Andor Season 2’s third week catapults us from simmering tension to full-blown tragedy. The Ghorman massacre ignites the Rebel Alliance. Cassian meets K-2SO. And Mon Mothma finally steps out of the shadows. I think these three episodes might be the most important Star Wars TV has ever delivered.

Major spoilers for Andor Season 2, Episodes 7 through 9. That’s all the warning I’m going to give you.

How We Got to Ghorman

Episodes 1 through 3 are real simple. We see Cassian full-blown in Luthen’s network. All the Ferrix allies are sort of working together, sort of scattered, especially after the Empire comes and they get caught out of place. Brasso dies during a botched raid, and the stakes become kind of personal.

Then Episodes 4 through 6. Each of these weeks has moved us one year on from the first season, so there’s a time jump, and Cassian’s now undercover. He gets sent into a brand new cell on Ghorman, and at the end of the day he makes the determination that they’re not ready. They’re just not ready. When he talks to Luthen about it, he tells him a planet like Ghorman in rebellion will be crushed. They’re going to burn. And Luthen says, really cryptically, probably one of the coldest things I’ve ever heard in my life: “But they will burn brightly.”

Cinta gets killed. We get our first glimpse of the unrest on Ghorman. Mon Mothma’s sacrifices begin to deepen. The Rebellion’s growing, and the Empire’s tightening its grip.

Yavin Is a Thing Now

We hit another one-year jump, and the rebels are finally staging from Yavin 4. You know that preview we got when Cassian met those rebel guys? I say not rebels, rabble. Well, full-blown Yavin is a thing now. This is the beginning of the fully formed Rebellion.

There’s a part later on where Cassian wants to leave, and one of the admirals or commanders we’ve seen from Rogue One tells him flat out: “Those who enjoy the security of Yavin must proclaim their loyalty.” And Cassian comes right back: “You know where I stand. The day I need permission to come and go, I’m gone. That day is near.”

So they’re beginning to finally coalesce into a thing, and I think that’s very important.

Back on Ghorman, there’s now a full-blown Imperial occupation. So much so that Dedra is assigned a security force. She’s like, we have security. No, this is special. This is Imperial security. Very different thing, very different beast. She’s ready to leave, and she’s ready to take Syril with her. This is our chance, let’s go. And Syril, meanwhile, has kind of drunk the Kool-Aid finally. If you remember, last week I said that was probably going to end up being the case.

One of the highlights of this episode for me is Luthen sending Wilmon to recruit Cassian, and the mission’s pretty simple. Kill Dedra Meero. Oh yeah. They tracked her down on Ghorman. They realize she’s the one who sort of built that whole Axis thing, and she’s one of the biggest impediments they have to advancing their goals. She always seems to be finding herself in the wrong place at the right time, if you will.

When Cassian arrives, he sees the same kid at the hotel, and the kid’s clearly now part of whatever the resistance thing is. Cassian’s not dumb, not by any stretch of the imagination. He’s very much aware that something’s happening.

And it really is. The security guy has brought in more forces, and they’re all a bunch of kids. The commander who’s in charge of them says it: what are we doing, these are a bunch of kids. And the guy’s like, I see Imperial soldiers in uniforms, so go get them ready.

Watching all of it happen, I kept saying to myself, oh, this is going to go bad, period. There’s no universe in which this doesn’t go bad. Especially because they kept focusing on it. These guys literally become Chekhov’s soldiers, if you will.

The next morning they’re moving all of the barricades. They’d been blocking off the square pretty much since they erected the building, the depot. And now there’s mining equipment coming. Dedra’s boss calls and says to her: “We need what’s in the ground. The Empire has been patient long enough. Our struggles with Ghorman are well documented at this point.”

That sets the stage for Episode 8.

The Massacre

Episode 8 is flat out what it is, man. It’s the massacre.

As soon as the square is cleared, the Ghorman protesters do a sort of peaceful sit-in. It’s engineered provocation, because you figure that’s what they wanted them to do. That’s what these special troopers wanted them to do. That’s why they finally moved the barricades. They knew they were going to show up.

