Andor Episode #12 Concludes the Season with a Fiery Call To Action!

Nearly everyone comes to Ferrix for Maarva’s funeral and to hear her stirring call-to-action from beyond the grave in Andor episode #12, “Rix Road”!

Austin Gorton: Since everyone is coming to Ferrix in this episode, and this season finale marks the completion of a stirring season of television, we thought it would be prudent to bring the full Andor review band together for the conclusion of season 1. On steampunk-y french horn we have: 

Armaan Babu: It is me! Reporting in for duty, brick in hand, getaway route planned out if needed! 

Austin: And playing the Triple Flute is 

Adam Reck: Fweee! Adam Reck in the town square! Did you know my flute has fifty extra keys and doubles as a molotov cocktail? 

Austin: Don’t worry, we’ll all be hurling bricks at fascists! Before we get into the specifics, what are everyone’s high level thoughts on the finale, and the season as a whole? 

Armaan: I thought they nailed the finale. For a show that explores the darker part of a rebellion, it ended on a really high note. Plus, it did what so few season finales do nowadays: it gave us a satisfying ending. Sure, there’s stuff a’plenty leftover for a possible season 2, but if Andor stopped here, we have still been given a deeply satisfying story.

For the season as a whole? I’m not the first in saying this, but this might be the best thing Star Wars has ever done. I am deeply inspired by this show, and I feel like I’m going to be thinking about it for years afterwards. 

Adam: I am on the record as not being on team Rogue One, and have listened for years to fans telling me they love that movie for its grounded tale of the origins of the rebellion. So I am thrilled that I finally have my own Rogue One in Andor, a show that actually achieves what I think RO was trying to do far more successfully. Tony Gilroy has said a few times in interviews that the story we see here is inspired not just by the present, but the endless cycles of authoritarian rule and those who overthrow them. Gilroy and co have tapped into something truly timeless. This is not just a great show, it’s probably one of the best things on TV this year. 

Austin: For the most part, this finale was deeply satisfying: it pulled together most of the narrative threads from the season, really highlighted the larger themes of the series, and showed that, yes, Cassian was on something of a character arc all along, even when he seemed at times a passive actor in his own series. Yet for as exhilarating and cathartic as this episode was (see: hurling bricks at fascist), it also wasn’t perhaps as tight as it could have been. I think the Mon Mothma stuff could have been shoved into the preceding episode, as its clear her plotline is the biggest carryover into the next season, allowing this one to be entirely Ferrix-focused. Vel and Cinta also got a bit lost in the episode as the riot escalated (with Vel dramatically running into the smoke of the riot…just to get back to Cinta’s apartment, while Cinta shivving Korv was fun but ultimately random and kind of pointless). 

But those are ultimately minor quibbles in what is otherwise an entertaining capstone to a revelatory season of TV. I was a bit cold on this show coming out of its trio of episodes (more on this below, but now more than ever I’m convinced they could have cut the Kassa flashbacks and made the introductory arc a lean two episodes to get to the really good stuff sooner), but after that, it quickly became clear this series is something special. Not only did it give us, what, maybe six-ish immediately iconic Star Wars moments, but it succeeded as a Star Wars thing, a streaming series, and a TV show, with multiple arcs, standalone episodes, and a central protagonist completing some measure of an arc. Any one of those on its own would be worthy of celebration. 

What Happens in Canto Bight Stays in Canto Bight 

Austin: Before we get to the funeral, let’s check in on the most significant member of the ensemble to not make it to Ferrix in “Rix Road”, Mon Mothma. As has been the case all season, her adventures continue to be limited to Coruscant. Here, we see her first absolutely gaslight Perin with accusations that he’s gambling again, an argument overheard by her not-obviously-an-ISB-spy-all-along driver. Then her plotline for the season concludes as she goes forward with the introduction of her daughter to Chandrilan gangster-banker Davo’s son, in a sequence that has the same overall vibe as Maarva’s funeral. 

Adam: This is the first time we’ve seen Mon really take control all season. She’s been witness to things getting increasingly out of hand episode by episode and now she finally undoes her collar and starts to scheme. She knows her driver’s a spy who will head back to the ISB as soon as he hears something fishy. She knows he’ll listen if she tells him not to. And Perrin is the perfect fall guy for losing mystery money. Just like that, the ISB is looking in another direction, and Mon pulls the trigger on the gangster’s kid meet n greet.

