Welcome back to another Star Wars television show. Today we’re talking about one of my personal favorite shows, Andor. It ran on Disney+ for two seasons in 2022 and 2025.
At the time of making my original timeline, season two had not been released yet, so in this post I’m only going to talk about season one. I do highly recommend watching the whole series though because it is very good television.
So without further ado, let’s get started fellow Andorians and Starwarsians.
Cassian Andor is a rebel, but he didn’t start out fighting for the rebellion against the Empire. As a young child, he was living on an isolated planet called Kenari.
At some point, the Empire invaded the planet to mine the resources out of it. A mining accident happened later, leaving all the children of the planet orphans when the Empire abandoned them.
Scrappers discovered the mining wreckage and Andor, and ended up adopting him and secretly removing any evidence he lived on the planet Kenari.
Cassian becomes anti-Imperial after his adopted father is killed, and at one point tries to find his lost sister. Two local cops confront him and try to get him to pay the “toll” for coming by, and things get heated and one of the cops is killed. In a panic, Cassian kills the other one and runs, and this is the initial plot point of the show.
Cassian Andor’s rebel path was pretty much set after that moment. Before we get into that, I want to talk about most of the characters we see in the show. Many of them have their own stories whether it’s for or against the Empire.
They can be categorized in a few different boxes related to Andor: Friends and Family, Rebels, and Opposition.
Friends and Family
Maarva Andor
The adoptive mother of Cassian. Probably the reason for Cassian’s rebellious nature. Lives with Cassian on a mining planet called Ferrix and is very outspoken against the Empire.
Clem Andor
Killed before the plot of the show. Was trying to stop violence at a protest but was blamed by the Empire for starting it and hanged in town square.
B2EMO
The Andors’ friendly robot. A loyal droid to friends who speaks with a stutter, and often is nervous, but always follows through with helping his friends.
Bix Caleen
Cassian’s close friend and ex. Lives on Ferrix as a mechanic and is secretly in touch with a rebel radio contact who sometimes offers jobs against the Empire.
Brasso
Another close friend of Cassian. Scraps old ships on Ferrix and often volunteers to take care of Maarva when Cassian is away.
Rebels
Luthen Rael
Luthen secretly runs a communication service to supply funding and puts various rebel cells in many jobs against the Empire. He has the mindset that the goal is what matters and that there will be casualties in the war. His public persona is that of an antiques collector living in Corusant. This helps him with the cover of traveling a lot for antiquities when in reality he is traveling for a mission of some kind.
Kleya Marki
Luthen’s right hand. She runs the antique shop when Luthen is away, and also runs communication and coordination on different rebel jobs.
Mon Mothma
Probably the secondary protagonist in the show. Mon Mothma is a senator for the Empire who is very outspoken against corruption and secretly funds Luthen and other rebels. She is a mother and a wife to another senator who she married in an arranged marriage.
Her husband lives the fancy life as a partner to a rich Imperial senator while Mon stays with him just to keep up appearances.
Throughout the first season, she is struggling to come up with more money for the rebels because her current source of funds is running dry. She reached out to an old childhood friend who was a banker to help her find some money, and his solution was to introduce her and her daughter to a rich mob boss and his son who was thinking about bringing back the tradition of arranged marriage.
Opposition
Syril Karn
Syril is a hardcore Empire supporter and believes in the sanctity of the system. He initially was a local cop investigating the death of two fellow officers. His commander told him to ignore the murders. Saying they were corrupt and they probably were in the wrong place at the wrong time. Syril didn’t listen, however, and discovered it was Cassian Andor who killed them.
Syril set up a raid on Ferrix to try and capture Andor, while lying to the Empire that he has his superior’s support in order for them to send Stormtroopers. The raid was a failure, however, and Andor escaped while the Empire decided to remove all the local authorities and put themselves in charge. Syril was fired and forced to go live with his mother in Corusant.
Dedra Meero
Dedra is one of the Empire’s brightest rising stars in the ISB. As mentioned in a previous Star Wars post, the ISB is a government agency within the Empire who secretly monitors and assesses threats to the Empire. If a rebel group is forming they will step in and stop it.
Dedra is still somewhat new to the ISB but she is loyal to the Empire and seems to be willing to cut corners to find what she wants. Some of her coworkers aren’t happy with that because she is investigating planets the others are in charge of and has no interest in protocol.
She questions Syril over what happened on Ferrix and they eventually become a couple after Syril seeks her out.
