Andor Season 2, Episodes 4-6 review: ‘We’ll bring them down, or die trying’

“We’ll bring them down, or die trying. What else is there?”

That line from Andor art dealer-turned-rebel spymaster Luthen Rael isn’t just a rallying cry — it’s the beating heart of this live-action Star Wars series that stopped being largely about the clash between rebels and Imperials long ago, and transformed into a harrowing study of power, sacrifice, and the machinery of oppression. This is a show about what it means to wake up, arm oneself, and truly rage against the machine.

As a reminder: This second and final season of Andor is unfolding in three-episode batches that will ultimately connect viewers to the events of the 2016 Star Wars prequel movie Rogue One. And episodes 4 through 6 of Andor Season 2, which dropped tonight on Disney+, are among the bleakest and most quietly devastating entries in the series so far.

The new arc unfolds like a fever dream in a surveillance state — a three-hour crescendo of secrets, suspicion, and personal unraveling in the shadow of the Empire. The action herein also doesn’t (always) rely on starships or blasters; it springs from whispered conversations behind closed doors, chess moves made in dimly lit rooms, and a lingering question that haunts every frame: How far can you go before you stop recognizing yourself?

What makes the newest episodes so bracing is that they spring from a lie — or, more precisely, a trap disguised as truth. Months earlier, ISB officer Dedra Meero told Director Orson Krennic, coolly and without remorse: “You need a radical insurgency you can count on.” She’s referring to Ghorman, a planet being quietly stripped of its resources by the Empire. In an audacious bit of stagecraft, Dedra suggests letting the rebels steal something in order to embolden them — before the Imperials then swoop in for the kill.

To Krennic: “You need Ghorman rebels you can depend on to do the wrong thing.”

So begins the Empire’s campaign of narrative warfare — setting an act of rebellion in motion in order to justify state-sanctioned violence. Dedra ropes her lover boy Syril Karn into the setting of the trap, Syril being everyone’s favorite Imperial office drone still clinging to the approval of a mother who weaponizes passive-aggressiveness like it’s a family heirloom. And both of them work under the auspices of the ice-veined Major Partagaz.

Syril is tasked with helping lure the Ghorman Front into taking the bait: Specifically, making sure they snatch an Imperial cargo shipment. Even while the plot unfolds, by the way, Andor doesn’t miss an opportunity to draw real-world parallels. To wit: Syril’s mother at one point rants about something she saw on an Imperial news broadcast so Fox News-coded that it buzzes like a broken holoscreen. Syril, with barely concealed contempt, scolds her for letting that sort of drivel rot her brain.

The Empire, it turns out, doesn’t just control the galaxy through force. It manufactures obedience by flooding the signal.

After tapping his comms and following his movements, the Ghorman rebels peg Syril as their man (which the Empire had planned on). And finally, they make contact — convinced he’s persuadable. “Many of us think the Emperor has no idea what’s being done on his behalf,” one of them tells Syril, carefully choosing his words. “We think the ISB is running a shadow government.”

Elsewhere, Cassian is furious. Luthen’s manipulations are pushing Bix too far. She’s still raw from the trauma of being imprisoned, tortured and almost raped by an officer in Episode 3. At one point, Bix tells Cassian, “If it’s a war … it’s not up to us what we save, what we lose. If I’m giving up everything, I want to win. We have to.” She’s a rebel as well as a survivor, refusing to be defined by what’s been taken from her.

But Cassian doesn’t want to lose her. He pushes back at Luthen. “We are not droids,” he insists. Luthen doesn’t flinch. “We are not who we were when we started.” And that’s the tragedy of it all. This rebellion isn’t being led by bright-eyed idealists. It’s being carried forward by broken people who’ve already had to burn pieces of themselves just to stay in the fight.

Even Kleya, always composed and severe, is given one of the most nail-biting sequences in Episode 6. As Imperial elites browse a gallery of artifacts, completely unaware that two of the rebellion’s most crucial operatives are standing right there, Kleya quietly works to extract a listening device from a relic. All the while, Krennic — back turned — drones on, mocking the galaxy’s freedom fighters. “Insurgencies have a long history of puffing up their failures,” he sneers. And yet he’s the fool in that moment.

He doesn’t realize that the room is full of more than trinkets. Two of the rebellion’s most dangerous saboteurs are also there, watching the nerve-shredding scene unfold.

The genius of Andor is that it’s not about the moment the Death Star eventually explodes — it’s about the moments no one notices. The meetings, the sacrifices, the compromises that stain your soul but move the needle forward. When Bix is told in Episode 4, “Everyone has their own rebellion,” it’s not just a platitude. It’s a reminder that in this world, resistance is personal. Everyone fights differently. And everyone loses something along the way.

By the end of Episode 6, the trap is set. The Ghorman Front’s partisans, believing in their own agency, walk directly into the Empire’s snare. The spark of revolution has been lit. Andor dares to ask: What happens when your resistance is part of their plan? When your uprising is the fuel they need to crack down harder?

Andor is no space opera. This is a political parable. A study in manipulation, in mourning, and in what it costs to claw back meaning in a world designed to erase it. There are no Jedi, and no chosen ones. Only people, exhausted and enraged, risking everything for a future they might never see.

The show continues to be the most emotionally honest, politically incisive thing Star Wars has ever done — a series that stares fascism in the face and refuses to blink. It strips away the myth and leaves only the moral weight of resistance. As Luthen says, what else is there?

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Andor Season 2, Episodes 4-6 review: ‘We’ll bring them down, or die trying’ originally appeared on BGR.com on Wed, 30 Apr 2025 at 08:52:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.