The 25 Greatest Moments From Andor's Incredible First Season

From the minute we met the boxy little red droid with the most accurate name in Star Wars—being intimidated by a pack of alien hounds on Ferrix—we knew he’d worm his way into our hearts. But then he’d speak in mopiest stuttering droid voice and the love was immediate. Protect B2EMO at all c-c-c-costs.

The first three episodes of Andor are a slow burn, and much of it involves watching Cassian be not just far from the daring spy we met in Rogue One, but actively the hottest of hot messes. And yet, in desperation as the net of Pre-Mor rent-a-cops closing in on him, we get his tense, edge first meeting with Luthen Rael. “Don’t you want to fight these bastards for real?” Maybe not quite yet, but he will real soon.

I mean. That’s it, that’s the moment. You love to see it.

After he’s despatched Cassian to assist the cell on Aldhani, we get to witness the miraculous transformation Luthen makes as he returns to Coruscant, re-disguising himself as a charming, gregarious antiquities merchant. The rings, the wig, the practicing of a fake smile—it’s a tiny moment that tells us so much about his character.

Look at this pathetic little man and his bowls of space cereal! There’s a profound joy in watching a fascist like Syril Karn just have the most miserable home life, and nothing hits that home harder than when we see him berated over his bowl of space puffs by his mother Eedy. A joy to watch this man suffer, every week.

Andor’s grasp of politics is razor sharp, and none more profoundly shown than when, through the eyes of idealistic firebrand Kasin Nemik, we get presented with his writings that will fuel the Rebellion. “The pace of oppression outstrips our ability to understand it. And that is the real trick of the Imperial thought machine—it’s easier to hide behind 40 atrocities than a single incident.” In a franchise about the struggle against authoritarianism, it took this long to have someone actually speak to its evils and ideas so plainly.

Andor’s scale is a personal one, and for much the series, the Empire appears undefined by the familiar iconography that is plastered over the rest of Star Wars—Stormtroopers largely replaced by lightly armored grunts, Star Destroyers fleeting, and then the TIE Fighter, so rarely seen that when one does appear, flying over the Aldhani cell’s encampment, it’s the scariest a lone, screeching starfigher has ever been.

Star Wars’ rocky history with LGBTQ representation largely leads to a “take anything you can get” philosophy, but while Cinta and Vel might not have explicitly kissed on screen or anything like that, the fraying relationship and love we saw between them as freedom fighters and as a couple was far more profoundly welcoming—simply allowing them to exist as people in this world, instead of a prop.

It’s almost unfair to not nominate the entirety of “The Eye”, one of the tenses hours of Star Wars ever, but the exhilarating, awful, beautiful escape of Vel, Cassian, Skeen, and the dying Nemik with their Imperial Payroll through the beautiful-but-deadly stellar phenomena the Aldhani religiously revere? From the visuals to the tension to Nemik’s pained howls commanding Cassian to fly higher and higher to their freedom, it’s an incredible sequence.

Luthen Rael isn’t the only one wearing a mask on Coruscant, and the fraught social gathering Mon and Perrin Mothma hold so the senator can court resistance to Palpatine’s law-and-order rule is a masterful display of the many masks she wears. Trying to appease recalcitrant politicians, trying to be the happy mother and wife, and then, when she encounters old Chandrilan friend Tay Kolma and sees an opportunity to mask her Rebel funding in her homeworld’s banking system, we get to see the real fire behind Mon’s steely exterior—a rebel playing the world for fools around her.

One thing that the Disney era of Star Wars has really captured well is the inherent in-fighting of an organization like the Empire, sycophants and power-hungry people climbing the ladder over each other. But the denouement of the competition for Major Partagaz’s favor at ISB between Dedra and Blevin—where the latter’s attempt to get the former chided for going around ISB protocol to continue her own investigation connecting rebel activity across the Empire goes very poorly for him—is a perfect example of it. You almost feel good for Dedra, as much as you can, before immediately remembering how vile all these people are... even to each other.

Cassian Andor fleeing to a party planet for bangin’ tunes, space drugs, and sex is perhaps the last thing you might have expected after the Aldhani heist, but it’s what we get—even if it’s short lived. A trip to the store goes very badly for Cassian as the Empire begins tightening its grip across the galaxy, leading to his detention for simply walking past potential rebel activity, and a nightmarish encounter with a K2 security droid.

Syril Karn’s increasing obsession with Cassian almost undoes him when, having been interrogated by Dedra and rebuked for his aid, he shows up to stalk her on the way to work. It’s an incredibly chilling scene, where even someone as routinely pathetic and looked-down upon as Syril has been up this point becomes a dangerous threat, blinded with infatuation to the fascist cause he sees Dedra as the symbolic form of. Once again, that pang of sympathy with her, despite knowing what a horrifying person she is, makes for a compelling, gutwrenching moment.

Spending two full episodes with Cassian locked in the harsh prison of Narkina 5 at his lowest makes this moment—where he finally breaks down his section supervisor and fellow prisoner Kino Loy, played to perfection by Andy Serkis, to help start formulating a plan to break out. Cassian tries earlier in the episode to poke and prod at Loy, get him to see the horror he’s helping maintain, but it takes the tragic death of their fellow inmate Ulaf, and the evil realization that the Empire ‘frees’ prisoners on Narkina 5 to simply re-assign them to another prison, to crack him and tell Cassian how many guards are on each level.