Andor Season One Storylines
The show spent a few episodes each following a certain storyline for Andor’s rebellion awakening. Starting out as just a guy looking for himself to make extra money, to someone who would risk it all to stop the Empire and save who he cares about
Heist Storyline
The first job Andor took under Luthen was a heist on the planet Aldhani. Andor gave the group he joined for the heist a fake name under Luthen’s advice: Clem, the name of his adopted father.
The plan: Steal the quarterly payroll of the sector, which is over 80 million credits. Including Andor it was a team of 6 with another inside man at the Imperial base.
Soon on Aldhani is a giant meteor shower that occurs every three years. The locals go on a trek through the mountains to their sacred site to see the event, which happens to be where the Empire built their headquarters. This was easy for the heist team because the locals were escorted by troopers, so half the squad dressed as troopers while the rest went out to eliminate the communications to prevent backup being called in.
The heist went through after a few months of planning, but not without problems. Some Imperial troopers did fight back once they discovered what was happening, and while they did escape, their man inside was killed, and one of the rebel squad members was crushed by the money in the escape. He had an impact on Andor because he gave him a manifesto he wrote, and it eventually got through to Andor to fight for others instead of himself.
Before that, however, another man in the rebel squad suggested to Andor that they could both leave with the money and make their own way. Andor shoots him immediately and leaves with the money he was promised for doing the heist. If he could just go and lie to anyone, there’s no way Andor could trust him.
He goes back home and tries to convince his mom to go away together with his money, but she decides to stay on Ferrix.
Prison storyline
This one is probably my favorite arc of season one.
After leaving Ferrix, Andor went to live the private life on a vacation planet using the alias Keef Girgo. He was walking around the beach when some people getting chased by stormtroopers ran past him. After looking around him another trooper stopped him and arrested him for looking suspicious. Andor claimed he was just a tourist but he was arrested and sentenced to six years in jail on a planet called Narkina 5.
The jail was one of many built into the ocean going down multiple levels. When Andor first arrived, he was introduced to the rioting deterrent: an electric floor. If it was set up to the highest setting it could fry everyone standing on it unprotected.
His cellmates were already working, as it was a labor prison. As he learned what to do, each table was responsible for hitting a quota, and the lowest performing table is fried. The lowest performing floor as a whole is also fried so the floor lead, fellow prisoner Kino Loy, is responsible for making sure all the other prisoners fall in line.
Andor was almost immediately checking his surroundings and trying to find a way to escape, and Kino was discouraging it because he was close to the end of his sentence. During all this they were trying to finish all the work their sentence required.
One day they found out that the Empire killed an entire floor of prisoners. The reason? A prisoner who just finished his sentence was relocated and sent to another floor to do more work, meaning they were never planning on releasing anyone. The Empire is planning on working them until they die. And one person on Andor’s floor did, which empowered Kino and the floor decided that they were going to attempt to escape or die and no longer work.
During the introduction of the next prisoner onto the floor, they grabbed the guard and Andor flooded the bathroom. The guards in the other room activated the electric floor and it shorted out the power, allowing the prisoners to escape the work room and head to the warden’s office. They freed all the prisoners and opened the doors to let everyone out, but Kino froze because he couldn’t swim and the prison was in the middle of the ocean. Andor was pushed out by all the running prisoners and that’s the end of the prison arc.
Sidenote: it’s later revealed that the prisoners were building pieces of a large space station.
Revolution on Ferrix storyline
The final plot point in season one is where the citizens of Ferrix fight back against the Empire.
While Cassian Andor was in prison under the name Keef Girgo, the ISB was in search of him to question him about the recent rebel activity. Andor’s mother, Maarva was also dying.
The Empire has removed all the local authorities and taken over, and captured Bix while she was attempting to reach her rebel contacts.
Bix was held under interrogation and tortured for information. Not physically, but an Imperial scientist found audio from dying alien children who they found could work as torture to break their minds.
Luthen also spoke to his team about eliminating Andor due to being a liability and for what he knows, so everyone was coming to Ferrix, Andor included for his mother’s funeral ceremony which was a parade to the town center.
The people of Ferrix had enough of the Empire at this point and fought through the barricades. Andor used this as a distraction to get Bix back, and they all escaped to the shipyards where Andor met Luthen again, and decided to finally join the rebel cause and work for Luthen.
This concludes season one of Andor.
Final thoughts
I think this is currently one of the best Star Wars shows. To talk about the rise and fight of fascism is absolutely important these days. As I said previously, I will not be talking about season two during this marathon, but I highly encourage everyone to watch the whole show.
Tune in next time to see a group of rebels instead of focusing on one, in Star Wars: Rebels.
Kristopher K. Online 