Star Wars: He’ll Shoot You in the Face – Cassian Andor Breakdown
Cassian Andor was one of the rebellion’s best spies. While we wait for his stand-alone story to unfold, let’s review what we know so far.
Andor premiered last week and we are looking forward to learning more about one of our favorite Rebel intelligence officers and spies. As the episodes unfold over the next two months we’ll learn all about Cassian’s early days of the Rebellion and how he became the character we know and love. But for now, let’s talk about what we know so far and what gaps we hope the show will fill in.
Rebel Officer
Andor has given us a few peeks into Cassian’s early life, but prior to the three-episode opening week, our knowledge of his history began with the Rebel Alliance. Somewhat of a mystery, Cassian was never the sort of character who talked about himself or revealed things about his past. He spent some time with an anti-Imperial anarchist group and was eventually noticed and recruited by the Rebellion.
Andor joined the Alliance’s Intelligence Branch and quickly earned a reputation as somebody who would do anything for the cause. Often working alone, Cassian would jump into millions where backup or help would be impossible to secure and constantly put his own life in danger in the name of taking down the empire.
His lacking sense of self-preservation mixed with the nature of his spy work meant that Cassian Andor was often put up against moral quandaries time and time again. And he always chose whatever would further the Rebel Alliance’s goals over all else. In his mind, it was better to make a morally questionable choice than do nothing at all.
Meeting K-2SO
On a mission to retrieve Imperial protocols on Wecacoe, Cassian led a small team to a facility guarded by KX series security droids. Though they weren’t immediately caught, Storm Troopers spotted something suspicious, and the alarm was sounded mid-way through their mission, forcing the team to flee.
Cassian decided to distract one of the KX droids and shut them down and remove their Imperial memories. After a messy escape and multiple attempts to fully shut off and restart K-2SO, some of which involved K-2 trying to kill Andor, they were eventually successful in escaping with an Imperial security droid. They managed to get the information they needed off of the droid and modified it to be friendly(ish) to the Rebellion. And so Cassian and K-2SO’s friendship and partnership were born.
Notable Missions
Now with a droid partner, Cassian Andor and K-2SO took on a number of missions together for the Rebellion. A trip to raid an Imperial freighter quickly turned into a rescue mission when they found three young Wookiees in the cargo hold. The two also investigated the Aloo family, who were collecting Sith artifacts for Emperor Palpatine.
But as their missions progressed, Cassian became more and more focused on recovering intelligence specifically pertaining to threats to the Rebellion and weapon development. Working to surveil kyber crystal shipments, he was able to confirm that the Empire was moving the crystals at a massive scale – though he didn’t even learn the full magnitude of the project at first due to the Empire using civilian ships for much of their crystal transportation.
This lead him to learn through defecting imperial cargo pilot, Bodhi Rook, that the Empire was building a super weapon that they described as a “planet killer.” With this information, Cassian was sent on another mission to rescue a former associate of Saw Gerrera and Jyn Erso, the daughter of a scientist being held hostage by the Empire, in an attempt to bring her into the Rebellion and help neutralize the super weapon threat.
Retrieving the Death Star Plans
After retrieving Jyn Erso, the three quickly joined a small team to retrieve the Death Star’s plans. They would see both Galen Erso and Saw Gerrera in order to get vital information and see the destructive power of the new super weapon for the first time in Jedha City.
Finally, the team would sneak into the Imperial base on Scarif with stolen clearance codes and attempt to retrieve the weapon’s plans. The mission started out well and was technically successful. But it, unfortunately, ended in tragedy for the Rebel team on the ground. The Death Star’s second test would be against its own base on Scarif. Though the attempt to stop the transfer of the plans would come too late. In the end, Cassian Andor died exactly as he had lived, fighting the Empire with everything he had.
Are you enjoying Andor so far? What do you hope to see in the earlier parts of his story? Are you disappointed K-2SO won’t be making an appearance this season? Let us know in the comments!
May The Force Be With You, Adventurers!
