Tony Gilroy knew the assignment. That’s my takeaway for the whole series, and Episodes 10 through 12 of Andor Season 2 are where he proves it. It’s the end of a road. A really long road, but a good one, and I’ve enjoyed it.

These three episodes jump to one BBY, the year before the Battle of Yavin, and take us directly into Rogue One exactly as promised. The stakes center on a single objective, and it’s no surprise what it is. They’ve got to get proof of the Empire’s planet killer to a fractured rebel council. That’s what all of this boils down to, with a lot of tricks, twists and turns on the way there.

The finale balances hard espionage tension with some just devastating emotion. There aren’t any lightsabers. There’s very little Force mysticism other than the healer we saw last week. It’s raw rebellion, and I think that’s what set the show apart, how grounded it was. You’re probably going to hear that a million times over the next few days.

Spoiler-free, my verdict up top: this is an essential and significant piece of Star Wars lore. It elevates Rogue One and sets a new bar for franchise prequels, at least in my estimation. Full spoilers from here on. You have been warned.

Three Career Highlights

Diego Luna as Cassian has embodied that character in a way that’s made the series such a standout. When you watch Rogue One you don’t realize how important he’s going to end up being, and then you watch this and you’re like, wow, he’s very much a fulcrum point.

Stellan Skarsgård is next level. He does such a good job going to the dark place. “What do I sacrifice? Everything.” They do a wonderful job paying that off here. Adria Arjona, same thing. For me, these are career highlights for the three of them.

The production design and the cinematography keep that grounded, cinematic feel, the grit everyone’s been talking about. And by cinematic, I mean each of these blocks was approached as a movie. I don’t mean that in the stereotypical way that’s failed for Marvel and some other things. This genuinely felt grounded the way movies do.

How, Not If

The three episodes have a rhythm that mirrors the season-long time jump format, a relentless forward momentum that carries all the way through. I wasn’t expecting a flashback in Episode 10 at all. If you look at this as a week-to-week TV show, last week was technically the penultimate week, and if you’ve watched any number of my reviews you know the penultimate is always the place that either sets up where you’re going or, at the very least, does something exciting. Last week did both.

The tension here comes from how, not if. We all know Scarif is coming. What gets you is learning the personal costs as they’re finally revealed.

Most prequels are self-congratulatory. We know where we’re going, so we’ve got to show you everything on the way. A good example of the bad version is Solo. Now, the movie wasn’t bad. I love Solo. But there are elements I could’ve lived without. We’ve got to show where he got his gun. We’ve got to show how he got his name. We’ve got to show how he gets the Millennium Falcon. None of those things felt like they served anything other than being a form of memberberry.

Andor doesn’t do that. God, it was satisfying.

Cassian, Bix, and What They Were Fighting For

Cassian fully commits to delivering the Death Star intel while completely unaware that he’s a father. That was tragically profound.

I was already moved and emotional, because you feel excited for where he’s going. Look at him, he’s going to go meet this guy. And then it cuts to Bix. She’s there on Mina-Rau and she’s got a baby. The clear implication is that’s his kid, and I’m here for it. It embodies the idea that this is what they were fighting for. A future, whatever that is. You feel it, and it’s palpable.

In my notes it says “hope in the shadows.” Cassian has an unseen child with Bix, and the fact that the two of them survive is the quiet future the rebels die for. I’m glad we got that button.

Luthen and Kleya

We see the backstory. You understand who Luthen was, where he served, how he found Kleya, and how the two of them evolved into freedom fighters. Pre-rebels, if you will. His turn is from orchestrator to martyr, and Kleya’s mercy kill seals his legend for me in the canon of Star Wars.

The Coruscant hospital sequence is the standout scene. Once you know Luthen’s there, and that’s where Dedra has him held, I knew for a fact Kleya wasn’t going to rescue him. She was going to end him. He was a loose end, and that’s the surface reason. It’s also what he would’ve wanted. He never would’ve wanted the potential to be a liability. She goes in there with a vengeance and takes out every obstacle in front of her. Unbelievable.

And you see that that was her father. Your parentage isn’t limited to the people who begot you. There are others who paid into you. Luthen was her father in every way that mattered, and she realizes she owed that to him. I love that.

The Rebellion Moved On Without Them

I need to park here for a minute, because this is the part I most want to talk about.

The Rebellion on Yavin is up and running. It’s the Rebellion we eventually see in Star Wars. And you look around, and Kleya and Luthen are still back on Coruscant. They’ve been left behind. The Rebellion they started moved on without them. You can tell it wants to wash its hands of the likes of Luthen and Saw Gerrera, and it doesn’t want to acknowledge the really messy, really dirty past that built it. It takes the characters who worked so closely with them to remind everybody.

