves this set of otherwise excellent episodes ending on a hollow note.
I’m tackling these elements back to front for two reasons: first, because they left a genuinely bad taste in my mouth. (I also really need the show to stop acting like there’s Destiny at play here, guiding Cass from meaningful plot point to meaningful plot point; it was bad enough when Bix bought into this crap, but hearing Luthen start to pontificate was really a bridge too far.) And second, because I’d like to end this week of coverage on the much higher note of the rest of this episode, which sees Andor add paranoid political thrillers—and maybe a lick of Bourne—to its list of spy-media reference points.
We pick up the episode proper on Coruscant, in the immediate aftermath of the new Ghorman Massacre. Specifically, we open on the arrest of Senator Dasi Oran, watching as he’s dragged from the Senate floor for the horrible crime of, well, being the senator from Ghorman. As he yells prophetic warnings to his paralyzed colleagues, we watch Mon Mothma decide that enough is finally enough. She and Bail Organa agree to execute the plan they’ve been building to for years at this point: one last use of Senatorial authority to denounce Palpatine and call for rebellion, and then as quick a getaway as possible for the (relative) safety of Yavin. Mon is thrown when Bail reveals he intends to stay, because the Rebel army isn’t ready for the outbreak of open warfare that a double-defection would provoke, but he reassures her that it’ll all work out. (And here’s another point where the prequel of it all muddies some of Andor‘s fun: I suspect we’re supposed to have some worries about Organa’s commitment, especially after Luthen reveals that the escape plan he offers Mon is compromised. But the character, first played by Jimmy Smits and now by Benjamin Bratt, is so ingrained into the structure of modern Star Wars, and so solidly a classic Star Wars hero, that the paranoia can’t find purchase.)
Not that there’s not paranoia to go around, especially once Mon learns that her assistant Erskin Semaj has secretly been one of Luthen’s agents for years. The tension between Mon and Luthen—which is, in essence, the tension between the Rebellion’s respectable wing and its terrorist one—has always been one of Andor‘s most fascinating undercurrents, and it comes to full flower here. Genevieve O’Reilly has done a remarkable job in these two seasons of taking a barely one-note character from the original trilogy and turning her into a real person: brave, drily funny, a tad sheltered, and frequently scared by the places her convictions demand she go. Her discomfort with the violence inherent to the fundamentally violent act of revolution is one of the key paradoxes that Andor wrestles with, and it very nearly gets her killed here. (It’s telling that we never see Luthen even briefly contemplate eliminating her, as she fears; if she’s not there to inherit, with clean hands, the Rebel Alliance he intends to die building for her, then what was the point of any of it?) The pragmatism of his approach sickens her still. It sickens him, too, the weight showing in the slump of Stellan Skarsgård’s shoulders as he suffers her distrust. The difference, of course, is that he’ll spend whatever lives it takes to keep her safe regardless.
Meanwhile, and on the less heady side, Andor reminds us how much fun it can have when it’s locked into pure spy mode. (This is another episode that foregoes the show’s usual obsession with multiple locations, instead centering everything in the Senate building—and, once again, that focus pays huge dividends.) Cassian might be telling anyone who’ll listen that this is his final job, but it’s still a delight to watch him operate, falling into the role of a hapless reporter as he infiltrates the supposedly secure building. (One thing I like about the way Luna plays Cassian on a mission is that there’s never anything especially showy about what he’s doing; it’s all about the little touches, like the way he automatically corrects a clerk when he struggles to pronounce “his” name.) The brightly lit building makes for a beautiful backdrop as Cass and Semaj move into position, while the ISB mole on Organa’s extraction team executes her plan (and, uh, one of her comrades).
All that and we get some real authentic parliamentary dorkery, as Organa interrupts various senators jumping over each other to lick Palpatine’s boots so he can cite some official Senatorial ruling to cede Mon the floor. The ensuing speech has a lot to live up to, both in-universe and out. And while it lacks the poetry of some of the show’s more flashy and off-the-cuff oratory, I’d say the senator from Chandrila acquits herself pretty well. After some slow preamble, she gets into the good stuff: “The distance between what is said, and what is known to be true, has become an abyss,” she warns her colleagues, bemoaning the fraying dissolution of truth. It’s on the nose, certainly, but as I noted in my previous recap, certain flavors of political commentary can’t really exist in a subtle space. And soon, she’s cooking: “When truth leaves us, when we let it slip away, when it is ripped from our hands, we become vulnerable to the appetite of whatever monster screams the loudest.” And then, as the ISB races to silence her, Mon Mothma finally stops playing around with polite language and toothless petitions and invisible support for clandestine actions, and stands in the heart of the Empire and fucking rebels. “What happened yesterday, on Ghorman, was unprovoked genocide. Yes, genocide. And that truth has been exiled from this chamber. And the monster screaming the loudest. The monster we’ve helped create. The monster that will come for us all, soon enough…is Emperor Palpatine.” They cut the signal. It’s too late.