I do love when Andor sprinkles a little Star Wars universe into the mix, and as an avowed Last Jedi-lover, the quick reference to Canto Bight made me smile. 

Austin: Ah yes, Canto Bight, the least favorite part of Last Jedi for everyone who’s not racist or an Incel (I say this as an avowed Last Jedi lover as well). 

Armaan: I thought it was a very clever moment for Mon Mothma that was completely lost in everything else that was going on. With all the other brilliant scenes that happened in this episode, this one is going to completely fade from people’s memories until it’s part of a recap somewhere down the line in Season 2.

I will say — I have been enjoying the Mon Mothma scenes immensely through this series, but she seems to be the only one whose story doesn’t really seem to intersect with Andor’s at all through the series. Aside from a tangential collection to Luthen, her tale (while captivating), is adrift in a whole bubble of its own. I thought for sure we’d see a stronger connection happen here in the finale, but I guess that’s something else that’s left for Season 2. 

There are a lot of little scenes like that that are lost in the best parts of the finale that seem to be little more than setups for another Season. Mon Mothma and the driver, Syril and Dedra’s strange little moment of connection, and, of course, the massacre of Anton Kreegyr and his men that happened entirely offscreen.

They’re great scenes, on their own, but in the context of the finale they all feel like leftovers, sprinkled in. Is that just me?

Adam: It’s a good point, Armaan. Austin and I talked last week about how we still don’t know exactly how the Aldhani heist factors into Mon’s missing funds. I thought they’d answer a little more of that puzzle this episode, but knowing we have another 12 episodes in Season 2, I feel confident we’ll get the answer. For now — and we’ll get into dangling plot threads later — these scenes seem to be included mainly to complement what’s going on in Ferrix. While I do think it would have been a really smart addition to cut to the massacre of Kreegyr and co as a parallel to the funeral riot, I realize that would have been really expensive and this show already has a hefty price tag, so when they don’t show something I totally understand. 

Austin: As I alluded to above, I definitely agree that the Mon Mothma stuff — good as it is — felt overshadowed in this episode. Especially given how much the previous episode was a tablesetter, moving her climatic moment there probably would have improved both episodes. As much as there are still dangling plot lines and character arcs to explore in season 2, nothing is dangling quite like Mon Mothma’s. I get why her agreeing to this meeting is a Big Deal for her, but as a climax to a season-long arc, it is lacking compared to what some of the other characters experience. And it represents an incidental, at best, advancement of the “what’s going on with Mon Mothma’s money?” plotline. Basically, it’s a perfect fine point on which to end an episode, but feels lacking when asked to serve as the punctuation on her season-long arc. 

It’s Easy for the Dead to Tell You to Fight

Adam: On to the main event then! Maarva’s brick has been cast. Does it look suspiciously like the engraved bricks they used to sell to Disney World patrons until they realized that after everyone walking on them for years they would not, as advertised, “last forever”? Yes, yes it does. That does not make its symbolism any less potent! But before any permitted gathering time can be allotted, the Empire is doing some last minute security checks. The Daughters of Ferrix are treated much the same way as the native inhabitants of Aldhani were. The Empire dismisses them and their traditions as momentary obstacles to their eventual assimilation. Dedra is back in town looking for Luthen, Luthen is back in town looking for Cassian, Karn is back in town looking for Cassian, and Cassian is right in the middle of all of it, hoping no one notices as he attends his mother’s funeral and tries to save Bix. 

Austin: Vel is also there, because, uh, she is a character in this show. To your point about the Aldhani parallels, I love how the Empire tries a similar tactic -— they aren’t *banning* the funeral from occurring, but they push it back to the afternoon, when they believe the citizens of Ferrix are slower. But the Daughters of Ferrix and whatever organization Brasso belongs to are basically like “eff that” and start the funeral exactly when they wanted to, anyway. 

The whole sequence leading up to the start of the funeral is a masterclass in tension building. It opens on Paak — whose father was the guy tortured into giving up Bix — building a bomb. You’ve got Luthen and Dedra arriving and running around in their Incognito Hoods. Cinta and Korv are dancing around each other, with only one realizing the other is a spy. Nurchi, the guy Cassian stiffed and humiliated earlier in the season, is making a play, and Cassian himself is stealing back into the city and hanging around in the sewer tunnels Maarva had been opening up in the hopes of flooding out the Empire. Just as with the escape on Narkina Five, the build up was heartracing.  