The security commander tells the guy with the troops, “I want to clear a path. There are people here.” He just let them in. These kids are shaking. I mean they’re literally shaking. Dude knows. He knows. But he still goes, because what choice do you have? Seriously.

So they go out, and tensions are high. People are banging on the riot shields. It’s not a good moment. An Imperial sharpshooter kills one of the cadets, and it sparks a powder keg. It’s utter chaos.

For those of you who are sensitive to these kinds of things, it’s violence on a level I don’t know that we’ve seen in Star Wars often. It’s probably one of the most graphic sequences I’ve ever seen in Star Wars television. It’s pretty rough.

They unleash the KX droids into the crowd, and it’s just rough. Especially because at one point Cassian’s trying to help his friend Wilmon escape. Wilmon’s got a girl he’s into again, just like on the farmer planet. He has a type, by the way. You can clearly tell. And Wilmon tells him, I’ve got to go help, I’ve got to rescue whoever else. His girlfriend is the one making the final message off of Ghorman: “This is Ghorman, reaching for any open channel that can hear me.”

It’s incredible.

And one of the KXs goes to attack Cassian and them, and they use a floating speeder thing, a transport, to hit it and wreck it. So when the guy’s about to leave, Cassian says, hey, help me get this thing in the thing. He’s going to take it with him. That’s going to end up being K-2SO. It’s their meet cute, if you will.

For Cassian, It Was a Tuesday

Just before all this, Syril had gone to find Dedra and ask her what’s going on, because he’d actually gone down to see the rebel people and they’d accused him of being a traitor, the whole nine yards. Rylanz says it to him: you betrayed us, if I’d have known you were such a snake. And he tells him there’s mining equipment coming in. He tells him.

So Syril goes to Dedra and he says, what’s going on, what’s happened? Dedra tries her best to use her very dominant wiles on him. He’s past all that. He’s 100% turned in his heart. Not against the Empire, and he hasn’t joined the Rebellion, but he knows everything happening in front of him is a betrayal. And a betrayal of him by Dedra, because he confronts her flat out. He is livid. He snatches her by the throat. Oh yeah. She finally has to tell him, and he wishes her good luck, and then he leaves.

It’s funny. It looks almost like he goes to the square knowing what’s happening. And my first thought is, who’s he looking for? Is he looking for Cassian? He can’t possibly know Cassian’s there. I don’t know. But he’s looking around.

And that’s where Syril finds his demise, man. He’s freaking out, everything’s happening around him, and he sees Cassian, and it’s like his whole life crystallizes into this moment. He rushes to attack him, and it’s a brawl. Then there’s a moment when Cassian looks up and literally says to him, “Who are you?” And dude can’t even think. He’s like, what? And as he’s looking at him crazy, that’s when Syril is surreptitiously just taken out.

I remembered the scene from Street Fighter, because it had come up recently on a Nerd Fights. The day Cassian Andor came into Syril’s life was the most important day of his life. For Cassian, it was a Tuesday.

Bro, it was so bad. But it really underscored the fact that there are so many layers to these things, and everybody is in their own adventure, so to speak.

Dedra, meanwhile, is faced with the harshness of what her actions have brought, especially when Partagaz is like, no, open fire, the whole bit.

Mon Mothma Names the Monster

Episode 9 is the fallout, and it’s definitely a major turning point.

We see the senator from Ghorman get arrested. “Will no one help me? Ghorman is being slaughtered. My people today and yours tomorrow. Remember this day. Remember Ghorman. This will be you soon enough.” It’s a scene very reminiscent of what you might’ve seen in Nazi Germany. Obviously, space Nazis. They’re leaning very heavy into that psychology in all of this.

So Mon Mothma heads straight to Bail Organa, and she basically says, we’ve got to do something, we have to go. And he tells her he can’t leave. What are you talking about, why are you going to stay? They need more time. They’re not ready. When the leaders of the Rebellion finally leave to join full-blown and actually fight, that can only happen when Yavin is ready. And according to him, it’s not ready yet.

I feel as if everything that happens from this moment forward is really the culmination of everything we’ve watched when it comes to Luthen, when it comes to Cassian, when it comes to all these parts that have been coming together, at least on this side of things. I’m not talking about the Rebellion side, where it’s all out there and the fighting’s happening. I mean all the espionage comes to a head here.