What follows next is a whole other kind of thrill, as Cassian intercepts her and mostly convinces the senator that he’s her best ticket out of the building in anything but chains. Andor likes to play a very long game with keeping its main characters disconnected from each other, and, just like the fight with Syril in the last episode, there’s a base-level charge to seeing O’Reilly and Luna getting to share a scene together that elevates the entire sequence. Beyond that, though, this is the stuff Andor most frequently excels at: moving parts and rising tension, moment-to-moment improvisations and whispered plans. These are the moments when you can almost believe the show’s bizarre insistence that the Rebellion needs Cassian Andor specifically with extended sequences of Luna being the coolest man alive.
In the aftermath of the escape, we get one more scene of quiet between our two largely disconnected leads—even as the show’s need to move scenery once again starts to intrude. (Wilmon is at the Coruscant safe house, for some reason, presumably because the show didn’t want you to worry for a week that he’d been killed in the fighting on Ghorman.) “I’m not sure…how to thank you,” Mon near-whispers, feeling the weight of finally facing a man who’s been killing and bleeding, on her behalf, while she’s been making pretty plans and speeches. “Make it worth it” is his typically terse reply.
After that, well, I’ve already covered what happens after that. What we’re left with, then, is a duty to assess this block, which is, despite some flaws, easily the best part of Andor‘s second season to date. Director Janus Metz, who helmed all three of these episodes, has doubled down on the show’s most beautiful touches without sacrificing its all-important sense of tension. I might quibble with some of the elements of Dan Gilroy’s scripts, but they grapple meaningfully with the heat of watching the Rebellion finally, truly ignite. This is Andor as the show we’ve always known it can be: smart, heartfelt, quick-moving, and decisive. The only question now is whether the show can hold it together as the future looms, and the clock ticks forward, one last time.
Stray observations
- • Our intro music this time is a quiet, haunting version of the Ghorman anthem.
- • Last episode, I talked about Cassian as a man with a desperate need to choose. That comes through here as he tries, again and again, to tell people that he’s given the Rebellion enough and simply wants to have control over his own life.
- • Yes, in case it’s been annoying you, too: “Erskin Semaj” is a joke about a real person’s name. Wookiepedia says it’s a reference to James Erskine, who worked on The Force Awakens. This is what happens when you import bit characters from the cartoons into other shows.
- • “He’s protected you in ways that you’ll never know.” “Well, isn’t that wonderfully cryptic.”
- • Amidst all the skullduggery, there’s something strangely sweet about Luthen calling Cassian “Someone I can trust. Someone I know I can trust.”
- • “I’m not sure I’ve ever felt this betrayed in my life. And I’ve had some experience.”
- • “There’s still some bridges you haven’t burned.” “We’ll take care of that today.”
- • No Dedra this episode, but we get a nice, slightly hapless performance from Michael Jenn, playing Supervisor Lagret, one of the Usual Useless ISB Guys.
- • Hey, they let Benjamin Bratt say “shit!”
- • Mon’s fellow senators are so excited to paint the Ghor as evil that they’re resorting to ill-advised soup metaphors. “The tragic broth we sip this morning has been brewing in plain sight!”
- • There’s a fun little comedy beat between the deeply beleaguered Senate clerk and the (clearly Rebel) maintenance people cheerfully trying to “help” him access the shut-down switch.
- • “I’m not sure I can do this.” “Welcome to the Rebellion.” This is a quippy episode!
- • In case you, like me, do not have an encyclopedic memory for faces in a show that took this many years between seasons: That’s Melshi, the guy who escaped from Narkina 5 with Cassian, putting his hands up for the pistol on Yavin. (He’s also set to die in Rogue One and is played by Duncan Pow in all appearances.)
- • There’s a weird fake out with Luthen not showing up at the safe house; I’m half worried he did die during the Senate escape, and Kleya’s covering it up. But it’s probably more a matter of Skarsgård’s availability.
- • Everyone seems to think Cassian will be pissed if he doesn’t get credit for saving Mon; it’s wild how little anyone grasps what a nothing that question is to him.
- • “I’ve done what I can. And I’ve done a lot.”
- • I just re-watched the ending to collect quotes, and, yep, it still pisses me off. The show becomes just a little less interesting every time someone tells Cassian about his “purpose.”