Armaan: The choices they made with regards to sound design are what really got to me. We saw something similar when the town came together in Episode 3, all banging their drums and walls and whatever they could find to show that this town is theirs. The sound isn’t played like most background music is — it’s at inconsistent volumes, though constant. At times distant, at times right there, with the simple silences of a respectful crowd throughout. It felt so real, like I was in the streets of Ferrix myself, watching all of this unfold. So much priority was given to the sound of the people here, and it’s done masterfully.

Austin: It seemed like the music moved in and out of being diegetic, coming from the performers on screen, and coming “from above”, as part of the score, and that was very cool. 

Armaan: I don’t know how much it happens in the States, but community funerals that have the dead marched through the streets is fairly common here, which is another reason why this scene hit me so hard. It’s a strange mix of loud and the quiet respect of the march. You don’t have a lot of time to think, or talk, but there is a lot of time to dwell. There’s something inspiring here to see grief that’s not a private thing, but as something of the community’s. 

And then, of course, we come to Maarva’s speech. It speaks to how close-knit Ferrix is that this message wasn’t just left for her nearest and dearest. It was for the whole town, and damn if she didn’t make the most of it. It was a simple speech. It wasn’t angry, it wasn’t spiteful. It didn’t condemn those who hadn’t fought — it was gentle. It came from a place of love. She understood. People had been passively allowing the Empire to grow in strength, herself included. She also knew that that time was over. That the people she was talking to needed to act now. 

Austin: In a season that gave us so many immediately-iconic moments, Maarva’s speech is in the running for the best of them all. And this episode gave her two great speeches; the earlier, quieter one delivered by Brasso to Cassian was more personal and less a call to action, but still impactful. I love that of all the characters drawn into the mix by the funeral, Cassian is the one largely ignoring Maarva’s speech. He’s focused on rescuing Bix, and he doesn’t need to hear what she has to say; he’s already decided to answer the call to action she’s delivering, and he already heard the Maarva speech he needed to hear. 

Armaan: There are so many moments in this season that make me think, “Oh, this is the untold story of how the Rebellion started.” Aldhani inspiring Rebellion throughout the galaxy. The prison revolt on Narkina 5. Mon Mothma’s official resignation from the Senate (a moment yet to come) and publicly calling for Rebellion. 

But for many who’ve watched this show, I think, everything that came before was kindling. The fires of the Rebellion started here.

Adam: And folks, if you weren’t inspired by Maarva’s passionate plea to kick some Empire ass, I know you were triggered when that Empire jerk kicks over B2EMO?! Nonononono. We must protect B2EMO at all costs. Needless to say, absolute chaos ensues as the Empire can no longer stand by, and the people of Ferrix can no longer stay silent. You’ve both mentioned the masterful way the show handles the sound design and keeping tabs on all of the players in the scene, and once the riot starts, it would be easy to lose track of everyone. So props to director Benjamin Caron for maintaining clarity as fists fly, Paak throws his bomb, Cassian helps Bix escape, Nurchi dies a cowards death, Cinta kills Korv, and Karn rescues Dedra who is getting kicked to death by the home team. A lesser production would have made a mess of the confusion, but we feel the panic and the anger and still hold on to all the various comings and goings. Kudos also go to best dude Brasso who somehow gets a cluster of key players onto a junkyard getaway ship and escapes. 

Austin: Brasso clocking Tigo with Maarva’s funeral brick after he knocked over Bee was one of the best moments of the season. 

Adam: I just want to take a moment here to talk Dedra and Karn for a second, because this is the second time we’ve seen them up close to each other like this and I think in different hands we would have seen them kiss. I applaud the hesitation. These are fascinating, yet horrible people, and while I know there are fans out there shipping these weirdos, I am just very curious where this leads, especially for Karn. 

