As much as a two-season show can be said to have a tradition, the Andor mid-season heist feels a bit like the Star Wars equivalent of the Halloween or Christmas episodes of old. But while last season’s Aldhani mission was a proving ground for Cassian’s entry into Luthen’s orbit, things are a bit different in BBY 3, with Cass shrugging off the possibility of fomenting further rebellion partnership with the Ghorman Front. When Luthen picks up his irritable fake fashion designer following the quick business trip to Ghorman, Cass offers his executive analysis: Don’t get involved with this. “They started too late, now they’re rushing,” he notes, inflaming Luthen’s skepticism. Or perhaps he’s actually teasing out Luthen’s indifference to any concern for their lives; if the Ghorman Front’s plan to hijack an Imperial transport “goes up in flames,” the revolutionary svengali notes, “it will burn. Very brightly.”
Great, Luthen, great. Can I go home and make out with Bix for a bit now? (That’s what Cassian’s eyes are saying.) Actually, no: Luthen’s meddling intrudes on whatever imitation of domestic harmony Cass and Bix are able to forge in their safehouse apartment (with a great view, as Luthen pointed out last time), as Cass learns that Luthen was poking around, checking in on Bix without telling him. What’s more, Cass knows that Luthen knows the uncomfortable point it would make when the former inevitably learns of this intrusion – even if Bix downplays the intrusiveness, probably out of desire to downplay her own potential fragility. Cass storms into Luthen’s antiquities front, furious, to confront his sorta-mentor, who is in turn infuriated by the risk Cass is taking by showing up in the first place.
As it happens, Luthen has a new favorite couple to expertly puppeteer for Empire-heisting purposes: Vel and Cinta, who sit down to lunch on Ghorman before beginning the hijack mission in earnest. They seem more at peace with Luthen’s meddling in their relationship, admitting that ”we’re worth more to him separate than together” before a beautifully backlit kiss.
When they join the Ghorman Front, their job is clearly to provide a crash course in precisely the discipline that their old compatriot Cassian says the Ghor are lacking. But does it also kinda, sorta feel like they’re being shipped in to provide some characters we care more deeply about than the French-coded Ghor. Obviously we care if they’re beneath the Empire’s boot, but these specific rebels haven’t made much of an impression. It’s a tall order, given how many other major characters this show is following.
The hijacking goes relatively smoothly until a scrap with a passerby, not even an ISB officer or a stormtrooper, sends a stray blaster shot into the night, which kills Cinta. Hey, isn’t there a trope named after this? Of course, rebel spies and soldiers are going to die on this show’s way to Rogue One, but it does feel like Cinta gets shortchanged in this episode and, now, the season, Vel’s earn-this speechifying notwithstanding. It’s most effective as an ongoing counterpoint to Cassian’s relationship with Bix, though the show sometimes feels like it’s nagging for the right to sacrifice her. Cass, committed as he is to the cause, still doesn’t want to be put in a speech-giving situation like Vel. Yet he can’t quite compartmentalize the way Dedra can: “Syril must never know what this is really about,” she’s told before he takes his spot as the counter-mission’s eyes on the ground. That is, he has to think he’s straightforwardly spying on the rebels, rather than secretly helping to goad them into an uprising that can be turned against them. It’s a fascinating portrait of complicity: Syril is seemingly completely on board with the Empire’s overall agenda, so long as they appear to be following the predetermined rules. (Or, in 2025, is that an outdated fantasy, the idea that he might be bothered by the insincere machinations?) Dedra is the opposite: She’s fine with whatever rules the Empire wants to make up on the fly, as long as she can bend them to get the fascist equivalent of a gold star and a promotion.
Now, the hijacking that claims Cinta isn’t the episode’s only heist. Over on Ghorman’s forever counterpoint of Coruscant, there’s a much smaller-scale operation going on at the Senate’s opening gala: Luthen and Kleya must get in to remove the bug from one of his artifacts before a reappraisal leads to its discovery. With on-the-fly and extremely reluctant help from Lonni Jung (Robert Emms), Luthen’s extremely nervous ISB informant, Kleya gets the job done. Mon Mothma contributes the fun part: Baiting and antagonizing Krennic, whose superciliousness in this scene somehow plays more evil than his more overt villainy in Rogue One.
Not through with his couples counseling through subterfuge, Luthen (presumably) gives the signal for a new mission, one where Bix can join Cassian, presumably their final bit of business as Coruscant residents: Destroying an ISB wing, and killing off Bix’s Imperial torturer while they’re at it. I haven’t loved the Bix storyline this season – it’s felt a bit all over the place, circling a contemporized post-damsel tragedy more than the complexity it seems to be aiming for – but here, Andor does subvert one particular trope common to this sort of story. Typically, a traumatized woman seeking violent revenge is made to back off from the abyss at the last minute, reasserting her superior humanity by refusing to sink to her victimizer’s level. Bix tortures the son of a bitch and blows him up, looking unambiguously empowered as she and Cassian walk away from the scene together. No hesitation, no guilt. What will be, if you’ll permit the mildest tantalization, the weakest of Andor’s four season-two arcs comes to a highly satisfying close.
• Okay, look, I know this stuff is all very serious with the spycraft and the hushed tones and the life-or-death stakes. But I cannot for the life of me understand the repeated conversational pattern where Luthen (or whoever else; Cass did this too on Ghorman) insists on mixing in some cover conversation as if they’re being watched before almost immediately transitioning into talking more-or-less plainly about what they’re really talking about, then finishing off with some more cover chat. If there are people around, sure, that might slightly lower the odds of them overhearing something important. But if Luthen’s otherwise empty shop is bugged, or being watched from a distance, is he really protecting any information by sandwiching open discussion of the rebellion with a few manufactured pleasantries?! Just best practices, I know, but it sometimes has the air of Tom Sawyer insisting on taking the long way around to escape in Huckleberry Finn. (I think about that sequence a lot.)
• Benjamin Bratt IS… Bail Organa! Some offbeat but necessary casting shenanigans here: Jimmy Smits played Bail Organa in Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith (which is, like it or not, where a lot of the infrastructure for Andor and Rogue One came from). He played a decade-later Organa in the Obi-Wan Kenobi series, fudging his age slightly but not noticeably, and with some makeup played a still-older version of the character in Rogue One (which was made a decade after Revenge of the Sith, but set later — and also set after Kenobi, which was shot later. Got all that?). Smits is actually nearly the perfect age to play Bail Organa right now; this season of Andor is set roughly 20 years after Revenge of the Sith, which came out … 20 years ago next month! (The anniversary re-release is now in theaters.) But apparently some combination of scheduling and financial issues kept him off the show, so Bratt has the part. (Too late for a Bratt Summer?) Generally, I’m all for Star Wars getting used to recasting so that they’re not tempted to use their unholy digital reanimation technology, but it would have been pretty cool to see Smits fill in so much of this character’s life over the years.
• The music when Mon Mothma lands at the gala briefly sounds like the HBO Feature Presentation melody from the 1980s and 90s.