Review: Andor, "Make It Stop," "Who Else Knows?," & "Jedha, Kyber, Erso" | Season 2, Episodes 10, 11, & 12

“Just keeps spreading, doesn’t it?”

One of the most crucial moments in the two seasons of Andor, and really within the entirety of the Star Wars franchise, arrived late in the first season. While the title character of the show was feeling his way towards being a true part of what will become the Rebel Alliance, it became much clearer to us that someone like Luthen Rael had doubled down so fiercely that he knew his end was in sight well before any hope of a happy ending. When he hissed at his ISB source, Jung, that he would “burn my life to make a sunrise that I know I’ll never see,” he was making exceedingly clear that his intentions were to help bring freedom about, no matter what.

When you read a sentiment like that, you can’t help but feel roused, but there is a big leap between reading a sentiment like that and embodying it. The difference between the two has been a major focal point for many of the characters who are, largely, on the right side of this battle. Mon Mothma, Cassian Andor, and others have all generally been in favor of freedom and against the fascist tyranny of the Imperial Empire, but they have not all been as willing as Luthen and his assistant Kleya to embody the “no matter what” part of fighting for their rights.

Of course, as I noted in the first-season recaps of Andor, we all know that this show leads into the 2016 film Rogue One, which is unique in the various and sundry Star Wars titles because everyone dies in the end. (Well, almost everyone. Mon Mothma can’t be stopped!) But so many of the other characters from that film, from Cassian to Director Orson Krennic, are as unyielding to their ideals as they are to the very large not-a-moon Death Star that will wipe them out. For the heroes, that means this show is about them rushing towards their own fates, even as they can’t begin to know the impact their efforts will have on Luke Skywalker, Princess Leia, Han Solo, and other heroes.

The notion that these people are fighting for a future that they will never see and that their sacrifice will never be truly known by those who live to enjoy that future is as powerful as it is poignant. I did express some misgivings last week in my review, essentially wondering what the last three episodes of Andor would give us. So much of the Ghorman massacre felt like a grim, bleak climax that put crucial characters like Cassian and Mon Mothma in the general roles we know they’ll adopt as of the events of Rogue One. So what else was there? For the final trio of installments, “Make It Stop,” “Who Else Knows?”, and “Jedha, Kyber, Erso,” the focus mostly—but not entirely—shifts to Luthen and Kleya, and the "no matter what” they’ve embodied throughout.