‘Andor’ Episode 12 Recap: Everything That Rises Must Converge

It’s the end of Andor’s first season, and all roads lead to Ferrix. Dedra Meero is there, leading the Imperial garrison in its attempt to trap their quarry at his mother’s funeral. Luthen Rael and his lieutenants Vel and Cinta are there too, hoping to kill him faster than the Imperials can question him. Syril Karn and his old pal Linus Mosk are there too, desperate for revenge against the man he blames for his collapsed career, in hopes that said revenge can help kickstart a new career instead. And sure enough, Cassian Andor is there too, but not to attend his mother Maarva’s funeral service as everyone expected, but to rescue his friend Bix from Imperial captivity.

They were all so close to getting what they wanted, but in the end, only Cassian Andor pulls it off. Maybe that’s what makes him the hero of this story, the title character, the lynchpin around whom the rest of the story revolves. He once told his erstwhile Rebel comrades “I’m here to win and walk away.” Maybe now he’s just here to win and keep on winning until the battle is over.

Written by Tony Gilroy and directed by Benjamin Caron, the episode creates tension by expertly cross-cutting between fully twenty different viewpoints and characters as they converge: Cassian, Luthen, Vel, Cinta, Bix, Dedra, Syril and Mosk, two separate Imperial commanders, an undercover ISB officer, a local informant, three different local Rebel sympathizers (including one we’d never seen before, who spends several brief scenes working on some kind of engineering project before we realize he’s building a bomb), two different funeral processions headed for the same destination (one of them playing mournful music that turns rousing as the sequence progresses, an extremely shrewd scoring choice), Cassian and Bix’s friend Brasso, the droid B2EMO, even the guy who strikes that giant bell-like anvil in the town’s clocktower. It’s like watching someone assemble the pieces of a puzzle, spreading them out in front of you before snapping them all into place.

The picture that emerges once the puzzle is assembled is one of near-spontaneous rebellion against the Empire. I say “near” spontaneous because obviously several key figures knew what was coming, though crucially none of them are part of the Empire, which gets caught flat-footed. A funeral speech from Maarva, delivered via a hologram recorded prior to her death, turns into a rabble-rousing declaration of war against the Imperials, prompting a riot that claims many lives on both sides of the fight until the order is given to open fire on the protesters. 

We see people we care about escape and people we care about gunned down. At one point the camera lingers on a dead rebel’s face for second after painful second to remind us of the human cost of the Rebellion.

Dedra Meero gets knocked down by the rioters and carried away, screaming and trembling with fear of what will be done to her. (I don’t want to say that something…untoward is being implied here, not on a Star Wars show, not even this Star Wars show, but Denise Gough’s performance conveys that terror nonetheless.) Fortunately for her she’s not being captured, she’s being rescued, by Syril Karn. “I should say thank you,” she tells him, unused to being grateful to anyone for anything, much less to a worm like this dude. “You don’t have to,” he says, so obviously in some combination of love and awe that it’s amazing he doesn’t just drop to his knees and lick her boots right then and there. 

With all his pursuers caught up in the chaos of the riot or observing it frustratedly from afar like Luthen, Cassian is free to infiltrate the hotel being used as the Imperial prison and garrison — now mostly empty of guards, who are all being used to pacify the riot — and free Bix. She’s barely mobile, barely lucid, but “barely” is enough for him to get her out of there and onto a waiting ship. 

But rather than take off with her, Brasso, B2EMO, the bomber kid, and a leader of the local civic group the Daughters of Ferrix, Cassian has other plans. He’s seen Luthen outside the funeral, and he’s realized what Rael is there to do. So he tracks down the Rebel leader’s ship and waits there, surrendering to him when he arrives. He presents Luthen with a choice, either option for which it’s clear he’s willing to accept in this intense moment: “Kill me…or take me in.”

It only lasts for a split second, but Luthen — not Luthen the glad-handing antiques dealer, but Luthen the ruthless Rebel commander — smiles. What a note to end the season on, and what a sign that Cassian is destined for great things.

There are other interesting signs for the future, too, if you know where to look. In her brief scenes Mon Mothma seems mostly concerned about the prospect of child marriage for her daughter, whom she’s tempted to betroth to the teenage son of that sleazy banker guy in order to secure his help in plugging the holes in her sketchy financial situation. However, she also picks a fight with her husband Perrin about his apparent gambling addiction, a habit he swears — convincingly, to my ears — that he has left behind. The way she steels herself before the discussion makes me believe she’s well aware that her driver is an Imperial informant reporting back to the ISB about her doings…and that she’s framing her own husband in order to explain her missing money. Cold, but it’s easy to see why this would be preferable to her than sticking her kid into a regressive socio-religious arrangement, and at any rate war is a cold business.

It’s those individual, emotional moments that resonate the strongest in this episode. Mon’s guilt, Dedra’s terror, Syril’s abject admiration of Dedra. Maarva’s defiance from beyond the grave, Bix’s brokenness, the bomber’s wordless determination. Mosk drinking alone as the dust settles, Luthen realizing his plan won’t work, the Imperials celebrating the slaughter of Rebel commander Anto Kreegyr and his forces back on Coruscant without realizing they’ve been had. Vel running through the smoke and fog in search of her missing girlfriend Cinta, Cinta stabbing the undercover cop to death as a crime of opportunity, the informant’s ignominious death in the bomber’s explosion. The closeup on the dead man’s unseeing eyes, the closeup on Mon Mothma as she prepares to talk to Perrin, the closeup on Luthen as he hears Cassian’s offer, the closeup on Cassian as he makes it without knowing what the older man will do.

If anything ties Andor together, it’s this: a conviction that great things are made from small pieces, painstakingly assembled. It was true of the bomb, it’s true of whatever they were building in that prison (a post-credits scene reveals it to be components for the planet-killing weapons system on the Death Star), it’s true of the growing Rebellion, and it’s true of Cassian Andor himself, a lowlife who’s gone from scrambling to survive to fighting for something much larger than himself. It’s amazing to see a Star Wars story this thoughtfully constructed, adding brick to brick to brick until the most impressive story that universe has seen in two decades is right there before our eyes.

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.