‘Andor’ no more: Your burning questions, answered

With apologies to anyone hoping this prequel show might squeeze in a season 3 before the events of Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Andor has reached its inevitable bittersweet conclusion.

Even the title of the last episode of season 2 now on Disney+ — “Jedha, Kyber, Erso” — reminds us of the tragic movie narrative in store for Cassian Andor (Diego Luna). That list (a planet, a crystal, an engineer) is what sucks Cassian, along with reprogrammed Imperial droid K-2SO (Alan Tudyk) and Andor’s old prison buddy Melshi (Duncan Pow), into the hunt for those all-important Death Star plans, at the cost of all their lives.

So now we have a complete narrative, the longest unbroken one in the Star Wars franchise; call it the Death Star trilogy. Andor ends minutes before Rogue One, which itself ends minutes before the 1977 movie now known as Star Wars: Episode IV — A New Hope.

That’s a lot of data tapes to take in at once, so here’s a Yavin-style debrief that can handle your biggest burning questions.

What happens to Cassian next?

As his show ends, Captain Cassian Andor, Head of Rebel Intelligence (his full title, only used in Rogue One) is on his way to meet with a source named Tivik (Daniel Mays) on a deep-space trading outpost called Kafrene. Cassian knows Tivik already, from some time between the show’s BBY time jumps — so don’t worry, you didn’t miss him in Andor.

Tivik is one of the informants that General Draven (Alistair Petrie) placed inside the increasingly paranoid team of rebels led by Saw Gerrera (Forest Whitaker) on Jedha. The information he’ll only give to Cassian is that an Imperial pilot has defected with a message from Galen Erso, engineer of a weapon that Tivik reveals for the first time is a “planet killer”: the Death Star.

The meeting doesn’t go well, as you may recall. Tivik is so anxious he draws the attention of Stormtroopers, and his broken arm means he can’t climb out of their dead-end meeting place. Cassian is forced to kill Tivik along with the troopers — his most morally compromised action yet.

At the same time, Draven sends Melshi to extract Jyn Erso (Felicity Jones), daughter of Death Star engineer Galen (Mads Mikkelsen), from an Imperial work camp on the planet Wobani. Andor meets Erso back on Yavin IV, then takes her to Jedha for a fateful meeting with Saw. The defecting pilot brought a message from Galen Erso, who reveals he’s put a flaw in the Death Star.

That flaw can only be found in the data tapes housed on the Imperial planet of Scarif. Which is where Cassian and Jyn die, courtesy of a Death Star attack, having transmitted the plans that will find their way to Princess Leia (Carrie Fisher), and ultimately save the Rebellion in A New Hope.

Was there a budding romance between Cassian and Jyn on that Scarif beach as they faced their doom, or just a close friendship? It’s still an open-ended question, but Andor gives us reason to think Cassian actually had the love of his life on his mind as he was vaporized by the explosion.

What happens to Bix?

Credit: Disney+

At the very end of Andor, we see Bix Caleen (Adria Arjona) back on the farming planet of Mina-Rau, where she and Cassian lived during the first three episodes of Season 2. Turns out this was the secret location where she fled a year before, BBY 2, to stop getting in the way of Cassian’s essential work for the Rebellion.

Not very secret, in other words — suggesting that she was torn about her selfless act, and wanted Cassian to find her easily. This gives fresh poignancy to what Vel (Faye Marsay) tells Cassian in the final episode of Andor, that he should look her up. He promises to do so after his next mission (sob!).

As she searches the sky for a love who will never return, Bix also has the show’s final surprise in her arms: her child, and yes, definitely Cassian’s. We don’t know anything about the child, not even its gender, so it’s possible this is a character that will crop up in future Star Wars entertainment.

For now, think of the scene as mirroring the final shot of Rogue One. The child in Bix’s arms, like the Death Star plans in Leia’s hands, provides a new hope.

What about Cassian’s sister?

Before his final fateful walk on Yavin at the end of Andor — during which he sees the Force healer one last time — Cassian has a dream where he sees his long-lost sister as she was back on his home world, Kenari. The entire narrative of Andor began with him chasing down reports of a Kenari woman on the industrial planet of Morlani.

So, has he found her or not?

Given that Cassian just helped rescue Luthen’s assistant Kleya (Elizabeth Dulau) and her vital information on Erso, and given that we learned Kleya (in season 2, episode 10) was found by Luthen as a war orphan on an unnamed planet at around the same age as Cassian’s sister, you might be forgiven for thinking they’re one and the same. But that’s not the case.

