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definitely not getting extremely emotional over this photo right now… 🥲

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The Great British Andor Bake Off, Round One

The Great British Andor Bake Off Comes To The Empire!

Over several rounds, twelve hardy contestants battle it out to be called Andor's best baker!

Week One: Bread Week!

Contestants have to bake:

Signature challenge: a flavoured bread loaf

Technical challenge: a round cob loaf

Showstopper challenge: 12 sweet and 12 savoury rolls.

Notes: Please vote for who you think goes home. Voting period lasts 1 day until we get to the final 9.

Judges: Paul Hollywood, Mon Mothma

Presenters: Noel Fielding, Lagret.

An Extra Slice show and podcast host: Perrin Fertha

Potential contestants who said 'absolutely fucking not' because they aren't insane but are cheering on their boo / family member: Dedra Meero, Cinta Kaz, Maarva Andor, Ruescott Melshi

Potential contestants that wanted to be there but no one wanted to ask them: Blevin, Mosk, Corv, Sculdun, Kaido, Grymish, Gorst

Potential contestants that wanted absolutely nothing to do with this nonsense: Luthen Rael, Kleya, Lonni, Leida, Enza Rylanz

Wild card that had to drop out because they insisted on only 12 contestants: Carro Rylanz

Potential contestants who couldn't swim to the location to even be considered: Kino Loy

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When you said "entirely selfless" about Kleya do you mean she's become an entity without an individual self; literally no self? Or more the traditional concept of unselfish; concerned more with the needs and wishes of others than with her own?

It’s a mix of both. It’s not that she has no individual self, it’s that to her, it is irrelevant because everything she does and everything she IS is in service to the Cause. So in that sense, she’s more concerned with the needs of others, but not in the “I’m a Good Person who will prioritize others” way. It’s that she spent her whole life focused on one thing and in service of that thing, she considers herself expendable.

When Cassian finds her in the safe house, sure, a part of her is definitely a bit in shock over Luthen’s death, but it literally doesn’t click with her that he would be there for HER too, not just the intel. That scene is very revelatory of the worth Kleya places on herself: she’s an instrument for the Rebellion, that’s it. As her own person, she does not matter. She had already decided she was gonna pass the information on to Cassian, and then she probably would have killed herself just like Luthen did. Being taken to safety was simply something unconceivable to her.

I’ve said it before but it’s one of the things I love so much about the final arc of the series. Yes, there is the Death Star reveal and everything is set in motion to lead to Rogue One, but at its core, that’s not what the final arc is about. It’s about saving Kleya’s life. It’s about Cassian never finding his sister but refusing to abandon a girl who thinks her life doesn’t matter, a girl who gave herself body and soul to the Rebellion because everything and everyone else was ripped away from her. It’s about Kleya receiving kindness and shelter from a woman who would have every reason to hate her. It’s about Kleya seeing the sunrise Luthen knew he would help make but would never witness. It’s not about the Grand Mission. The ending of this show is quiet, and the most human it could’ve been. It’s perfect.

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Syril Karn x Dedra Meero

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Andor

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i know people keep saying star wars andor is really fucking good. but jesus christ it really is just that fucking good

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Diego Luna practices his emotions with Elmo

shoutout to @mariadelmontgomery for the translation, thank you!

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“I am a very foolish fond old man”

"Unhappy that I am, I cannot heave my heart into my mouth. I love your majesty. According to my bond, no more nor less.”

. Kleya and her Lear .

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Do people actually like quote books, movies, and TV shows in casual conversation because I refuse to believe that that's true. I legit cannot remember a single quote from anything that I have ever watched or read and you're telling me that people can quote full on paragraphs from their favourite book and it's not just a movie trope to show that they're a nerd.

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violence and death and dying and blood and guts and gore and violence and viscera and fuck you fuck you fuck you fuck you fuck you fuck you

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I’ve started a full rewatch of the whole thing and boy does even season 1 hit differently now in the full context. Even that whole “only stepping off the Narkina 5 floor at the last second before it goes killer electric” little detail. Are you flirting with your fate there, Cassian ?!

I think Rogue One and Andor are a unique prequel-sequel pair which are best experienced when you watch the sequel (Rogue One) before the prequel (Andor). You need to be able to pick up on all the little nods and references in Andor, Rogue One needs to be the catalyst that makes you wonder about the past, you need to experience them like a meteor hurtling toward an end you know all too well. The culmination needs to be seen and suffered before you grasp for the build-up. You shouldn't be finishing the last season of Andor wondering what became of him. The tragedy of that episode (and the series as a whole) hinges on you knowing how it all turns out. And seeing the events that lead to it. That despite it all and because of it all. You need to be able to visualise the almost-parralel storylines of the characters, inclining toward each other till they intertwine. Rogue one is someone's out there and Andor is is anyone listening. Answer before the question. End before the beginning. Smoke curling and spiraling into the distance out of a house that started smoldering a long time ago in a galaxy far far away.

