Andor's season finale is a rage-filled triumph

“Best of all time” is thrown around a lot, but with only a handful of Disney+ entries ranging from “pretty cool” to “expensive toy commercial,” I think it’s more than fair to declare Andor the best Star Wars TV show of all time. (I will add “live-action” as a qualifier in case a bunch of Clone Wars fans get mad at me.) In the short term, I’ll miss it, but the good news is we’re only halfway through the story, and we get one hell of a sendoff this week in a blisteringly-paced and gloriously angry episode of rebellion.

First thing’s first, conspiracy fans: Maarva’s definitely dead. I’d said previously I didn’t believe they’d pull that kind of trick, not only because it’s Not That Kind of Show™, but what good would it do Maarva to fake her death, all but ensuring Cassian’s pigheaded return to the place she told him several episodes ago he can, under no circumstances, stay. Maarva’s loss, her life, and her funeral ceremony are the threads connecting everything this week, and while Tony Gilroy allows for some earned somber moments, the threat of the Empire and the simmering-over rebellion wait for no one. And Maarva does, of course, have one last trick up her sleeve.

In all honesty, it’s a trick Dedra, for all her need for control, should have seen coming. Instead, she’s a little distracted by the ISB’s ruthless murder of Anto Kreegyr’s entire fleet and frustrated there are no prisoners (R.I.P. Anto, we literally did not know you). She ensures the same mistakes aren’t made this time, instructing the imperial agents stationed on Ferrix to do away with snipers for Maarva’s funeral. If Cassian’s here, she wants him alive, presumably to be kept as a hollowed-out plaything along with Bix, who is still a shell, still hearing those unfathomably horrific alien death cries.

Dedra and the Empire, though, have gotten cocky. It’s been the achilles heel of Palpatine’s system-spanning vanity project since A New Hope, but the reality holds true: the bigger the operation, the bigger the blindspots. The ISB approves a special ceremony for Maarva, considering she was a Daughter of Ferrix, which an officer dismisses as a “social club.” (We know better.) However, they demand the ceremony be pushed back two hours, and allow only for 40 mourners. (They were talked up from 30.) Dedra’s smirk all but confirms it: There’s no way this is going down the way she thinks it will.

In play is a young boy assembling a pipe bomb, the barely-held together resentment of the people of Ferrix and, of course, Cassian Andor. Syril, tipped off by Linus last week, also makes the commute, sensing yet another chance to sate his obsessions with both Cass and Dedra. Cinta and Vel link up again, more alienated from each other than ever. Hell, even Luthen’s here for the show.

All roads lead to Ferrix in this final episode, with only the briefest of check-ins with Mon Mothma on Coruscant breaking things up, so let’s get into that. Mon, showing the kind of inventive ruthlessness she’s been searching for all series, asks her totally-a-spy driver for a private chat with her husband on the way home from yet another function. She knows, obviously, the driver will listen in and chastises her husband for gambling again, something he steadfastly denies. It’s a stroke of brilliance from Mon, who’s found a way to add a new wrinkle to ISB’s audit of her bank accounts. Of course there would be some squiffy numbers if Perrin was jaunting over to Canto Bight and blowing it all on the space ponies. Just to shore things up, she does indeed grant Davo Sculden’s son an audience with Leida. I love the quiet ingenuity of her first scheme, but both plays come a little out of nowhere. Genevieve O’Reilly has done superb work all season, and it’s only natural she’d have to be sidelined a little for the grand finale, but I’d like to have seen more of her journey from dismissing Davo out of hand to interrogating her daughter’s affinity for regressive Chandrilan child bride customs to making the arrangements with Davo. It’s easy enough to infer, but for a show that so brilliantly examines systems, and the compromises people have to make to work in (or outside of) them, it feels a touch rushed.