“His sister died on Kenari,” Andor showrunner Tony Gilroy confirmed to Mashable. “Her absence is much more valuable as a motivator” for Cassian, in order to give him a “savior complex” that drives him to rescue people whenever he can — including Kleya, a character Gilroy intended to reveal as the real brains behind Luthen’s nascent rebel network.

What happens to Saw Gerrera and the rest of the rebels?

“We’re running on fumes,” Tivik tells Cassian in that fateful meeting at the start of Rogue One. He’s talking about Saw Gerrera’s ragtag operation on Jedha, which receives only suspicion, not aid, from rebel HQ on Yavin.

We thought Tivik was just talking metaphorically — but now, thanks to Andor, there’s a literal meaning too. Saw is addicted to the fumes given off by rhydonium or “rhydo,” a volatile fuel for starships, which explains his need for a breathing apparatus in Rogue One.

Saw also appears to be inducting newcomers by making them inhale rhydo, on the grounds that “revolution is not for the sane” and that the rebels need to be more like rhydo themselves — “the thing that explodes when there’s too much friction in the air.”

As crazy as he is, Saw is not wrong: With the fast-approaching completion of the Death Star, the Rebellion needs more friction in order to explode it.

We saw Cassian’s information meet with distrust on Yavin, where Senators including Mon Mothma (Genevieve O’Reilly) and Bail Organa (Jimmy Smits in Rogue One, Benjamin Bratt in Andor). In Rogue One, they’re still inclined to capture Galen Erso so he can testify before the Senate, which wouldn’t have done any good (the Emperor disbands the Senate in A New Hope). So, General Draven goes rogue himself, ordering Cassian to kill Galen.

Saw dies with a smile on his face, casting aside his oxygen mask as the explosion from the Death Star’s destruction of an ancient city on Jedha reaches his compound. Bail Organa, having gone home to tell his people of the Death Star, is killed when Alderaan is the first to be entirely wiped out by the planet-killer. Draven, according to the canon storyline in Star Wars comics, is killed helping rebels escape from Darth Vader a year after the Death Star’s destruction.

Mon Mothma survives as Commander-in-Chief of the Rebellion, coordinating the attack on the second Death Star in Return of the Jedi. Her famous line, “Many Bothans died to bring us this information,” now bears a lot more weight considering all the people who died in Andor bringing her news of the first one.

What happens to Orson Krennic and the rest of the Imperials?

“I was due on Scarif two hours ago,” Death Star director Orson Krennic (Ben Mendelsohn) tells Imperial Security Bureau honcho Lio Partagaz (Anton Lesser) during Krennic’s final dialogue scene in Andor. Scarif, home to all information on the Death Star, is where Krennic dies at the hands of Jyn in Rogue One. He lives just long enough to see the Death Star appear in orbit above the planet.

But Krennic is not going directly to his doom on Scarif. First comes the scene where we see him at the end of Andor, watching the Death Star’s final component being hauled into place. He’s confronted here by Grand Moff Tarkin (Peter Cushing, or at least the creepy Rogue One CGI version), who takes the Death Star out from under Krennic’s control after its first live test on Jedha City.

Krennic then seeks a meeting with Darth Vader, hoping the Dark Lord of the Sith can intercede with the Emperor; he’s desperate for Death Star credit. But there is no honor among Imperials, and a mortally wounded Krennic is wiped out on Scarif by Tarkin’s hand. Partagaz, meanwhile, has taken his own life rather than face up to the Emperor’s displeasure at letting Kleya go.

Syril (Kyle Soller), of course, died back in the genocide on Ghorman in episode 8, abandoned by Dedra Meero (Denise Gough) just as he was starting to figure out what the Empire was doing; Dedra had just learned about the Death Star herself.

Of the Imperial figures we’ve been following in Andor, Dedra is the only survivor — albeit in the same kind of prison where Cassian found himself in season 1. Presumably she stays there for the next three years, during which time the Empire needs more prison labor to construct the second Death Star; she may, if she’s lucky, survive long enough to see the Republic founded in its ashes.

If Andor and the rest of the Death Star trilogy tells us anything, then, it’s that working for the Empire is unlikely to lead to any more longevity than working for the Rebellion. If you’re heading for prison or an early death anyway, you may as well be on the side of the good guys.

Andor is now streaming on Disney+.