Luke Skywalker put it best: Breathe. Just breathe.
(And if you're allergic to spoilers, he might add, make sure you've watched Andor episode 12 before perusing the sacred texts below.)
Andor Season 1 is over. The Star Wars show's finale brought its main Imperial and Rebel protagonists together for an explosive, rebellion-sparking funeral on Cassian Andor's junk-filled home from home planet, Ferrix. Every one of the surviving characters, grown so real over the course of a meticulous tale, now has a giant "what's next?" sign twirling above their heads.
We know Rebel captain Cassian Andor (Diego Luna), Saw Gerrera (Forest Whitaker) and Senator Mon Mothma (Genevieve O'Reilly) are in the heart of the fight in Rogue One, now four years ahead in Andor time. But we don't know how they get there, or anything about the other names we've come to care about: Andor's mentor, Luthen! Andor's crush, Bix! Rebel lovers Vel and Cinta! Dammit, even those star-crossed Imperials Dedra and Syril!
Where will they all be for those crucial, deadly, ultimately final days of the Death Star — which, as a post-credits sequence reminded us, is the dark shadow looming over everything?
Thanks to the Andor masterplan that showrunner Tony Gilroy talked about, we know that Season 2 will take us right up to the opening of Rogue One. Four years of Star Wars time will pass over the course of the 12 concluding episodes, and at the end of them Cassian will not yet know about the planet-killing weapon his prison labor helped build.
But you'll need to breathe really deeply, because we're probably not going to get Season 2 until 2024. Gilroy only just started filming, after all, and for as much as Andor leans on practical effects, there's still a lot of CGI to slot into place like so many Death Star widgets.
In the meantime, here are the burning questions Season 2 will answer whenever it arrives — at least, if Gilroy's sense of storytelling continues to hold up to the Season 1 standard. Let's start with the question that could have the biggest bombshell of an answer:
Who is Luthen Rael?
Aside from being an Emmy-worthy role for the inimitable Stellan Skarsgård, Luthen Rael — antiques dealer, secret "axis" of the disparate rebellion — is a riddle wrapped in an enigma. Who is he underneath all his masks, both metaphorical and the ones in his store? How did he get trapped in this moral maze where he has to sacrifice 50 men to not burn an Imperial source, his life now a series of galactic trolley problems — including nearly killing Cassian himself for the greater good?
We just can't wait to tear the enigma-wrapping paper off Luthen, especially because of a theory that makes an increasing amount of sense: Luthen is a former Jedi, hiding in plain sight with Force-connected relics in the Empire's capital.
The clues may not exactly be subtle, in retrospect. Luthen gave Cassian a kyber crystal, the power source for lightsabers, as a sign of his trustworthiness. Jedi and Sith holocrons — think USB drives for the light and dark sides — can be seen repeatedly in the background of his back room; given the absolute vital importance of holocrons in other Star Wars TV, we don't think that's just set decoration.
Luthen says he shares his plan with "ghosts" and that he's sacrificed "everything," including first and foremost a sense of "calm" — exactly what a Jedi cultivates. He said he'd been fighting the Empire since the beginning, which lines up with Order 66, the moment the Emperor directed clone troopers to slaughter their Jedi officers.
An apparent Jedi Sentinel mask in Luthen's shop could be a prop department coincidence, or it could indicate that he was a member of that old order, which functioned quite like freelance private detectives in urban environments. Sounds about right for a rebel who is restless and very at home in the shadows at all levels of the city-planet Coruscant.
Will Luthen die?
Sad to say, Luthen is probably for the chop in Season 2. The main reason: he isn't anywhere in the rebel base on Yavin 4 in Rogue One and A New Hope. Sure, you could invent some reason why this consummate rebel spook is detained elsewhere during a very all-hands-on-deck situation, but his death would bring weight and momentum to Cassian's journey as well as Mon Mothma's.
Luthen will spill the blood of others to keep the growing rebellion a secret; he would certainly be willing to lay down his life to prevent the Imperial Security Bureau from learning more. Everything we know from the Rebels animated show, set in the same time frame as Season 2, suggests he succeeded: the Empire is none the wiser about the network growing under its nose.
Will we see Ahsoka in Andor?
Still, think on this: "Axis," the only name Imperial spooks know Luthen by, reminds us of "Fulcrum," the code name in Rebels for Ahsoka Tano, key contact for the rebellion. Ahsoka is a former Jedi padawan who walked away from the order, meaning Luthen might know her of old. She's also the subject of another Disney+ series that began filming in 2022. Could we be on track to witness the Fulcrumaxis Axisfulcrum passing of the torch between the two hinge characters, and the two shows?
