20-05-2025
What happens in the ‘Andor' finale, and how it leads into ‘Rogue One'
WARNING: The following piece contains spoilers about Andor Season.
It feels paradoxical that Andor is over. On the one hand, creator Tony Gilroy and his team have been working on the series since at least 2020, with various delays in production and release caused by the COVID-19 pandemic and the 2023 Hollywood strikes, so now all that work has finally paid off. On the other hand, how can the most acclaimed Star Wars show be over after only two seasons, when other big-scale genre shows last for years and years?
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But because the end of Andor ties so directly into Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, which runs right into the original Star Wars, the show is now part of a chain of epic storytelling beyond any release.
One result of that connectivity is that Andor viewers have known how titular hero Cassian Andor (Diego Luna) will die since before the show began. But plenty of other characters on the show aren't in Rogue One, so their fates have been open-ended. The final three episodes of Andor give those characters resolutions, starting with Luthen Rael (Stellan Skarsgård). The underground revolutionary has played a key role in forming the Rebel Alliance over two seasons. Still, his epic Season 1 speech about how, 'I burn my life to make a sunrise I'll never see,' indicated he was doomed to die in obscurity, and indeed he did — but not before making one last key contribution to the Rebel cause.
After all, that epic speech was delivered to Luthen's Imperial Security Bureau mole Lonni Jung (Robert Emms) to convince him to keep delivering insider information. It worked, and in Episode 10, Lonni rewards Luthen with the biggest secret in the entire Empire: the Death Star. By accessing the files of Dedra Meero (Denise Gough), Lonni has learned that the Ghorman Massacre, the mining of Khyber crystals on Jeddah, and other Imperial activities are all connected in developing a massive new weapon. Lonni demands safety for himself and his family in exchange for this huge jackpot, but Luthen kills him.
Luthen knows how vital this intel is and finally decides to leave Coruscant for the safety of the Rebel base on Yavin. But first, he needs to burn his headquarters so the Empire can't access all his information. In another excellent example of tactile technology on this show, we see Luthen pouring acid over his computers — and that's when Dedra walks in. After years of hunting and refusing to give up, she's found her 'Axis.' But if Dedra expected Luthen to spare himself the brutal treatment he's delivered to informants and acquaintances over the years, she gets served a rude awakening. He slits his wrists while she's not looking, but not before providing some beautiful final lines: 'You're too late. The Rebellion's not here anymore. It's flown away; it's everywhere now.'
Dedra races Luthen to the nearest hospital, desperate not to lose her quarry before she can interrogate him, but again, she underestimates the Rebels' commitment to their cause. His longtime assistant Kleya Marki (Elizabeth Dulau) sneaks into the hospital, but to kill Luthen rather than save him. Before that happens, we're treated to flashbacks of a younger Luthen saving her as a young orphaned girl from a battlefield. This is a thematic Rogue One connection rather than a direct plot one, because it reveals that Luthen and Kleya had a similar adoptive relationship as the one between Saw Gerrera (Forest Whitaker) and Jyn Erso (Felicity Jones) in that movie.
Kleya kills Luthen and is alive to tell the Rebellion the big news about the Death Star, but first, they must get her off Coruscant. Dedra's loyal assistant, Heert (Jacob James Beswick), has learned many lessons from his mentor and is doing a good job of hunting Kleya down. Luckily, Cassian and K-2SO (Alan Tudyk) arrive just in time to save her. Rogue One fans have been waiting two seasons to see Cassian and his droid best friend fight side-by-side again, and watching them take down a battalion of stormtroopers does not disappoint.
Meanwhile, Dedra finds herself arrested and interrogated by her coworkers. In particular, Director Orson Krennic (Ben Mendelsohn) believes she is a traitor who leaked news of his Death Star project to the Rebels. Poor Dedra thought working harder than everyone else in the Empire would always get her ahead. Still, she didn't realize that working in an evil corporation means the person above you will throw you under the bus if it saves their neck, which is exactly what Krennic does. As Major Partagaz (Anton Lesser) notes later on, the Death Star should be finished by now, and Krennic's delays have now led to news leaking before it's even ready. Krennic scoffs that Partagaz 'sounds like Tarkin,' which is a second namedrop for an unseen Rogue One character after Krennic earlier asked Dedra how she learned about Galen Erso, Mads Mikkelsen's engineer from that movie who is building the damn thing. Dedra thought that by 'scavenging' every scrap of information she could find from across the ISB's operations, she could find 'Axis' and end the Rebellion in one fell swoop. Instead, putting all those secrets in one place allowed the Rebels to see them and set in motion events that will destroy the Death Star — there's that great chain of storytelling in action!
Throughout Andor, viewers have seen how the extensive Imperial bureaucracy can be as much of a hindrance as an advantage. At the same time, Luthen's Rebels are fleet-footed and quick to adapt to changing dynamics. But with Luthen dead and the Rebellion now with an official leadership council in place on Yavin, we see how their gears are getting clogged up, too. Cassian expects his return with news of the Death Star to be greeted triumphantly. Still, instead, the leaders underplay the news (because, in fairness, it is horrifying) and diss Luthen now that he can no longer defend himself. But when Cassian insists, Senator Bail Organa (here played by Benjamin Bratt instead of the usual Jimmy Smits) approves him to go to Jedha and investigate this intel, where we will find him at the beginning of Rogue One.
As for the other non-Rogue One characters: Kleya is safely ensconced on Yavin, while Dedra is sent to the same type of Imperial prison-factory that Cassian once escaped — how's that for just desserts? Like a samurai, Partagaz dies by ritual suicide behind a closed door. At the same time, Mon Mothma's topknot-sporting ex-husband, Perrin Fartha (Alastair Mackenzie) takes some new mistress (or perhaps even second wife) home in his flying car while he sadly drinks liquor.
Best of all, Bix Caleen (Adria Arjona) is still alive, and she's not alone. She's holding a baby, which adds another dimension to her decision to leave Cassian when she did. If he knew he had a child to protect and raise, maybe he wouldn't have been able to make the selfless sacrifices that would save the galaxy from the Death Star. This is Andor's final surprise: It turns out that viewers didn't know how Cassian's story would end after all. Heroes can die, but legacies live on. Somewhere out in the galaxy, there's always a new hope.
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