An episode later and with the riot/breakout plan in full swing, Cassian compels Kino to take over the prison’s comm system to rally the prison complex against their guards—and the initially timid man gives a barnstormer of a missive, reminding his fellow inmates that there’s more of them than their enemies, that they need to show compassion and help each other to perform a miracle and get out alive, and that, of course, there is only one way out: together.

... Which of course, makes the climax of the breakout so tragic. Cassian and his fellow prisoners are overjoyed to make it to the outside world, seeing that all they need to do is swim away to freedom. And then Kino breaks his heart, telling Cassian he doesn’t know how to. It’s the last we see of him, as Cassian is dragged over the edge by the pull of the mass of other inmates. Did Kino know all a long? Had he forgotten? What happened to him next? We’ll never know.

“One Way Out” gives us not one, but two incredible monologues, as Luthen ends the episode meeting his contact within the ISB—a contact who wants out, and questions Luthen’s sacrifice in comparison to his own. A big mistake, as Stellan Skarsgård delivers the performance of the year in a haunting, melancholic, fiery soliloquy about the life he has cast aside in order for generations beyond him to see the light of freedom.

Faced with the decision of compromising her morals to work with Chandrilan crime lord Davo Sculden to hide her unbalanced bank records from the Empire, or be exposed as a Rebel financier, Mon chooses to acquiesce to Sculden’s demand that her daughter Leida meet his son as a potential suitor in their homeworld’s traditional teenage marriages. Breaking down to her cousin Vel after, fearing the trouble she’s in, we get a heartbreaking moment to see just what Mon is willing to do for the nascent Rebellion.

It’s always great to see Forest Whittaker return to his role as Rogue One’s Saw Gererra, but his fiery relationship with Luthen is a highlight, as the latter convinces Saw—who, after rebuffing him, is open to providing air support to another rebel cell—that it’s worth sacrificing 30 men and their commander to maintain Saw’s contact in ISB. It’s a moment that sees Saw pushed closer to the uncompromising warrior we met in Rogue One in the best way.

Andor doesn’t have a lot of the typical Star Wars-y hallmarks, but when it goes for it—like the brief, but dazzling escape Luthen makes from an Imperial cruiser that stops him on the way back from Saw’s base is up there as one of the franchise’s greatest little space battles. The Fondor’s flechette-barrage shredding the tractor beams of the Imperial ship, the side-mounted laser beams to slice through incoming TIEs... it’s another layer to Luthen’s mysteries, and just an incredible action scene.

All that horror endured in Narkina 5, only for the truest of all gut punches: having made it back to Niamos with Melshi to retrieve his money and his blaster, Cassian thinks he’s about to return home and reunite with his mother... only to learn that Maarva Andor is no more. Diego Luna plays the moment incredibly well, full of heartbreak and regret, as he parts ways with his fellow escapee and, in a fitting parallel to his final moments in Rogue One, looks out across Niamos’ serene ocean.

Cassian returns to Ferrix to attend Maarva’s funeral after all, only to find the tightened Imperial grip—and his former flame Bix in their thrall. Steeling himself to storm the Empire’s base of operations with Maarva’s farewell ceremony as cover, he turns at last to Nemik’s manifesto—the thing he was gifted by Vel after his death, the thing he was so scared to touch after Aldhani—and we hear the young man’s stirring exploration of the weakness of fascism, how individual insurrection chips away at the fearful oppression of the Empire, and that all rebels need to do to break its siege is a simply thing: remember to try.

Is this the most haunting, powerful sequence in all of Star Wars? As all the players of Andor’s season find themselves converging on Ferrix on the day of Maarva’s funeral, its people come together—throwing the Imperials for a loop—to bid farewell to the matriarch with a beautiful march through the streets, punctuated by the stirring music of a marching band. Strings and brass swell in a melancholy chorus, one that steels the crowd to march right to the shields of the Imperials’ hastily-mustered defensive line, a mournful tune that echoes through each of our characters swept up in the sea of the crowd. A community ready to face down its oppressor...

... If only someone’s words uplifted them to do so. Maarva becomes the star of her own funeral via a post-humous hologram projected by B2EMO, a triumphant turn from Fiona Shaw as we see Maarva reflect on her history with Ferrix’s traditions and her own yearning to be inspired to believe in something bigger. And then she turns firebrand herself, as she’d hoped to be all her life, to remind her fellow beings that the Empire’s evil grows stronger in the face of comfortable inaction, rousing them to push back against its influence. She lights the spark, and Ferrix blazes into an all-out battle between the petrified Imperials and its inspired citizens.

He’s saved Bix, he’s watched his home rise up against the Empire, he’s lived to see another day. What is left for Cassian to do by Andor’s end? One last encounter with Luthen of course. Sneaking aboard the Fondor as Luthen himself races away from the riot’s aftermath—his mission to kill Cassian incomplete—Cassian makes the man an offer, nudging him towards his pistol: do what he wanted to do in the first place and kill him, or take him in as a new operative. Perhaps inspired by the events of the day, we’re left with Luthen’s wry smile, and the realization that Cassian Andor has taken his first step into a wider world of Rebellion.