Andor Recap: The Galaxy Is Watching

Everything that happens in this episode of Andor is inevitable. Most of it has been openly and repeatedly discussed in scenes from previous episodes. The rest of it could be easily inferred, even if it comes as a surprise to some of the characters, particularly one who catches a blaster to the head. It is not a shocking twist that the Empire brings mining equipment to Ghorman, prepares for protests that they’re hoping to incite, observes as they boil over, and then push the conflict into deadly violence. That ensuing violence is more terrifying chaos than exciting spy-show action. Cassian and Syril are both caught in the middle, largely unaware of each other until a last-minute collision. The hero who we know is going to escape, escapes. As soon as a familiar line of droid appears on the Imperial side, it’s pretty clear that one of them will wind up forcibly switched over to the rebels. Minus the previously-on and various credits, the whole thing runs about 40 minutes, all told — less than a typical episode of network television.

Yet those 40 minutes have a ruthless focus that places this installment among the best episodes of Andor, particularly in the area of translating the Star Wars iconography into a more complex world. We’ve seen plenty of Star Wars scenes where a barrage of laser-gunfire streaks across the scene. We’ve seen fewer where this many bodies pile up as a result.

While it’s not a surprise to see this happen, the show uses it to interrupt some of its characters’ well-laid spy-narrative plans. Before the violence begins in earnest, Cassian is assembling his rifle, preparing to take out Dedra Meero. But he sees Imperial troops setting up barricades on the plaza outside his hotel room, just as Dedra has noticed the arrival of mining equipment signaling that the Empire cares less and less about deniability. Or rather, they no longer consider it necessary. They want an excuse to start mining, they know violence will give them one, and they know how to make it boil over. “You seem animated,” Partagaz tells Dedra as he confirms that it’s time for the Empire to unleash its full might. She is, indeed, working even harder than usual to contain herself, and that animation, such as it is, emerges during her final scene of the episode. Calling it an expression of guilt would probably be stretching it, but the intentional loss of control that the Empire requires does almost literally rattle her.

Still, Dedra has, to date, been more accepting than Syril of the moral and procedural compromises required to move up through the Imperial world. As the Ghor march on the plaza to protest the Imperial presence, Syril skulks through the crowd, seemingly unsure of what to do, a man without a faction. Rylanz, still preaching nonviolence, snags and confronts him; Syril, who still thinks he was supposed to “trap outside agitators” (and apparently not having received the message from the Ghor slap in the previous episode), insists that he meant the native Ghor no harm. Frustrated and angry, he finally confronts Dedra about this deception and his accidental role in it, before storming back out into the streets.

That’s really the bulk of the episode: Cassian and Syril both roaming through the streets, which erupt into further violence when an Imperial sniper (upon Dedra’s go-ahead) fires a shot to incite more violence, faking an excuse for troops on the ground to open fire. Hundreds of Ghor are killed, stormtroopers patrol the streets, and KX-series security droids are unleashed like hulking monsters, subduing random humans to death.

Cassian has expressed his misgivings about whether Luthen was using all of this as an excuse, rather than actually caring for the Ghor, but he’s here to do a job, and tries to take aim at Dedra. Syril, who so relentlessly pursued Cassian last season, recognizes him in the crowd (after an earlier shot where the camera is essentially handed off from one to the other without either noticing). Though the last person he attacked was, in fact, Dedra, Syril tackles Cassian and a brutal fight ensues. When Syril eventually gains the upper hand, aiming a weapon at the unarmed Cassian, the latter unintentionally fires back: “Who are you?” he asks with genuine incredulity. He doesn’t remember the man he once tied up (but didn’t kill, despite Luthen’s urging) as he escaped Ferrix, whose pursuit of Cassian brought him, in a roundabout and Dedra-assisted way, glory enough for a foot in the Imperial doorway.

The question — probably the fact of it more than the existential nature, though also maybe same difference — gives Syril only the slightest pause, and an even slighter lowering of his weapon. Then Rylanz, from off-camera, shoots him in the head.

Because the action stays with Cassian as he escapes (and Will splits off to go after Dreena, his Ghorman Front love), we don’t see any direct mourning for Syril Karn. We can infer from the final shot of his mother Eedy in tears watching the propaganda, lamenting the loss of “Imperial” life, that she either suspects or knows that he’s died; it’s not entirely clear whether that’s part of the private fit Dedra has, tugging and chafing at her impeccable Imperial Outfitting. We don’t see any scenes where anyone is informed that this has happened, and Cassian, of course, barely seems to give it a second thought. Somehow, there’s an element of heartbreak here.

One danger of humanizing fascist characters is giving short shrift to their victims — of accidentally saying, “Yes, what these people did is bad, but aren’t their lives so much more interesting than the mere ants under their boot?” Yet Andor has been able to locate a deep well of sadness within Syril and Dedra; it wouldn’t even be accurate to call them good people caught up on the wrong side, yet that there is humanity underneath their officious, borderline fetishistic admiration of Empire rules and norms that makes their failure as humans seem all the more tragic. And inevitable.

Rebel Yells

• Cassian has to run like hell from a KX-series droid and it has him dead to rights before fate intervenes via a rebel-driven tank. In a moment of perhaps unlikely but satisfying inspiration, he decides to haul the violently decommissioned droid who we first met as K-2SO away with him to, presumably, reprogram it with the ability to issue sassy remarks.

• Love that shot of Dedra staring out into the streets of Ghorman, her reflection mixed with the smoke of the massacre filling the air.

• Not a lot of side notes for this episode because it’s all pretty vital to the central action. Just a lean, propulsively edited, well-paced, beautifully shot 40 minutes or so of television. That craft is present in almost all episodes of Andor to some degree, but it really comes to the fore here.