Andor: Season Two—Welcome to the Rebellion

The final two arcs of Andor: Season Two were released on May 6 and May 19, 2025,  bringing the show to a decisive, conclusive end. Andor (2022-2025) was critically acclaimed for its realistic take on the rise of the Star Wars universe’s famed Rebellion. The show serves as a prequel to Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), which itself leads directly into Episode IV: A New Hope (1977). While Rogue One explains how the rebels acquired the Death Star plans, Andor explores how the Rebellion came to be. Following its title character, Cassian Andor (Diego Luna), Andor unveils the hidden stories and tragedies of the Rebellion. The previous half of the new season was set a year after the first and—telling the story of a Senator’s daughter’s wedding, a relationship beginning to blossom, and rebels’ first taste of loss— set the stage for the final two three-episode arcs and a strong finale.

The dramatic maturity present in the first six episodes of Season Two continues throughout its final half, though the focus shifts. While the earlier episodes explored themes like individual trauma and substance abuse, the later episodes centered on death. Of course, Star Wars fans have been subject to death before, but these episodes exemplify the true brutality of the Empire in a manner never seen in previous Star Wars media. 

Episode Eight, titled “Who Are You?”, is the clearest example of this brutality, telling the tale of the Ghorman Massacre. Earlier in the season, viewers learned that the Empire planned to strangle the planet Ghorman under the guise of accessing a special mineral for a supposed “energy program.” By the end of the season, however, it’s revealed that this energy initiative is a cover for the creation of the Death Star. In this episode, the audience sees the ending of the growing tensions from past episodes when the resistance on Ghorman collapses. After an imperial sniper kills a young Imperial soldier at the behest of his superiors, the plaza erupts. Bodies line the edges of every scene, and no one—not even Imperial official Syril Karn (Kyle Soller)—is safe. Unlike past Star Wars violence, this massacre does not just involve some lasers being shot and people collapsing with no blood or visible injuries. This battle is so impactful because Andor takes the extra step to show this gore. There is blood, the sounds of bones cracking on impact, savage hand-to-hand combat, and actual blast marks on everyone who is shot. While these details may seem small individually, together they impact the scene to make it believable and not just a fictional story in a galaxy far, far away. 

Initially, the Ghorman Plaza was filled with a crowd singing an anthem of defiance; by the end of the episode, all that remains is the cry of a Ghorman rebel calling out for aid: “As I say these words, hundreds of murdered Ghormans lay dead in Palmo Plaza. Thousands more on the streets. More every minute… This is murder! The Empire built this fire. They made this fire and led us to the slaughter. Now they expect us to die without knowing why.” This monologue is played over scenes of the carnage on the plaza and Andor trying desperately to escape off-planet. The fact that there are “more every minute” is even shown as some Ghorman rebels take their final breath. Very little music plays, highlighting how stark this moment is for those who survived, like Andor. There is nothing except the brutality; it’s the only thing one can see, hear, and feel. 

Many of the victims are strangers to the viewer, but their loss represents the horrifying consequences of tyranny. The scale of the death is what director Tony Gilbert is attempting to emphasize. In subsequent episodes, Galactic Senators refer to the massacre as a genocide—a word never previously used in the franchise and one that carries enormous political weight today. This word is used in a similar fashion to the use of “rape” in a previous episode; both are words that carry immense connotations that highlight the obvious shift of Andor from previous Star Wars media. In no other shows or movies would these words be uttered, simply because they wouldn’t fit the tone. However, in Andor, they carry the right type of heaviness the show is trying to convey. 

These final episodes also hone in on the strained relationships between characters in their ever-changing environment. Andor and his lover, Bix Caleen (Adria Arjona), are no exception. The show is not a romance, despite how much fans wanted them to stay together. Anyone who has already watched Rogue One knows that Caleen doesn’t appear again in Andor’s story. After he returns from Ghorman, Caleen realizes that the war will tear them apart. She leaves him in the middle of the night, taking a transport off the rebel base. She tells Andor that she has to leave him because she knows he’s too important to the success of the Rebellion; she tells him that she’ll come find him again when it’s all over and they’ve won. This moment is painful for viewers since they know she will never find him again—they know Andor will die in Rogue One. The moment also demonstrates one of the key messages of the show: being a rebel is not a life for the weak. They must sacrifice everything to create a better future for someone else. Had Caleen never left, the audience realizes, Andor may never have gone through with his mission, meaning all of the events in the film and onwards would never have happened. 

Many fans contemplated how the show would end; it had to conclude before Rogue One, of course, but the specifics were unclear, especially due to the season’s frequent time skips. However, Andor leads directly into the movie. The last minutes contain a montage of Andor walking towards his ship, bound for Jedha, the desert moon where he is first seen in the film. But Andor doesn’t end with its title character. Instead, its final shot reveals Caleen, safe and cradling a baby. 

This final moment may very well be one of the most intelligent, heartbreaking scenes in the show—and there are a lot of contenders. Caleen faces outward and to the left, overlooking a grand field of golden corn. When he dies in Rogue One, Andor looks inward and to the right, away from the gleaming wave of debris moving towards him as he takes his final breaths. The mirroring in the scene is deliberate and staggering, invoking the memory of his death just as the show closes. This visual echo encapsulates Andor’s central transformation: from a man who once fought simply to survive, to someone who chooses to stay behind and give up everything for the rebellion. He becomes the reason the Rebels manage to destroy the Death Star in Episode IV and the reason the Empire will eventually fall. By sacrificing his own personal happiness, Andor saves the galaxy. 

When it was first released in 2022, Andor was quickly revered as one of the best pieces of the Star Wars franchise due to its unrelenting, realistic take on what the universe would entail. It wasn’t about how many random lightsaber cameos one could throw in or another weird reason a Sith lord managed to live again; it was about how real people live and die for a cause, about how people learn to survive losing over and over and over again in the face of evil. Any fan knew how it was going to end, and yet this ending, while tragic, demonstrated the true power of humanity in these moments. In a way, it was an example of the famous line in Rogue One: “Rebellions are built on hope.” Andor and all of the rest of the casualties of the show may have died, but others—like his son—will live on.