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Cassian's kid will have a droid best friend, just like Cassian had.

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"You're my ideal reader."

"He's a messenger."

"It keeps spreading, doesn't it?"

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Thinking about Cassian and Melshi and Kay around the table: the laughter, the looseness, the teasing that is also ride-or-die loyalty at a moment's notice.

Thinking about years earlier, when all three of them were being forced to labor for the Empire, programmed to be and make weapons against their wills.

Thinking about days later, when all three of them will die on Scarif trying to make sure those weapons will fail.

Thinking about how they really did make it out and make a home, and even if it was just a year, it was there. They played games and watered plants and lived.

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I love andor so much because it answers the age-old question: what if star wars was good?

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I don't have the words to talk about it intelligently right now, but something about the peppy hyperpop music playing over top shots of Brasso's body and Bix grieving and Cassian staring blankly into the camera and Mon dancing manically all throughout is a very good illustration about desensitization to tragedy - people are suffering and dying and the world's going to shit, but hey, a new nostalgic beat just dropped so let's bop until nothing feels real anymore.

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This is Ghorman reaching for any open channel that can hear me. If you can... If you can hear me... If you believe in truth, if you have any faith left in truth, please, please mark this message and pass it forward.

ANDOR 2.08 | Who Are You?

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“Cassian is the messenger.”

It has always been building up to this. Cassian not being the center, not being the middle but there. To witness, to make note, to see what others don’t and to pass along what is happening. Uncovering the harsh truth of the Empire, Aldhani, Narkina-5 and now Ghorman (the massacre and also the word and the sentiment “Rebellions are build on hope.”) He was there and he is the one passing the message along. It will culminate in Rogue One – first with the information about the Death Star itself and then with the Death Star plans. “Do you think anybody’s listening?” is what he says because he knows how important it is that someone gets this message.

The continuity here is so excellent. They really did dig deep into his character and took what made him so great in Rogue One to make it even more profound and integral to who he is. I love this show.

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sometimes family is the guy you escaped prison with and the droid that tried to kill you

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Cassian Andor is my favorite leading man in Star Wars. Look at him watering his plants. I would die for this man. For the rebellion. And his plants.

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Some thoughts on Andor, and that final shot everyone hates so much.

I don’t. I’ve been sitting with this show for a while now. This whole season I’ve been waiting to hate Bix’s arc with the same fervour that some of the more vocal fans do. I’ve been waiting to feel the injustice done to a “strong female character” (a phrase I fucking hate by the way, but that’s an argument for another time). I’ve seen the arguments that she should have stayed with the rebellion, that she was a fighter sidelined for the sake of a man, that she was reduced to a baby-factory straight out of right wing propaganda (Jesus Christ). And I disagree with every fucking one of them. 

For me, in season two, Bix is the heart of the show. She is the ethos, the drive, the reason that rebellion matters. Bix becomes, in a way, the most important character Andor has to offer us.

Andor has always been very clear in its ideology. Blatantly so. And one of the ideals it strives to impart to its audience is that we are not meant to live in fear. We are not meant to live under oppression. We are not meant to live looking down. For Andor the heart, the drive, the reason behind rebellion is to create a future where we are free. And where love, and peace, and community, and kindness, and hope are our foundations and are the only matter of our lives. 

Andor doesn’t want its characters to be fighters. They are forced to be. Andor doesn’t want its characters to live hiding and scared and clawing for any glimpse of peace and love and hope they can get. They have no other choice. Rebellion is important. It is so so fucking important. But it is only important because of what it fights for. 

Bix is not a fighter. In Andor’s first season she is a mechanic selling to Luthen on the side for extra money. She is not struggling against the empire. She is not joining a rebellion. She is getting the fuck by and living her fucking life. And one day her connection to Cassian puts her under the empire’s gaze and she is invasively tortured and horrifically traumatised because of it. And she endures. 

Bix is, also, an incredibly important character to me personally. There can often be a narrative surrounding trauma that it should make you the fighter everyone seems to think Bix should be. That you should take your pain and terror and suffering and turn it around and let it make you stronger. Use it to beat back against the person, or group, or institution that traumatised you. That you should pick yourself up, dust yourself off, take that horror, and fight back (girlboss-ify yourself and take those motherfuckers down). And to that I say, no. I don’t want that. I’ve done my fighting. I’ve lost my battles and I’ve come out the other side scarred in ways that still hurt to touch. What I want is to stop. Is to rest. Is to put this pain down and move out the other side of it and live, finally. 

