‘Andor’ Episode 11 Recap: Aftermath

There had to be a comedown. By the standards of Episode 10’s for-the-ages, nothing-left-to-lose prison break, the penultimate installment of Andor’s first season is a quiet, somber episode. It’s more concerned with moments of individual sadness than collective action, with frustration and powerlessness rather than catharsis. But still there are unexpected reprieves, dry humor — and, in a move that ought to delight longtime fans of the franchise, some of the most Star Wars-y stuff this Star Wars TV show has ever attempted. That these attempts are so successful should come as no surprise: This is Andor, and Andor doesn’t miss.

After a brief opening segment in which we see Cassian Andor and his fellow escapee Ruescott Melshi (Duncan Pow) desperately clinging to a cliff face in order to evade Imperial patrols following the prison break, the episode (directed by Benjamin Caron and written by creator and showrunner Tony Gilroy) makes its boldest move, one of the boldest in the series so far: It kills off Andor’s mother Maarva, played by Fiona Shaw, offscreen. Indeed, when we join the action on Ferrix the death, from her previously explored illness, has already taken place. A hearbreaking scene plays out in which Andor’s friend Brasso tries to help Maarva’s stuttering droid B2EMO through his grief. Good luck getting through his plaintive statement “I don’t want to be alone, I want Maarva” without feeling your soul crumple a bit.
(Now, we should note here that we never see Maarva’s body, so there may be more to this than meets the eye. Fakeout deaths are not my favorite thing in the world, but if ever a show has earned a little slack, it’s Andor.)

Of course, all eyes are on the coming funeral for the mother of a wanted man. Dedra Meero’s ISB spy network, led by the most obvious undercover cop to ever undercover cop, is instructed to allow the funeral to proceed in order to see who attends and what they do with one another, with Cassian highest on their hoped-for guest list. Meanwhile, Luthen Rael’s spy Cinta, sent to find and kill Cassian to shut him up, has something similar on her mind.

By the time Cassian receives the news of his mother’s death, he’s made it back to the beach resort-like world where he was arrested, in order to break into his old apartment and recover his valuables, which include guns, money, and his slain comrade Nemik’s manifesto. He got there with the help of a pair of hulking aliens with the appearance and speech patterns of mythical trolls, who capture him and his running buddy with a cool spiderweb gizmo and seem prepared to kill them and turn their bodies in to the Empire.

Looks can be deceiving, of course: These guys hate the Empire as much as the escaped prisoners do, in their case for polluting their planet’s water with the prisons. They give the escapees a ride in a cool ship that looks about two hundred years old, as perfect an evocation of Star Wars’s lived-in sci-fi aesthetic as anything you’re likely to see.

But the real highlight of Cassian’s storyline is just the lingering close-up on actor Diego Luna’s face as Andor processes the news of Maarva’s death. It just goes on and on, as the enormity of the loss spreads its way across Luna’s face like the shifting of tectonic plates. It’s one of his finest moments on the show to date.

Unfortunately, Cassian’s not the only person who’s gotten word. Vel, Cinta’s lover and contact, reports it to Kleya, Luthen’s hardcore assistant — who’s more paranoid than ever, especially because she feels like Luthen and Vel have been getting sloppy. 

Elsewhere, in one of the episode’s lighter scenes, the bulldoggish Sgt. Mosk makes a cameo over a spotty Zoom call to his old boss Syril Karn, updating him on the status of his nemesis’s mother. Syril’s awful mom can’t help but get a dig in; he repays her by breaking into her jewelry box and stealing her money, for purposes as yet unknown.

In another emotionally grueling scene, Vel visits her cousin Mon Mothma, and the two older women watch in barely contained horror as Mon’s daughter Leida (Bronte Carmichael) participates in a conservative religious ritual with her friends, whom Mon says are far more devout even than kids on their home planet Chandrila. (I’m stretching, I know, but there’s something to be said here about the reactionary politics of the descendants of white immigrants here on my native Long Island.) Mon also tells Vel about her money woes due to increasing Imperial scrutiny; she mentions just how deep she’s in the hole, but can’t quite bring herself to explain her horrible plan to get herself back out of it again by marrying Leida off.

But we’ve saved the most exciting stuff for last, in the form of Luthen Rael’s latest excursion. The Rebel leader returns to see his fractious ally Saw Gerrera to warn him not to participate in the raid to be led by fellow commander Anto Kreegyr, knowing that the ISB knows it’s coming and is preparing a trap. (Meero’s interrogators have been asking Cassian’s ex-girlfriend Bix about this guy too, wondering if he was Andor’s mysterious contact during the botched police raid on Ferrix, though we don’t know if she lies to them and says yes or what.) Saw is shocked to hear that Luthen is willing to sacrifice so many men and such a valuable leader, especially because it calls into question what his own fate might be like under similar circumstances. However, he understands the value of a high-level source on the inside of the ISB, and as he puts it, this is war after all.

That’s when things get really interesting — and, believe it or not, really fun, if only for a few moments. While making a call to Kleya in which the two discuss their current predicament using antiques-dealer lingo as a cover, he’s intercepted by an Imperial patrol scanning the area for Saw’s Partisans. The crew have the, well, imperious nature of all the Empire’s little martinets scattered across the galaxy…and Luthen punks them out almost effortlessly. He strings them along by pretending to be a mild-mannered traveler until his ship is ready, then he frags their tractor-beam generator with a blast of projectiles and makes his escape, taking out half a dozen TIE fighters like he’s Han Solo along the way — including with what can only be described as a double-sided horizontal laser-beam attack that had me hooting and hollering at the screen. 

The best thing about Luthen’s escape is how vital it feels to leavening the dread, suspicion, and subjugation that is Andor’s stock in trade. After everything we’ve seen our heroes go through, after Luthen’s big monologue about his misery last week, after listening to him have a conversation with Kleya where he’s not even free to say what he means, watching him physically make the Empire look like a bunch of chumps in two minutes is thrilling, funny, even liberating. 

The show leaves us with Cassian on the seashore as Ruescott breaks away from him, stating they have a better chance to spread the word of what happened at their prison — from which, for all they know, they are the sole survivors — if they split up. There’s hope in that act, and Luthen’s actions show us that hope sometimes pays off. That’s the Andor two-step: make us want something so bad it hurts, then deliver just enough to keep us going. That’s how rebellions are built, after all.
Sean T. Collins (@theseantcollins) writes about TV for Rolling Stone, Vulture, The New York Times, and anyplace that will have him, really. He and his family live on Long Island.