Organa promises her: I have someone who’s going to show up. You do your speech, and as soon as you’re done, we’re going to get you out of here.

While Mon Mothma is practicing her speech, Luthen comes to see her, and he says to her flat out, you can’t trust Bail Organa’s people. They’ve been infiltrated. Who can I trust? You? Yes. And he tells her that her right-hand man, Erskin, is working for him. She feels betrayed in the worst way, which is silly, because at the end of the day he’s been looking out for her and protecting her. And he tells her, look, my guy’s going to say this. It’s very specific. It’s a code word. I have friends in lots of places. She’s supposed to say one thing, he responds with that. It’s very cloak and dagger, very spy, very espionage.

By the next day, she and her guy have found the listening device, because the Empire has been listening to all the senators. The Empire has no intention of letting anybody talk other than the few people they’ve already orchestrated to tell the narrative. Because it’s a narrative now. After everything that happened on Ghorman, they have to push the narrative.

While all of that is coming together, Luthen sends his assistant to find Cassian, and she tells him flat out, Luthen needs you. She puts the stakes in front of him so he understands what’s at risk, what’s really going down. And what does he do? Same thing Cassian always does. Cassian never fails. No matter what. And he doesn’t fail now either.

Organa gets the floor. It’s funny, they play ping-pong with it. Somebody who’s authorized turns on them and cedes the floor to him. And Organa uses a very specific emergency authority, because as they’ve been talking, everyone’s been using the phraseology: state of emergency, state of emergency, state of emergency. That’s all he needed. “I am invoking Article 17252 and yielding the floor to the senior senator from Chandrila.” And Mon Mothma’s little thingy floats out there.

When I tell you what follows is arguably one of the best speeches ever given, if not just in Star Wars, in sci-fi in general. This is the speech I feel like Amidala wanted someone to say. It boils down to: we are in crisis, and what are they doing? “The distance between what is said and what is known to be true has become an abyss.”

Meanwhile the security forces upstairs are going nuts. Shut it down, get her off the screen. This one guy has to go up and he’s trying to find the keys to the thing, and the security people are like, yo, we locked it up, they told us to lock it up. And he’s running back and forth. It’s his whole thing. And obviously they kind of wink at each other, because they know.

She flat out says this is a monster of their making. And she calls him out by name. “The monster screaming the loudest, the monster we’ve helped create, the monster who will come for us all soon enough, is Emperor Palpatine.”

That’s right. She calls out Palpatine. Bro, it’s sick. It’s unreal. It utterly blew me away. I didn’t see it coming, because he’s so conspicuously not in this.

Tony Gilroy gave his reasons. He did an interview and said essentially it was a heavy lift trying to figure out how to fit Palpatine into this. I don’t know if I believe that. That’s the one thing that was very conspicuous. You’re talking about machinations happening on the Emperor’s orders, and we don’t ever see him. Ever. He’s supposed to be in charge of the Senate, there’s the chair and everything else, and ultimately he should be there and he’s not. And it’s like, okay, why?

Welcome to the Rebellion

As soon as she’s done, the Senate erupts. It’s a whole thing. She’s publicly condemned the Emperor and the massacre, and warrants are immediately issued for her arrest.

Cassian is there in a heartbeat. At first she doesn’t understand who he is. Who are you, what’s going on? And he literally uses the code word. Then it’s obstacle after obstacle, including her driver, who we know to be dirty, and he does what Cassian does, which is guide her and get her where she has to go.

“I’m not sure I can do this.”

“Welcome to the Rebellion.”

And I was like, dang. That’s unreal, man.

Cassian himself has gone from being a bystander, sort of an operative, to being a very proactive member of the Rebellion, whether he’s reluctant or not. He saves Mon Mothma. He literally delivers the future Alliance leader to where she’s going to go.