For me, watching Bix as an horrifically traumatised woman live stuck in that fight for the first half of the second season was harrowing. To see her spend her time in the Coruscant safehouse grappling with the true cost of what it means to fight the way she needs to in this war, never at peace as the life she lives and the things she must do force her to stay held in her trauma, had me aching in ways I didn’t realise I would. To see her stuck in the dark and the gloom and the cold, and yearning the whole time she is in Coruscant to be able to go out and live without having to look over her shoulder, hurt in ways I struggle to put words to.

And then, to see her get out. 

I know there is a lot of contention about seeing Bix have little to do on Yavin. And to that I will say, it’s a big show, there are a lot of characters, and she is on Yavin during a storyline that arguably should not narratively or structurally be focusing on her anyway. I know there is also a lot of contention about writing her leaving Cassian for the sake of the rebellion. That it diminishes her character to a plot beat. And while perhaps the tropes at play feel trite in comparison to the more grounded beats the show is known for hitting, this is still storytelling. All the characters are, functionally, still devices serving a narrative. Bix leaves, and narratively becomes our ethos. Becomes the heart of this story. Becomes the reason we have been watching this all play out for our two-season run. Bix becomes the most important character in the show. Because this is why we must fight. For Bix. For everything she represents in that moment. She becomes the way Cassian’s life should be if it weren’t for this war, and in doing so becomes the way all of their lives should be. Should have always been. And will be one day soon. 

She is the reason. For all of it. For every loss, for every death, for every fight. It is her. She is the hope at the heart of the rebellion.

That last scene on Mina-Rau; the gentle light, Bee playing, the table set for a community to eat and laugh and be. People smiling and content and together and peaceful. And Bix, free. Of the trauma, of the loss, of the death, of the fight. Looking up at the open sky with her child. Literally holding in her arms the life that the rebellion has always been fighting for. 

That is the hope at the end of our story -- that Bix is the one that gets to live. 

And you can pry that fucking ending from my cold dead hands.

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mon and cassian had one (1) trauma bonding experience together and got the same haircut

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Alone. There’s no team. It’s only her.

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Andor stays a committed love letter to the unknown soldier. The rebellion’s lines have been pushed forward by hundreds who will never be recognized, even if their deeds are famous. Cassian has heard people claim to be at Aldhani, they don’t even know he was there. The money that bankrolled the rebellion, and no one knows who did it. Luthen will never get a medal of honor, or see the light of gratitude. Nemik’s manifesto comes back in both finales, reaching people across the galaxy. Whole battalions have enlisted because of him, and he’ll never be remembered. Without the unnamed soldier, we’d be nowhere

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K-2SO in ANDOR 2.11 "Who else knows?" 2.12 "Jedha, Kyber, Erso"

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loved this scene in andor

cassian: i know your cousin vel

mon: …

cassian: we’re the last survivors of aldhani

mon: …

cassian: luthen is a dick

mon: ok let’s go

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Kassa in Andor 1x03 / Cassian in Andor 2x09

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i love andor's refusal to be subtle in the face of rising fascism. it's not complex metaphors for the audience to unpick. it's a kick in the fucking teeth. a banner and blaring alarms. THIS IS WHERE WE ARE. THIS IS WHERE WE'RE HEADING. it's knowing there's a time and place to be gentle and knowing the here and now needs us shouting from the rooftops. it's using energy independence, that thing tr*mp harps on about, as a cover for building the death star. it's a bunch of powerful empire officials brainstorming ways to colonise a planet for capitalist gains. it's the pomp and circumstance of the upper classes used to distract from the grit and ruin of the everyday. it's the visa inspection of harvest workers. it's the brutal abuse of power over "illegals" to the point of dehumanisation. but more than that. more than that. it's people working together against these forces of tyranny. it's kellen running around trying to keep them from the troopers. it's mon mothma trying to save her daughter. it's talia putting her legal status on the line to help them. it's brasso trying to save wilmon. it's wilmon running all the way home to help bix. it's cassian choosing home over orders. it's bix fighting for her fucking life rather than giving in. it's the fight. it's the people.