They even address it in the episode. Cassian’s facing the council and he flat out says it: “It’s insulting to hear him run down by people who have given a fraction of his sacrifice to this rebellion.” That’s a big, bold statement, and it’s true. They run because Luthen walked.

People seldom want to acknowledge what lights the fuse that eventually becomes the explosion. Luthen and Saw Gerrera carried the torch before Mon Mothma and Bail Organa had the luxury. Organa and Mothma walked into something. Luthen, Saw Gerrera and the like, they started something.

There’s been an ongoing debate between me and Salty, my partner host over on Nerd Fights, about the direction Star Wars has gone in. Why can’t it just be good guys and bad guys? This gives you the origin of that. It shows you what the good guys cost. You can keep the nice, neat prettiness of Star Wars, and it was wonderful. It’s like the Bible says in Corinthians 13: when I was a child, I thought as a child. You can have the romantic notions and the fight of good versus evil. That’s a dream and an ideal we should all hold in our hearts. But when it comes down to it, the actual courage to do something took a lot more. I get that. I believe in it. It fits the context.

To Salty and everybody else out there saying this isn’t my Star Wars: all stories are built, contrived. You get to see the moments that matter, the ones that make a story worth watching. That’s what Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi are. Key moments. What you don’t see is everything that built up to those moments, and that’s what this is. Those five years before the Battle of Yavin are the road that gets trod so we can enjoy the moments we do see in peace, in our naivete, without understanding the very adult reasons behind them.

I’ll most likely try to get Salty on the show to dig into this a little further. Not to argue. You can see that on Nerd Fights.

Mon Mothma, Dedra, and K-2SO

Mon Mothma’s political spine has been steeled. She’s fully in the form we’ve seen in Rogue One, hair a little bit in disarray, not presenting herself at her best, even in an outfit similar to what we saw in the original Star Wars. And that whole Yavin council scene shows how messy the birth of a unified alliance was. They’ve just come from a Republic that fell to the Empire, and now it’s, hey guys, let’s all work together the right way. It’s messy, and you see that journey beginning.

Dedra Meero gets hung by her own obsessive bureaucracy. As Krennic puts it, she was instrumental, if inadvertently, in igniting the Rebellion, and that’s wonderful irony. He does that part where he tells her Supervisor Jung spent three hours last night logged into her account. “Now, shall we take a guess at what he might have told Luthen Rael?” She’d been culling through everything to find Axis, never realizing she was leaving some of the most inflammatory information where anyone could see it. And dude saw it. It’s unreal. I loved it.

It ties into a theme that runs through all of this, that information is power. Leaks and paranoia are the things that topple the Empire from within. Dedra was so consumed by her pursuit that she’s telling them, you guys kept things from me. Well, the things they kept from you are the things you ultimately allowed to get revealed.

And the fact that she ends up on Narkina 5? Callback of callbacks, bro. Worth everything. Chef’s kiss.

Alan Tudyk, I love you as K-2SO. His entrance is a seamless handoff to the film continuity, and it came as a welcome flash for me. Then you get that wicked humor of his, which I loved.

The Music Hands It Off

Did you catch the musical cues? If you watch the end credits, there’s a piece I think is called “The Spark.” Listen to that music beat. It goes right into the rebels theme, which I loved, only to transition at the very end, over the credits, into the classic 1977 theme. When that came on I was like, yes. That deserves to be here. It rolled right into it.

And then you hear Bail Organa say it to Cassian as he sends him off on the first mission we’re going to see in Rogue One: “May the Force be with you.” Oh, bro. Welcome to Star Wars.

The Quibbles

They’re minor. The time-jump compression left the Luthen and Kleya backstory thin, and I wanted one more scene of it. You see the moment when she’s a child and he gives her a choice, and the young actress they got to play her did an amazing job. I really wanted one more scene from that whole thing.

And whatever happened to Cassian’s sister? That whole “I’m looking for my sister” thread from Season 1. I remember getting to the very end and thinking, what happened to that? I don’t know. Weird.

The Verdict

Andor Season 2, Episodes 10 through 12, is a 9 out of 10 on the Know-It-All Index.

It’s a near flawless finale, hampered only by the pacing limitations that come with compressing into two seasons what should’ve been a four or even five season series.

The show gave us a narrative payoff that was unbelievable. It delivered on every seed that’s been planted since Ferrix. The whole series is brutal and the ending is cathartic. I cried at least two times that I can think of. Every victory in this thing costs something irreplaceable: lives, ideals, your personal morals, your family.

It’s proven that mature, politically savvy Star Wars can absolutely thrive.

Your turn. Where does Luthen Rael rank among Star Wars icons for you? And tell me if that Bix reveal wrecked you too. The conversation lives in the comments on the video above.