One Gun Shows Why Andor Is So Good At Star Wars Storytelling

I’ve somehow seen every live-action Star Wars show, all of the movies except Solo, and played many of the video game spin-offs and adaptations, yet I still don’t really consider myself a Star Wars fan. These days it feels like you need a pedantic, encyclopedia-level recall of in-universe minutiae to really call yourself that, which I certainly don’t have. Like a lot of folks, I’m mostly just here for vibes and battles. But somehow Andor has bridged that divide and made me appreciate all of those little details that classic Star Wars fans are always gooning over. It did it with a single blaster I haven’t thought about in years.

Spoiler Warning: If you’re not caught up on Andor season 2 this is your cue to turn back. The thing I’m going to share isn’t a major spoiler in and of itself, but why it works so well requires delving into some of the show’s biggest moments up through the most recent episode 9.

Okay, so near the end of the last episode, rebel operative Vel is at the rebellion’s base on Yavin taking stock of the armaments. She notices an insignia on one of the guns and asks the group of new recruits who it belongs to. A guy in the back claims it as his own, and although his face looked really familiar, I couldn’t quite place it. The moment doesn’t linger for long and it also serves as a nod to the rebellion’s growing ranks, but I still had the nagging feeling I was supposed to recognize a deeper meaning to the exchange.

My instinct was right. While idly scrolling X over the weekend I came across a post by YouTuber RedTeamReview that used a handful of screenshots to trace the backstory of the gun in question. It turns out it’s the gun Cassian took from Syril Karn in season 1 when the latter was trying to apprehend him for the unsolved murders on Morlana One in episode 3. Later, Arvel Skeen asks Cassian where he got it ahead of the heist on the imperial base on Aldhani. Arvel notes it’s “corpo issued” and Cassian simply responds, “Didn’t get a name.”

Cassian later hides it in his apartment on the beachy resort planet of Niamos only to get captured and sent to the prison on Narkina 5. After spurring the revolt there, he escapes alongside another inmate named Ruescott Melshi. They get back to Niamos and Cassian gives him Syril’s blaster as they agree to split up for a better chance at survival and spreading the message of what happened to them on Narkina 5. Thanks to episode 9, we now know that Ruescott eventually finds his way to the rebel base on Yavin, where presumably Vel recognized the gun from when Cassian used it in the Aldhani mission. Incredible!

But somehow the best detail draws on an even more subtle throughline. While Andor viewers have watched Syril obsessively hunt Cassian and other “outside agitators” because of some pathological need to assert law and order, Cassian has no real idea who he even is, culminating in an exasperated “Who are you?” that stops Syril dead in his tracks when the two finally throw down during the Ghorman Massacre. The “didn’t catch a name” from back on Aldhani hits even harder in that context, and Syril’s blaster unexpectedly ends up acting like a sort of breadcrumb trail leading us back to it.

Callbacks like this rarely net such a payoff, especially in the blockbuster IP franchises we’re now surrounded by. Most easter eggs these days amount to simple name dropping so that anyone not in the know has to go Google what was going on until they eventually end up on a for-profit wiki so loaded up with auto-play ads and pop-ups that it crashes their browser. This is why I’ve generally defaulted to rolling my eyes at cheap lore deepcuts meant to earn credibility without actually doing the work, and why Andor is such a breath of fresh Chandrila air.

The show did the same thing with a moment in Rogue One, which all of Andor is leading up to, when Cassian tells Jyn Erso that “rebellions are built on hope,” a line she later repeats as the sentiment begins to take hold. Showrunner Tony Gilroy said he was bullied by his son into giving the quote an origin story in Andor, which is why the Ghorman bellhop ends up saying it to Cassian right before the fighting breaks out. That hope culminates in a bomb he lobs to give Ghorman’s freedom fighters a route to escape. So much of modern Star Wars is slavishly devoted to stale canon for no reason. Andor is the rare exception.

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