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After a few rewatches, I’m quite happy to say this more explicitly: Dedra loved Syril and is left distraught by his death. She has absolutely no healthy coping mechanisms. Importantly, unlike Vel and Cassian, she has no friends or community to fall back on to help process her loss. So you have a woman who is completely unfamiliar with strong feelings in the first place left trying to manage them – and it’s ironic that she appears to go through the same “reckless” stage as Vel. Dedra’s version of this reckless behaviour, (in her case) unconsciously self-destructive and in some sense “mindless”, is to double down on the hunt for Axis that will result in her being so careless. Uncharacteristically so, in many ways, but again - I see this as her emotions distorting her logic. And yes… I feel so bad for her, I really do. 

Cassian gets the balance right; Dedra doesn’t

Back in season 1, Maarva passed on - via Brasso - beautiful words of faith in her wayward adoptive son: “Tell him, he knows everything he needs to know, and feels everything he needs to feel - and when the day comes when those two pull together he will be an unstoppable force for good”.

In season 2, Cassian moves step by painful step closer to that day, the one where he can walk out across Yavin towards whatever destiny might be awaiting him. He’s self-assured. He’s known love and loss, but he’s also learned to balance his emotions and his reason. Bix, knowing that his love for her was tipping the balance too far towards emotion and that he would give up everything if he gave in to the old fear of losing her, removes herself from the equation and Cassian goes into Rogue One able to love without it disabling him, without it clouding his judgement. He has a desire to save people but it’s no longer entirely centred on a desire to assuage his own guilt about his sister. It’s balanced with reason. He can calculate risks and act on them. Kill quickly, if necessary. He knows what is most important, that there is a cause larger than himself. That his own death might be necessary if it saves countless others, but that he should still hope to live for a better future. He’s also strongly intuitive - intuition itself being a reason-emotion combination. He knows when to trust, whether people or to his instincts. This will lead to him disobeying his order to kill Galen Erso and placing his trust in Jyn (and we’ve seen him do that already with Kleya). These are decisions showing a perfect balance between his reason and his emotions.

In contrast, Dedra fails to find that balance. An incredulous Krennic finds it ‘terribly perplexing’ that Dedra could “balance such passionate competency with the mindless decision” to confront Luthen alone. He genuinely doesn’t believe her, and it’s so telling that Dedra, who was praised by Partagaz for her individualism in her dogged pursuit of Axis in Season 1, is now condemned for having let her feelings get in the way. “Passionate competency” is a perfect description … depending on the exact balance, this could be a positive quality. In s1 it was. But in her blind pursuit of Axis in the final arc, seemingly fresh from the raw and no doubt unfamiliar feelings from Ghorman and the loss of Syril, she seems to have made the most basic of mistakes: not realised that what to her was an irrelevant by-product of her search - the leaked Death Star files - was evidence against her of the most damning kind. Her pursuit of Axis became a dangerous obsession in the same way of Syril’s obsession with Cassian.

More broadly, Cassian learns ‘how’ to feel, and achieves that balance that Maarva predicted. Dedra never learns this because she’s so unused to emotions like love and grief. I think that Dedra’s downfall was signalled from the very start, but that the death of Syril made it a certainty. Vel is another character who is described as having become ‘reckless’ in the wake of the grief of loss, but like Cassian she is shown as having successfully come through it. Dedra never does. Ironically, for someone who appears to have real difficulty with experiencing and empathising with many emotions, I would argue that it’s emotion that is ultimately behind Dedra’s downfall.

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Cass

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Sadly, as he’s not getting many views on YouTube he’s likely to give up after episode 3 – so I really hope he picks up some traction with the algorithm.

Ok, so the background music is irritating. The visual presentation is distracting. But if you want a really excellent scene-by-scene deep-dive analysis of Andor… I highly recommend this guy. Beats most of the other video essays for me by being 100% “text-focused”. This video is a compilation of all his breakdowns of season 1, episode 1 : Kassa.

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“If I could do it again, I'd wake up early and be fighting those bastards from the start!”

Fight the Empire

July, 2025. First of Wild Fires. Digital with Maxpack oil painting brushes.

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Muhannad Bhaier in Andor S02E11