The first season of the show took place 5 years before the Battle of Yavin (BBY). We were introduced to the titular thief-turned-rebel who traveled the galaxy looking for his long-lost sister, Kerri, and earned credits by doing all kinds of odd jobs. Eventually, he got in touch with Luthen Rael, who sent him to Aldhani to work with a ragtag group of rebels to steal an unimaginable amount of money from the Empire in order to fund the Rebel Alliance. The operation wasn’t a success, but Cassian earned enough to last him a lifetime. However, after getting imprisoned on Narkina 5 and seeing the inhumane treatment the inmates were being subjected to, and then watching his home planet, Ferrix, get turned into a hellhole by Dedra Meero, Cassian got completely radicalized. In the second season, we see him evolve more as a person while reuniting with some old faces and meeting some new characters. So, let’s talk about it.
Spoiler Alert
Cassian Gets Stuck In The Middle Of A Mutiny
The first episode of Andor Season 2 opens in BBY 4 with Cassian stealing a prototype TIE fighter from a military base of the Galactic Empire in Sienar, which is hands-down one of the funniest and best action sequences that I have seen in the Star Wars franchise. Cassian reaches the planet where he had parked his ship, but apparently his associate, Porko, is nowhere to be found. Instead, a bunch of scavengers, who claim to have been a part of Maya Pei’s group of rebels (led by Gerdis and Bardi) and have been abandoned on the planet, get a hold of Cassian because they think he is an actual Imperial Pilot (can’t really blame them). Then they hilariously try to figure out how to fly the TIE fighter and fail. Cassian tries to win their trust and free himself by saying that he has worked with Maya Pei in the past, but since these guys are starving and desperate, they are not really in the mood to listen to reason. Things come to a head when the people on Gerdis’ side and those on Bardi’s side pull out their blasters to settle their arguments over Maya Pei’s alleged death, whether the TIE fighter can be flown without Cassian’s help, and who amongst them is a true soldier.
Cassian is dragged over to Gerdis’ side against his will, and he spends most of episode 2 of Andor Season 2 waiting for the right moment to free himself, get control of the TIE fighter, and get out of those jungles. I won’t go into the details of how Cassian makes his escape because it’s not really integral to the rest of the plot, but I think this subplot does a great job of showing how chaotic a rebellion can be and how vast the galaxy actually is. At one point, all of these people were working for the same cause, but within a matter of seconds, they turned against each other. Just because Cassian is lucky (and he is wearing the plot armor too), he gets to leave. But what about the rest? They’re probably going to starve or get eaten up by all the monstrous creatures lurking in the forest, which is just sad. By the way, does the final shot of the episode indicate that they’ve been on Yavin all along? The place that’s eventually going to become the base for the Rebel Alliance? If so, this means that Cassian has to eventually return to the planet that he tried to escape from. As for those soldiers from Maya Pei’s group, I still think they are going to die in those dense and treacherous jungles.
Bix Is Targeted By Krole
Bix is living with Brasso, Wilmon, B2EMO, and Talia on a farming planet called Mina-Rau. While Talia is a local, those from Ferrix are there as refugees. And for Bix, on top of the anxiety of being discovered by the Empire, she is haunted by her memories of being tortured by Doctor Gorst. The following day, when Bix is feeling better, we see that she, Wilmon, and Brasso have become acquainted with the locals. However, the sight of an Imperial Freighter dampens everyone’s moods because it’s evident that they are there to check if everyone’s visas are in order (take a guess who is doing that in real life), which is something that’s later confirmed by Brasso. Kellen, another local, warns the Ferrixers that things are getting tense on their planet as the Imperial forces are rounding up immigrants and killing or imprisoning them.
While checking the area where the refugees are staying, one of the Imperial officers, Krole, singles out Bix and asks her out on a date. Given the power dynamics at play, it’s obviously not an invitation; it’s more of an order because if Bix rejects him, he can arrest her. And this echoes the perversion of real-life oppressors who sexualize the very people they are oppressing because fascists don’t want only political power; they want complete dominance over the mind, body, and soul of their “subjects.” I mean, you can see how Krole’s attitude shifts from curious to creepy as soon as Bix brings up her husband (she doesn’t name-drop Cassian, but that’s who she is referring to). Before Krole can take things too far, Brasso shows up, thereby sending the Imperial officer scurrying back to his platoon. Later that night, Kellen tells the Ferrixers to be ready to move in case Krole decides to conduct an inspection.
Luthen Attends Leida’s Wedding
In Chandrila, preparations are underway for the marriage of Leida, Mon Mothma and Perrin Fertha’s daughter, and Stekan Sculdun, the son of Davo and Runai Sculdun. Here we get an excellent long take, as we follow Mon greeting the guests (which includes Vel Sertha and Tay Kolma) and then meeting Luthen Rael. The purpose of a long take in the sci-fi or fantasy genre is to show that it’s all happening in a real location and not on some sound stage supplemented by green screen, VFX, and CGI. The use of the Volume has been highly criticized in recent Star Wars projects. So, using a long take to show off the art direction, production design, and location scouting is smart. Anyway, based on Mon’s reaction, she isn’t the one who has invited Luthen; in fact, it’s Davo who has hired his services to acquire a unique wedding gift. When nobody’s looking, Luthen has a brief chat with his assistant, Kleya Marki, regarding Cassian’s whereabouts. She confirms that Cassian did escape from Sienar but has been MIA since. It’s impossible to converse with Cassian from Chandrila, so Luthen tells Kleya to keep listening for any more coded messages.