Will any Andor couple get it on?
Andor, the first Star Wars show to feature sexy sleepovers and brothels, has also now given us three potential couplings where you could cut the sexual tension with a knife.
There's Cassian and Bix Caleen (Adria Arjona), who used to get it on and were clearly into each other. But Bix was tortured by Imperials looking for him, Cassian put her on a ship out of Ferrix to keep her safe — and while you sense these two have unfinished business, you also get the sense that their trauma is going to trip them up if they so much as try.
Bix may die, or she may run far away, but either way it's not happily ever after. Cassian has a pretty haunted look in Rogue One, and viewing the movie again now, it's almost like he sees Bix in its main protagonist, Jyn Erso (Felicity Jones).
There's Vel Sartha (Faye Marsay) and Cinta Kaz (Varada Sethu), the first out gay couple in Star Wars, striking a blow for equality by proving that they can match any hetero couple in awkward silences. The problem here is Cinta's total sense of duty to the Rebellion, which she uses to keep Vel at several light years' distance even when they're in the same room. That relationship-killing workload isn't about to get lighter.
Then there's Dedra Meero (Denise Gough) and Syril Karn (Kyle Soller), the utterly odd couple. She's a ruthlessly ambitious insider; he's like what would happen if a poorly-coded Elon Musk reply bot became sentient.
But then Syril got to live his creepy nerd dreams by saving Dedra's life on Ferrix. All of a sudden, she was breathing hard and staring right in his eyes. To have the dictatorship-loving pair be the only couple hooking up in Season 2 … this seems very on brand for Andor.
What takes Mon Mothma to Yavin 4?
Speaking of joyless couples, there's Senator Mothma and her louche gambling husband Perrin Fertha (Alastair Mackenzie). As part of her bid to keep the lid on her funding of the rebellion, Mothma seems on the edge of dooming their daughter Leida (Bronte Carmichael) to the same kind of arranged marriage deal that bound her parents in unhappy matrimony years earlier. (Leida seems into the idea, but the kid is 13: too young to decide, even in a galaxy far, far away.) Meanwhile, Mothma and galactic silver fox Tay Colma (Ben Miles), a banker and secret rebel, have a good chunk of their own tension going on.
But forget sex for a second (just a second, I promise). Something is going to take Mothma from dying of sheer bourgeois boredom at her dinner parties to standing at the strategic head of the entire rebel operation inside ancient monuments on Yavin 4. Whatever it is, it is an emotional and physical catalyst that may be hiding in plain sight in Season 1.
Is it as simple as financial embarrassment: the Empire catches Mothma cooking her books, so she has to hide far from the Imperials who want to throw her down the hole in one of those endlessly churning prison worlds? That seems a bit straightforward for a show operating at this level. More likely it'll be a confluence of factors leading to a betrayal. Perrin, who professes to be bored by politics even as the galaxy turns deeply fascist around him, seems just the type to turn his own wife in.
Where's K-2SO?
Damn you Andor, you faked us out with the appearance of the Imperial droids working with shoretroopers on the planet where Cassian gets arrested. At some point in the next four years, Cassian encounters K-2SO, the sassy reprogrammed former droid of this type who gets so many of the best lines in Rogue One. But how, when, and why? These are cards still held very closely to Lucasfilm chests.
What happened to Kino?
Andy Serkis' disillusioned prisoner leader Kino Loy was another standout character in Season 1. Last we saw, he was left at the prison entrance with the revelation that it was surrounded by water; he couldn't swim. Is that all there was to Kino's character, played with such gusto by such a well-known actor?
You don't have to buy the rather dubious fan theory that Kino ends up being the model for Snoke, the Supreme Leader of the First Order until he was unceremoniously bisected by Kylo Ren (Adam Driver). This is based entirely on the fact that Serkis also voiced Snoke.
Aiming for fan service two whole movie trilogies hence doesn't exactly seem like Andor's style. But that doesn't mean we won't see Kino again. On the contrary, if this story is as Dickensian and tightly constructed as Gilroy says, expect him to crop up somewhere in the Imperial war machine. The one guy left in a prison after a prison break may ordinarily expect a swift execution, but something tells us Kino is smart enough to talk his way out of that situation — and into a different kind of living hell.
Whatever the answer, don't worry — you probably have less than two years until you find out.
Breathe. Just breathe.
Andor is now streaming on Disney+.
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