Austin: It definitely seems like this will be Karn’s in to the ISB. Despite the shipping, I really don’t get that Dedre is all that into Karn but I can definitely see her repaying his “service” by bringing him into the service, thereby setting him on the path to becoming Cassian’s direct antagonist/thematic opposite even more than he already is. Then again, this series has shown time and again that it doesn’t always take the obvious/easy route with characters, so it’s entirely possible this is all setup for something else entirely (and that lack of clarity right now is good!). 

Armaan: I was honestly very disturbed by the implication that there might be something romantic between the two. The last scene together, Syril all but stalked her at her place of work, and it’s the first time I’ve seen her truly shaken. Despite everything she’s worked for and achieved, she can’t even go to work without some guy attaching unearned feelings of importance to her. He’s an idiot harboring delusions of grandeur on multiple fronts — all I want to see is her continually putting him in his place. 

Before we move on, though, I want to say, Maarva’s speech wasn’t the only golden one this episode. Nemik’s posthumous recordings had their moment, too. In fact, as inspiring as Maarva’s speech was, Nemik’s is absolutely my favorite of this episode. It is, I believe, the speech that finally turned Andor around. It offers hope — the assertion that tyranny is, at its heart, weak, and unsustainable. That its fall is inevitable. 

Austin: This episode absolutely matches episode 10 in the pantheon of “delivers some of the best Star Wars speeches ever” episodes. 

Armaan: We saw the cowardice on the streets of Ferrix. The moment Imperial officers found themselves in actual danger, they scrambled, crawling, lashing out with aggressive orders or rendered speechless like Dedra. For all their casual cruelty in their displays of power, when faced with actual strength? They balk.

Kill Me, Or Take Me In

Austin: Cassian’s confrontation with Luthen is brief and largely understated, but it is the moment that sends us out of the series for the season, and it’s the moment which really clicked Cassian’s arc for the season into place for me. We all of us have talked in previous reviews about how Cassian often felt like the whole at the center of the show, a passive actor around whom events swirled but who impacted them only when forced to. The ultimatum he gave Luthen — kill him, or make him a larger part of the Rebellion, not just one of Nemik’s tools of the enemy to be discarded once he served his purpose — snaps Cassian’s arc into focus, as someone transformed from a largely selfish person who doesn’t like the Empire but is only concerned with himself and his immediate worldview, to someone answering his mother’s full-throated call to action from beyond the grave. Was this enough for both of you, in terms of helping recenter Cassian in the show? And is there any room left for any kind of arc in the next season? 

Armaan: I’ve written elsewhere that Cassian wasn’t really the main character of his own show. For the most part, this is true. Season 1 was less about him than it was the perspective he was receiving, meaning that Season 1 was about the stories of other people. 

However, this final moment was the thing that justified the show being what it was, instead of a simple anthology series of early Rebellion days that just happened to have Cassian as a common thread. This was the story of how a clever but self-centered thief learned to be willing to die — not just for the cause, but for the slightest chance of shifting the dial towards freedom. He makes a big gamble at this moment. You can tell from Diego Luna’s excellent performance here, he has no clue for sure whether or not he’ll survive this moment. He simply hopes for it. 

It’s been said that Rebellions are built on that.

Adam: What really works about this moment is that you have to believe he wants to die, and as you said, Armaan, Diego Luna really sells that this choice could go either way. Which is a really tough thing to sell when we already know how this character actually dies. Cassian is an exhausted soul filled with desperation and need. And that little smirk Stellan Skarsgaard delivers on Luthen’s face betrays all of the character’s scheming coming to fruition in this one radicalized guy. 

That said, we are still dealing with a cliffhanger here, as we don’t know what Luthen has planned for Cassian or the events leading up to his involvement in Rogue One. And because the story stops here, we do have some remaining plot threads that have gone unanswered. 

Austin: For me, arguably the biggest dangling plot thread is all that business involving Young Cassian in the first three episodes. Not because I terribly care that much about Cassian’s past, but presumably, there was a reason the series spent a decent chunk of its first three episodes showing us that, and as of the close of season 1, I still have absolutely no idea why that was. Which suggests either we’re going to get more on it next season (a popular theory I’ve seen is that whatever industrial accident is warning people away from Cassian’s homeworld will turn out to be connected to the Death Star construction), or else the show decided in the midst of its production to abandon the flashback narrative. Either way, we won’t know til the next season. 