The focus then shifts to Tay and Mon, where the former informs her that things are not going well in his life. His business prospects have gone sour. His wife has left him. And, on top of all that, he feels left out after essentially facilitating the marriage between Leida and Stekan, which has funded Mon’s rebel-funding Foundation, and not getting compensated appropriately. Before Mon can address all these issues, she is told by Runai that Leida and Stekan have had their first fight. So, she rushes to tend to Leida, for whom I have no sympathy because Mon warned her to not agree to this arrangement, but she was way too excited to get married according to Chandrilan customs. In the second episode of Andor Season 2, Kleya tells Rael that Cassian isn’t the only person from their team who is unreachable; Bix can’t be contacted either because of the “temporary reception outage for Imperial inspection” that has been implemented on Mina-Rau. Therefore, while Rael stays for the rest of the wedding, Kleya heads back to Coruscant to see what she can do from there. While all this is going on, we get a glimpse of Mon and Perrin’s strained relationship, which is largely due to Perrin’s insecurity about Mon and Tay’s friendship. In the last 3 years, I had actually forgotten how much I hated Leida and Perrin, but these 2 episodes have done a splendid job of reminding me that I should continue to detest them forever.
Tay Has Some Complaints
Later on, while trekking up a mountain (it has something to do with the marriage ceremony), Mon says something really relatable to Vel, who is very confused by Leida’s decision to get married: everything old is new again. It might be a reference to the Peter Allen song, but I think this sentiment underscores how, during fascist times, cultural regression occurs in the name of returning to one’s roots. Modernism and progressive thoughts will always hinder oppression. However, if archaic practices that were once put in place to stifle one’s growth are brought back so as to “uphold tradition,” then pushing that public towards something more primitive becomes easier. It’s happening everywhere in real life via religion, caste, nationalism, etc. So, yeah, the horrors from the “galaxy far, far away” are not actually that far away; they’re in our backyards.
Anyway, getting back to the plot, apparently Vel and her girlfriend, Cinta, have been away from each other for a long time, largely because Luthen has them working on different assignments, which is unfair as per Mon. But I think it’s for the best because personal relations can often ruin one’s sense of professionalism. During the dinner party (it’s a long wedding with multiple parties and excursions, brace yourself), Tay brings up the topic of feeling betrayed after helping Mon with her Foundation and helping get Davo’s son married. Tay doesn’t say it explicitly, but I think he is insinuating that if Mon doesn’t give him a hefty fee for his services, he is going to complain to an Imperial officer that maybe a senator is colluding with the Rebels. Mon puts on a happy face and promises to entertain Tay’s demands when they all go back to Coruscant. But when she talks about this issue with Rael, she sounds really anxious, which in turn makes Rael anxious. So, Rael hints that they should get rid of Tay, but since Tay is an old friend, Mon thinks that they can hash things out.
Syril and Dedra Are A Couple
On the snow-capped mountains of the Maltheen Divide, Orson Krennic has assembled an exclusive group of people—Dedre Meero and Major Partagaz are the only familiar faces there, other than Krennic—to talk to them about Ghorman. Apparently, Ghorman is known for 2 things: their high-quality fabric that’s produced from the web spun by Ghorlectipods (a species of spiders native to the planet) and the incident where Grand Moff Tarkin massacred a bunch of Ghors by landing his ship on them. Now, the Emperor wants to mine Ghorman for “deep substrate foliated Kalkite.” Apparently, through the Energy Initiative, the Empire has been trying to make synthetic Kalkite for a long time (Ben Mendelsohn’s performance in this scene is so deliciously over-the-top), but of course, it’s not working out. So, they need to risk the ecosystem and population of a whole planet to get what they want. It’s not surprising, because this is what fascists do. They create odd obstacles and then destroy everything that’s indigenous to a planet. There are several real-life examples, and in the show, we’ve seen this happen in Aldhani. Now, since Ghorman is a little more influential than Aldhani, their takeover needs to be both subtle and cruel.
The Ministry of Enlightenment plans to use propaganda to break the Ghors’ morale while changing the public’s sentiments towards them. But Dedra tells Krennic that that won’t be enough; they’ll need to instigate a group of Ghorman rebels into doing all the wrong things, thereby manufacturing consent for a violent Imperial takeover. In the second episode of Andor Season 2, Dedra and Partagaz return to the ISB Central Office, where Dedra expresses her desire to keep looking for Axis (code name for Rael) instead of focusing on the Ghorman project. Partagaz says that it’s pointless to go after Axis, especially after her failed mission at Ferrix has turned him from a mere rumor to a symbol of hope amongst the Rebels. So, if she wants to keep her head, she needs to deliver Ghorman to Krennic. Elsewhere on Coruscant, we see that Syril Karn has become a senior employee of the Imperial Bureau of Standards, and we also learn that Syril and Dedra are an actual couple now. As in they are living together because they fell in love after Syril saved Dedra during the uprising on Ferrix. If they weren’t space Nazis, this would’ve been cute. Also, if the existence of this couple irks you, the only assurance that I can give you is that romantic relationships in Star Wars usually don’t have happy endings.