There is some discrepancy there, because a lot of you know from Rebels that Gold Squadron, the group from Rebels, has Mon Mothma, and she gives a speech in the ship. I guess Tony Gilroy and the writer weren’t too keen on just regurgitating that speech, though that was kind of what was expected. So what they did was say, okay, what if you guys haven’t seen the whole picture? What if that event still happens? And in fact they do seed that. When Cassian delivers Mon Mothma to the encampment where he’s at, they say, hey, Gold Squadron’s going to take her to Yavin, and she’s going to say something then. And that ultimately becomes what we saw in Rebels.

But Mon Mothma, man, her journey. She’s the emotional core of this whole endeavor. It’s her public break from the Empire. That moment signals the birth of the Rebellion, and we saw the entire thing.

Not Jimmy Smits

I’ve been calling him Bail Organa, but in the room I was calling him not Jimmy Smits.

Turns out Jimmy Smits was unavailable scheduling-wise with some other stuff, so they got Benjamin Bratt to do it. Look, Benjamin Bratt, first off, does a solid job. Wonderful. But in every iteration since Jimmy Smits was introduced as Bail Organa, we’ve seen him. I feel genuinely like it was a mistake not to have him, especially at such a pivotal and important moment.

Now obviously they tried to seed that. They tried to soften the blow by having Benjamin Bratt show up briefly earlier, real quick, pass her by. Hey, what’s going on, I’ve got a thing to do, all right, bye. And you’re supposed to go, wait, what? I mean, okay, and move on.

I couldn’t. He’s not Bail Organa. He’s not Jimmy Smits, as far as I’m concerned. That was a misfire for me.

Why This Is Peak Star Wars

There’s a Nerd Fights up right now on the Nerd Fights channel. I simulcast it on the Know-It-All channel as well as on Salty Plus. It was Salty and I finally, finally having our day to argue and fight over Andor. It didn’t help that I was having microphone troubles at the time. So when you see it, you’ll notice the first ten minutes or so I’m silent, because I don’t want to risk my really bad microphone becoming an issue, till finally I noticed out of the corner of my eye I had a microphone nearby. It’s a whole thing.

Anyway. This is a grounded war drama. It’s everything we were told Rogue One was, and it was. That’s what this is. It’s a political thriller. And for those of you wanting classic stuff, it’s classic heroism.

We also get to see probably the most real use of the Force ever. There’s a healer. Remember how we just discovered healing was a thing? Her job is she’s a healer, and she can also see things. And she saw a future for him. We don’t know what kind.

And Bix. A very bitter scene for me. I say bitter because she leaves him a note and says, I don’t want you leaving the Rebellion, this and that. But then at the very end of it she says, when it’s done, when it’s over and we’ve won, we can do all the things we ever wanted. Everything we know we’ve missed. “I’ll find you.”

And I’m just like, no, babe. You won’t.

There you go. Now you know. And if knowing is half the battle, you’re halfway to being a know-it-all yourself.

Where It Lands

It’s an emotional gut punch, man. Masterful tension. These are canon rebel moments. And by canon I don’t necessarily mean the extended universe or Legends or whatever else. I mean literally the way we say it. These are canon moments.

I do feel like the early pacing was sort of a drag. One of the things Salty and I talk about in the Nerd Fights is the argument over why we can’t see certain grounded things. Salty made a well-placed argument that he would’ve liked to have seen something that shows clearly the Empire being evil. Now, we know they’re going to be. But I kind of get that. We shouldn’t take it for granted. We should genuinely be shown what’s going on.

And what do we get to see? This moment. These three episodes, I contend, should’ve been the beginning of the series. The beginning of Season 2 should’ve been these three episodes. Give us the inciting event, then build the pieces, and then, honestly, this should become Rogue One point five. The prequel to the prequel to the prequel. This should’ve all been the buildup. Show me the Bothans who died to get the thing. Show me a mission about all this stuff. Make him tangentially involved.

At the end of the day, Cassian wasn’t even the real focus of this. He was the focus of the first season, as we built up who he was. The second part was really about everything happening around him, and his throughline through it all. And I’m okay with that. He was the Forrest Gump of Star Wars. I get it.

Your turn. Did the Ghorman massacre hit you as hard as it hit me? I look forward to chewing on this one a little bit more. The conversation lives in the comments on the video above.