Hogan Reviews

Andor’s second and sadly final season somehow managed to keep up the momentum from its stellar first season and keep that going all the way up to connecting to the already-great Rogue One film, making for a hell of a run of stories and moving Cassian Andor way up the chain of “great Star Wars characters”. Perhaps beyond all that though is it showed masterfully how you can blend real world messages and allusions into a great fictional show without jamming it in people’s faces, no guesses as to what show I’m referring to there… Anyway, let’s take a broad look, which means yes there will be some scenes and characters I don’t mention… I don’t have all day you know…

The season is split into four quarters, each taking place in a different year leading up to Rogue One/Episode IV. This was originally going to be the format for five seasons, each season being a year, but sadly but perhaps for the best it was decided to condense the last four into one, which sucks in various ways but given the streaming landscape I’d prefer this than have the show cancelled before it got to tell its story. The first chunk of three episodes is the weakest of the bunch, but even weak Andor is still great! Our titular rebel (played brilliantly by Diego Luna) steals a new type of TIE fighter but during the escape ends up crashing on a “random forest planet” and gets mixed up with local rebels who have no idea how to work together and in fact end up fighting each other with Andor in the middle. Meanwhile Andor’s allies, including Bix (Adria Arjona), Wilmon (Muhannad Bhaier) and Brasso (Joplin Sibtain), are on a pleasant world hiding out as farmers but sadly the Empire arrives for a random inspection, including one Imperial officer attempting to rape Bix, which is certainly not the usual brand of storytelling Star Wars goes for, but seeing her fight him off and indeed kill him was satisfying, even if it was more emotional trauma for her (she’s still having nightmares from her mental torture in Season 1…) Eventually Andor makes it to his friends and saves them, apart from Brasso, who is randomly gunned down in a field while trying to escape.

Andor parks his stolen TIE fighter. I wonder what happened to it…?

While all this is going on we check in on our Imperial characters. Syril (Kyle Soller) has now moved up from his tiny cubical to a management position and is dating Dedra (Denise Cough), who has found herself invited to a secret meeting chaired by Orson Krennic (Ben Mendelsohn), who reveals that for his “energy project” to move forward they need a rare crystal that exists underneath the surface of the planet Ghorman and they need an excuse to extract it. While the Empire plans a media campaign framing the Ghors as criminals and nuisances to the wider public Dedra says that the best way to do it would be to intentionally grow a rebellion on the planet so they’d have an excuse to more heavily occupy it, which Krennic likes. Great to see Mendelsohn back, he’s got such great sinister charm to him. Meanwhile Mon Mothma (Genevieve O’Reilly) is still struggling to balance her high societal social life and her privately funding of the growing rebellion when one of her co-conspirators starts to hurt financially and not-so-subtly asks for more money less he let things slip. Upon hearing this Luthen (Stellan Skarsgard), the cold-hearted rebel he is, has her old friend offed, much to Mon’s distress, leading to a now-infamous scene where she dances at her daughter’s wedding in something of a daze in order to not think about it.

One year later and the second trio of episodes is really a build up to the big event in the third trio, but done really well. Basically the civil unrest on Ghorman is ramping up, and Syril has been secretly sent there by Dedra and her superior Partagaz (Anton Lesser) to join and spur on the local rebellion to make sure Dedra’s plan continues forward. Meanwhile Andor and Bix have become direct subordinates of Luthen and live on Coruscant, but Bix is still having nightmares so Cassian is sent alone to Ghorman to see if their rebel cell is able to be helped. While undercover there he deems them too eager and likely to just end up being killed so decides not to help them, much to Luthen’s anger, who when confronted confirms Andor’s suspicions and says that if it leads to a massacre then the planet “will burn so brightly”, in other words get more people on the rebellion’s side. Yikes, but sadly logical! Cassian and Bix leave Luthen’s care but not before finding out the location of her former torturer and offing him. I think it’s this point where the condensing was obvious, we missed out on Bix and Cassian rejoining Luthen’s fold, Bix has a drug problem that goes away as quickly as it was introduced and their attack on the facility with the Imperial torturer should have been a bigger deal, not to mention where they are at the start of the next episodes! Seeing these things getting room to breathe would’ve been nice, but hey-ho.

Syril and Dedra aren’t going to be winning any “cutest couple” awards any time soon…

Speaking of, the next three… hoo-boy! I knew going in the infamous “Ghorman Massacre” would be covered by the series and that it would be different from the old Legends version (though it’s mentioned as having happened in the past, so hooray for compromise!), but I still wasn’t ready for Episode 8. Still, before that it’s now established that Andor and Bix have joined a bigger rebel cell that has formed on Yavin IV, which for the record was the “random forest planet” he visited in the first three episodes, and after an ominous visit to a Force healer who claimed Andor had a special aura about him, like the Force had chosen him for a special cause (wink wink!), Cassian starts criticising Wilmon for still being in contact with Luthen. For the record Wilman also tried working for Saw Guerrera (as always played brilliantly by Forest Whitaker) earlier in the season and nearly died due to his increasing insanity and paranoia, so comparatively I don’t blame him for seeing Luthen as a better option… Anyway, Andor and Wilman end up going to Ghorman due to Luthen’s information that Dedra is there and should she be assassinated then it would be a big blow to the Empire’s plans on the planet. Sadly its all too late as soon the Ghors are making a peaceful protest against the Empire in a clearly specifically staged area, and soon the local Imperial top brass have someone shoot one of their own troopers to get a another panicked trooper to shoot a Ghor, and boom, “justified” massacre as the peaceful protestors start to get gunned down or brutally beaten by the KX droids they soon send out. It’s as brilliant as it is uncomfortable to watch, but that’s not even the “best” bit of the episode, oh no…