Adam: I’ve been meaning to go back and watch those first three episodes again for just this purpose. I was dismissive of especially the first two and their slower pacing, but in retrospect, those episodes seeded a huge amount of the Ferrix experience that pays off in the finale. We did see one flashback in episode 12, as Cassian visits his adoptive father Clem’s (anyone else miss this detail? I did not realize until the subtitles in this scene that Cassian had used Clem’s name as his alias on Aldhani) brick in the wall and remembers his dad showing him how to refurbish Imperial tech. To your point, Austin, I’m less concerned about how Cassian and his backstory fit into larger trilogy lore. I’m fine with Cassian being a product of Imperial annihilation. For those starved for info on how things fit in, hopefully they enjoyed the post-credits scene showing the prison widgets being used in the Death Star’s construction. 

Austin: For me, it’s less about being starved for backstory, as it is the flashbacks making the show more poorly constructed if they’re never revisited in any way. Why spend parts of three episodes at the beginning of a series that struggled to get its narrative momentum going on a series of flashbacks that ultimately didn’t really tell us that much about the story or the character if they’re not going to come back around in some way? If that’s all there is to them, they’ll just end up seeming like an unforced blemish on a show with an otherwise sterling record. 

Armaan: For a show that – for the most part – is so finely put together, its dangling plot threads are a lot more glaring. However, I’m also okay with forgetting about some of them entirely — Cassian’s hunt for his sister in particular. Turning family into MacGuffins is a more traditional Star Wars approach, Andor has become about so much more. 

I can almost imagine that it was put in there as a placeholder hook in the show’s initial stages and people forgot to take it out until it was too late, and now it’s Season 2’s problem. 

Adam: I feel confident that Gilroy and this writer’s room mapped out the entirety of Season 2 before drilling down on what they would and wouldn’t reveal in S1. There are simply more chapters in this book. In an interview with Diego Luna over at Collider, he talks about Cassian’s missing sister fairly symbolically, but I would doubt he’s going to spoil anything from S2 either. 

Austin: If nothing else, Maarva telling Cassian to let go of his search for his sister in episode 7 could ultimately serve as the end of that plotline, at least, if the series never comes back to it (ie it turns out he took her advice and stopped!). 

Adam: Season 2 already started filming last week and will continue to shoot through August of 2023, so we likely won’t see the second half of the show until 2024 at the earliest depending on post-production. Which is about how long we used to wait for a theatrical Star Wars sequel these days. I just want it to look amazing and tell more of a great story. Two things Gilroy confirmed are that Alan Tudyk has joined the cast as K-2SO and that S2 picks up a year after the events of S1.  

Austin: And that it will link up with Rogue One, which means it will cover three years of story time vs. the first season’s roughly one year of time. Which, if nothing else, should mean season 2 has a slightly different pace than this one.  

Adam: After the smashing-action-figures-together sensibilities of Boba Fett, I think Andor should put the rest of the Star Wars creative teams on notice: Step. It. Up. Let’s see what else this Galaxy Far, Far Away has in store instead of retreads with characters from the movies. If Andor can deliver elevated genre fair, there’s no reason it has to be limited to this one show. 

Force Facts

• According to showrunner Tony Gilroy, Nicholas Brittel’s 8-minute funeral march was part of their initial conversations about key diegetic music needed for the show. Tony requested “aspirational horns” that captured the “heartbreaking” quality of a high school band. 
• There’s a ton of little bits and characters from the Ferrix material in those first three episodes that pay off in this one; it makes a rewatch extra rewarding, which is always a fun thing for a good finale to do. 
• As former high school band members, Austin & Adam wholeheartedly endorse Tony Gilroy’s description of it as “heartbreaking”. 
• Gavia Baker Whitelaw noted the similarities between Brittel’s Andor score and Ennio Morricone’s Theme for Ali from the Battle of Algiers over at the Daily Dot.
• The alphabet on Maarva and Clem’s funerary stones is called Bazeese script and was created by graphic designer Barry Gingell, who also served as the model for the Anto Kreegyr hologram.
• According to Empire, the original screenplay for this episode did not have Maarva ending her speech with “Fight the Empire!” instead it was “F— the Empire!” Obviously, the Disney corporation did not let that get to the shooting script. 

Did Diego Luna Get to Touch Jabba? 

• A whole season and still NO! Maybe next time, Diego!