Back on Ferrix, it’s time for Anvil Hammer Guy to finally take center stage: In beautiful defiance, he smashes loud, somber peals through the streets of Ferrix before the agreed funeral time, and citizens—way more than 40—flood the streets to pay tribute to Maarva. In lieu of Cassian (who uses the distraction to find and rescue Bix), Brasso has the honor of laying Maarva’s brick. Then B2EMO kicks into gear, and projects a 20-foot-tall Maarva hologram. Even by proxy, Fiona Shaw’s furious, beautiful speech is elevated by the actor here. Honestly, I wish I could just transcribe the entire thing right here. “I always want to be lifted, to be inspired. I remember every time the dead lifted me with their truth,” she says, the mourners of Ferrix hanging on her every word. “Now I’m dead, and I yearn to lift you.” Something ripples through the crowd. “We’ve been sleeping,” she says, and Dedra allows herself a single nervous side-eye. “There is a wound that won’t heal at the center of the galaxy; it’s here and it’s not visiting anymore.” Maarva, you sly dog. It’s not a funeral; it’s a rally. “If I could do it again, I’d wake up early and fight the bastards from the start. Fight the Empire!” she cries as an officer smothers B2EMO with a jacket. But too little, too late. The pipe bomb is thrown, and the Ferrix uprising begins in earnest.

It’s a beautiful centerpiece of righteous fury and so very un-Star Wars. It’s scrappy, violent, and raw. Even Anvil guy gets to smush a Stormtrooper. Dedra, mobbed and panicked, gets saved by Syril, and the two share an extended, charged moment. I don’t care where this goes next season as long as we get a three-person dinner scene between Syril, Dedra, and Syril’s mother.

Cassian manages to rescue and evacuate Bix and B2EMO for greener pastures, promising them (once again) that he’ll find them. I truly hope he does. Andor is such a deceptively sprawling show that we’ve barely had time to get to know Cassian through the eyes of the people he knows the most. Before he transforms into a full-fledged freedom fighter, I want to see him get his moment of peace. Just a moment. It’s all I ask.

Luthen, ever the man who knows which way the winds are blowing (he tellingly stands above the fray on Ferrix, watching from a distance as explosions and screams ring out), makes for a hasty escape, too, before finding Cassian already on his ship. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out why Luthen was there in the first place, and Cassian virtually puts his blaster into Luthen’s hand. “Kill me or take me in,” he dares the man who inadvertently turned him into this. I’m not a betting man, but I doubt Luthen will see either of these options as very appealing when we return to Ferrix for season two. The first dominoes have fallen. The rebellion is here.

Stray observations

• I wondered who was going to get the requisite finale monologue. Take a bow, Fiona Shaw. There’s been no short supply of great characters and greater speeches in this show, but Maarva has a lyricism to even her most raw expressions. Beautiful stuff.
• My wishlist for season two includes, in no particular order: Mon and Cassian finally meeting, an inevitably devastating hero’s/villain’s death for Luthen (he could still go either way!), and, of course, for Diego Luna to finally realize his dream of meeting his Star Wars idol, Jabba the Hutt.
• No Kleya this week. Elizabeth Dulau has been great as Luthen’s no-nonsense partner in “crime,” but I’d have loved to see a single scene where she wasn’t “at work,” so to speak. If we can get several scenes of Syril eating soggy cereal, surely we can check in on Kleya’s internal life for a hot second.
• Vel and Cinta get shunted to the side quite a bit too in the finale, but what’s left unsaid between them does a lot of heavy lifting. I hope we see them pop up again next time.
• Did you catch the post-credits scene? Gold star for everybody who called that those nondescript parts Kino’s prison floor was building would end up being part of the Death Star. I don’t see this so much as a “Gasp!” moment as I do a reminder of where this is all headed for Cassian. The obstinate, monolithic symbol of the Empire is nearly here.
• So we just kind of dropped that thread on Cass’ sister after the first few episodes, huh? Guess that’s a season two thing.
• Thanks to everyone who watched, commented, and nitpicked this great, surprising show along with me. Safe to say, writing about Star Wars online is a fraught prospect, but I’ve been bolstered by the funny, thoughtful, collaborative community that is the Andor comments section. Thanks for being my friends, even when you were schooling me. See you all next time!