Scenes of unrest on Ghorman…

Syril has come to like it on Ghorman and is disgusted at his lover for okaying the killing of the population for the sake of minerals and runs out into the crowd only to see the carnage take place around him, his beloved Empire, his goal in life, falling around him alongside his Ghor friends… and then he spots Andor, the man he blamed for all his life’s ills for years, and takes out his anger and frustration on him in a brutal fist fight the two have. Amazingly Syril gets the better of Andor and has him at gun point but just before pulling the trigger Cassian screams “Who are you?!”, and the realisation that the man who he thought of as a rival, the bogeyman out to get him all this time, not knowing who he was, showing it was entirely a one-sided thing in his head, makes him stunned just long enough for a Ghor rebel to shoot him in the side of the head. This whole sequence just blew me away, so much story was told without any words beyond that one question Cassian spoke. Andor and Wilman survive, and the former even takes the wrecked body of a KX droid with him, but the damage is done. In the immediate aftermath, as we know from an episode of the Rebels cartoon from a good while ago, this makes Mon Mothma finally take a public stand against the Emperor with a big speech in the senate, but how did she go from the Senate to being picked up by Gold Squadron in the cartoon? Cassian Andor rescued her of course! Episode 9 is all about this and it’s great in its own right (especially Mon’s speech) as eventually our titular lead gets her out of the senate and into the other rebel’s hands so she can eventually be picked up by the Ghost crew and deliver the speech that gathers the Rebellion together. After this Bix mysteriously decides to leave Andor behind because he’s too important to the cause but she can’t stay, and shortly after Cassian and co. wake up the KX droid after its reprogramming, giving us K2-SO (voiced once again by Alan Tudyk) to lead into the film with the final three episodes, which I’ll get to in a bit.

Scenes of killer droids “sorting out” the unrest on Ghorman…

*Phew!* I probably should’ve reviewed the season in two halves but the first two quarters were all build up, so it wouldn’t have been very satisfying. I did have to cut out a few things, a great and really tense scene at an art gallery where Luthen’s aide Kleya (Elizabeth Dulau) had to remove a bug they’d planted in an art piece while Krennic and other top officials were having a tour was great, and Dedra’s reaction to her lover’s anger and the massacre she helped orchestrate was some great drama, also the previously mentioned scenes with Saw Guerrera’s group and others with Luthen’s top hitwoman Vel (Faye Marsay) and rebel medic Cinta (Varada Sethu, who manages to make it onto this blog again in the middle of her Doctor Who season airing!) including the former’s death by accidental gunfire were all great. Hell, even if the writing wasn’t great, which it is, the cast is damn-near flawless. Andor really is the rare perfect storm of writing and acting.

Overall Thoughts:

Mon Mothma delivers her anti-fascist speech in a sadly all too relevant time in our lives…

Andor Season 1 was an unexpected hit and so with Season 2 everyone, myself included, wondered if it would be able to continue its quality and I’m happy to say yes, continued and maybe even surpassed with the third trio of episodes. Watching Andor then Rogue One and then the original Trilogy of films works so well in showing how the rebellion formed and eventually won and having a lot of that success being thanks to people like Luthen and Cassian, people who aren’t the big heroes who are remembered in the history books like Luke and Han, is sad but extremely fitting. If this isn’t my TV show of 2025 then something amazing is hiding away, let’s put it that way…

The final trio of episodes takes place over a day or two before Rogue One, first with Luthen being found out by Dedra just as he’s informed that the Empire’s energy project was actually a massive weapon, with the Ghorman Massacre, “what’s happening on Jedha” and Gailen Erso being mentioned as connected. Luthen sends Kleya away as he tries to destroy his antiques shop but its too late as Dedra arrives and gloats in his face, only for that to give him enough time to fatally stab himself. Luthen is taken to a hospital (named after Lina Soh from the High Republic era!) but thanks to doing this not only badly but off-the-books Dedra is locked up while Kleya, after several flashbacks of how herself as a child was saved by a troubled Luthen and how they became such a tight-nit duo, infiltrates the hospital and cuts off Luthen’s life support before escaping, making sure he can’t betray all he stood for by some new interrogation method or something. Wilmon gets an emergency broadcast from Kleya and despite getting more grief from Andor about having it when it goes off again Cassian decides to head to Coruscant to help without the Rebel council’s approval and goes with K2-SO and Melshi (Duncan Pow) for that extra bit of Rogue One-ness.

Luthen thanks his informant for the Death Star info… before shooting him dead to try and buy himself some time. Rebellions are built on hope, and the corpses of a lot of people, sadly…

Thanks to K2-SO’s help they survive an assault by Imperial troops but Kleya is hurt in the escape, leading to a return to Yavin where they’re met not-so-warmly. Andor tries to convince everyone of the apparent threat that Luthen gave his life for but the Rebel council, minus Mon Mothma, doesn’t trust Luthen much like they (far more understandably) don’t trust Saw Guerrera, as they operate outside of the Alliance. Kleya soon wakes and chats with Cinta about everything and comes to see the Alliance as Luthen’s dream finally realised and decides to stay, while Andor gets pulled off the inactive list immediately thanks to a contact on Kafrene wanting to talk to Cassian, in other words the opening scene of Rogue One! On the way to his ship we see a bunch of characters from the show and what happened to them, like Dedra ended up in a Narkina prison much like Andor found himself in the prior season, the Force healer is still on Yavin and gives a knowing look Andor (and the audience…) and Bix is back on the farming planet from the start of the season, holding a baby that’s about a year old, explaining why she left but why she didn’t want to pull Andor from the rebellion, which is a good thing given what he now goes on to do in his next series of missions…