Andor Season 2 Episodes 1-3
"One Year Later" / "Sagrona Teema" / "Harvest"
Writer: Tony Gilroy
Director: Ariel Kleiman
Cast: Diego Luna, Genevieve O'Reilly, Stellan Skarsgård, Denise Gough, Kyle Soller, Adria Arjona, Muhannad Bhaier, Faye Marsay, Elizabeth Dulau, Joplin Sibtain, Kathryn Hunter, Anton Lesser, Ben Miles, Dave Chapman, Alastair Mackenzie, Verada Sethu, Ben Mendelsohn
A year has passed since an upstart Imperial officer overturned the hero groundmech B2EMO during a public memorial for Maarva Andor. This assassination attempt on the stammering red heart of Ferrix provoked a violent uprising, often considered the tipping point for the Galactic Civil War. It is, of course, where the term "tipping point" comes from, no citation needed. When the smoke cleared, the bent pseudo-tubas and jizz clarinets swept to the gutters, the last fascist lickspittle retreated to the Howard Space Johnson to nurse his brick-racked jaw, B2EMO and his supporters were away, plotting the next phase of rebellion.
The year is 4 BBY, but no one knows that yet — or if they do, the acronym confounds them; it will make sense in four years.
Now an established rebel, Cassian finds himself in a testing facility on Sienar, garbed in the black and red of an Imperial test pilot.
He is tasked with stealing a prototype fighter, and months of training and undercover work have brought him to this night, in this caf, comforting a woman who's put her life on the line for this singular act of defiance. In the year since Cassian asked Luthen Rael to either kill him or bring him into his confidence, Maarva Andor's brown-eyed boy has become the true believer we met in 2016's Rogue One: A Star Wars Story. He's not nearly as abrasive as Luthen, and quite a deal warmer than he was at the start of his journey. He reassures Niya that her taking this risk, forsaking the comfort she's admittedly enjoyed thus far under Imperial rule, is meaningful.
"You're coming home to yourself. You've become more than your fear. Let that protect you."
Cassian hurries aboard the checks notes TIE Avenger, and immediately realizes he's been studying the wrong manual. Nothing looks familiar. It's like Demolition Man when a freshly-thawed Stallone enters a futuristic bathroom and sees the "three seashells" in the place of toilet paper. This thing might as well be a submarine. Daddy Gilroy concedes to some studio notes and we're treated to combat reticles and heavy fire as Cassian button-mashes his way through a full night shift of Stormtroopers and doglegs the ship out of the hangar and into the night sky to rendezvous with a compatriot named Porko. That's the plan, anyway.
Cassian spends a good chunk of this arc on a jungle planet, a rendezvous point with Porko, who doesn't materialize. Instead, Cassian is held captive by bickering factions of rebels, the kind of lost, disorganized groups Saw Gerrera bemoaned last season. They all talk over each other. We're given a dozen nicknames we as viewers don't bother to commit to memory. They have no idea what they should be doing. They splinter and fight amongst themselves, camped out in a sweaty jungle beset by the roars of (mostly) unseen predators.
The setup recalls a recent episode of Star Wars: Skeleton Crew where the space Goonies happen upon a planet where adults and children alike are engaged in constant civil war. It's all, in turn, reminiscent of Dr. Seuss's Sneetches, by way of Rod Serling — a treatise on the absurdity of forever wars whose soldiers can no longer remember the cause they're dying for. It feels a bit broad for this show, not nearly as nuanced as past conflicts. Cassian ultimately outsmarts his captors and escapes once more in the TIE Avenger. But the time he lost will be costly indeed.
Elsewhere, Mon Mothma navigates the equally fraught occasion of her teenage daughter's wedding. It is enough that the marriage was foisted on Mon by Davo Sculdon, the father of the groom, an oily gangster who's helped fund the rebellion in return. But young Leida is also extremely into this whole trad wife thing, part and parcel of a cultural heritage Mon was hoping to relegate to the past.
This first arc takes us through the pageantry of the matrimonial retreat at the Mothma estate, nestled in the scenic mountains of Chandrila. The pomp and circumstance put Padme and Anakin's lakeside shotgun wedding to shame. And how could it not, with Mon and Luthen on hand to zhuzh every garland and gobo even as they fret. Yes, Luthen's in his wig all weekend, but this is a working holiday. Cassian secured the ship but is not responding on comms. Kleya and Vel are behaving right now, but that can hardly last. Mon's childhood friend and purse Tay Kolma is sleeping in his pool house and getting a little too chummy with Sculdun. Nightmare of nightmares.
Despite a desperate plea behind closed doors, Mon is forced to surrender Lieda to the life she's chosen. Luthen makes it very clear that Tay, down on his luck, hurting for credits, has become a liability they simply can't afford. While I was surprised and delighted to see Cinta return, it was immediately apparent what that cameo portends. This is very likely the last we'll be seeing Tay, and Cinta won't be receiving a very high Uber rating. Or any rating at all, because this is not a genuine side hustle and Tay is going to be dead in an alley.
Enough about the wedding. You're wondering about the best, most captivating, repulsive, cold-blooded love story in all the galaxy. Dedra and Syril are cohabitating on Coruscant. I know. I know. The Hot Lips Houlihan and Frank Burns of space fascists are together. Syril is now overseeing other pasty young bootlickers to be all they can be at the Bureau of Standards, hunting down paper clip thieves. Following a dull seminar about disinformation warfare and spiders (that absolutely could've been an email. Thanks, Orson!) Dedra returns to their unadorned, stark white apartment where Syril is not allowed to display his action figures or physical affection. It is just as sterile and toxic as I'd dreamt it would be since he weaseled his way into her heart on Ferrix.
And then Eedy Karn shows up in her flagrant orange to impose her codependent graviton waves over fondue. Dedra, of course, is all, fon-don't.
Having retreated to sulk on a bed where dreadful things must happen, Syril reemerges to find Dedra has bested his mother. Something unhealthy and sexual and awful has clicked into place for the twerp. If only they can find Andor …
Meanwhile, B2EMO and his companions await Cassian on the glutinous Mina-Rau, a kind of space-Kansas. Though B2 has established himself as a community mascot and the boys have found belles amongst their benefactors, their friend's return can't come soon enough. Bix, Brasso, and Wilmon, all working as itinerant "toolies" maintaining vast farming machinery, lack the documents to satisfy the coming Imperial inspectors. Bix is also suffering night terrors stemming from her interrogation and torture at the hands of Dedra, and Dr. Gorst in particular.
Unfortunately it takes Cassian until the end of this batch of episodes to reach Mina-Rau, at which point Brasso — the realest of real ones — is shot dead by the inspectors while attempting to reach Wilmon.
And Bix.
Bix has just killed an Imperial lieutenant in his attempt to rape her.
This is a reality we've not seen in Star Wars before. It's deeply sobering. And something like this should always stop us in our tracks. Andor has a way of doing that, offering us escape and asking us to reflect in equal measure. And sometimes it's really goddamn mean.
Mon, for one, is uninterested in reality. Having lost her daughter, her best friend — her true love? — and soul in the space of a weekend, she downs shot after shot and plunges headlong into the dance. Girl, we get it. That was a lot.
And I'm pretty sure — yep — Cassian left B2 on that wheat planet. Which is probably for the best. But geez.
Next: Andor Season 2 Episodes 4-6 Recap: What We Do in the Dark
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