Main cast: Diego Luna (Cassian Andor), Stellan Skarsgård (Luthen Rael), Denise Gough (Dedra Meero), Kyle Soller (Syril Karn), Adria Arjona (Bix Caleen), Elizabeth Dulau (Kleya Marki), Kathryn Hunter (Eedy Karn), Muhannad Bhaier (Wilmon), Anton Lesser (Major Lio Partagaz), Richard Dillane (Davo Sculdun), Richard Sammel (Carro Rylanz), and Forest Whitaker (Saw Gerrera)
Director: Ariel Kleiman
Well, what do you know—the rotting husk of Andor has finally developed a pulse. Things are happening!
Now, by “things” in I Have Friends Everywhere, I mean the usual Lucasfilm-brand political intrigue where the grand game of intergalactic chess is essentially two people shouting “Checkmate!” at each other in turn without ever actually moving a piece. Still, movement is movement.
Let’s start with Syril Karn, the galaxy’s most dedicated simp, who has officially gone from desperate bootlicker to rogue office wiretapper. Yes, my friends, he’s bugged his own HQ because apparently in the Star Wars universe, HR policies are as fictional as good aim from a Stormtrooper. Naturally, this leads to him getting audited and reprimanded, but it’s all part of the plan. Karn’s now cozied up to Carro Rylanz, Ghorman’s rebel leader and discount Mon Mothma if you ordered her from Wish.
Meanwhile, Luthen Rael is technically still on this show. Barely. His grand contribution this week is having placed spy bugs in Davo Sculdun’s house, only for Sculdun to get paranoid about the presence of spy bugs in his place and threatening to blow Rael’s voyeuristic fun. If this triggers a dramatic “Find the Bugs!” sequence, I’m convinced that it is because someone on the production team really wanted to justify the show’s 12-episode runtime.
Then we have Wilmon and Saw Gerrera. Disney, bless their tiny clueless hearts, has managed to stick the only two major black characters in a room together to shout ominous things in vaguely “gritty” accents while building a superweapon no one asked for and everyone that has watched that movie knows will fail. It’s like watching two crash-test dummies swap conspiracy theories in a junkyard. Culturally sensitive? Not in this lifetime.
Meanwhile, titular protagonist Cassian Andor continues his noble quest of stumbling into his own plotline. He figures out there are rebel moles in Ghorman, warns Rylanz, who then promptly ignores him because Andor is to this show what that one single raisin is to a cinnamon bun—barely noticeable and entirely irrelevant. Honestly, by this point they could rename the series Karn & Meero: Galactic Power Couple and no one would notice.
As for Bix, our ever-deteriorating damsel, she’s now a pill-popping trauma sponge whose sole narrative function is to give Andor a reason to sigh dramatically on cue. The poor girl probably deserves better, or at the very least, a subplot that doesn’t involve moody men and beige decor.
So yes, the plot has progressed from “nothing happens” to “slightly more nothing happens, but now with listening devices”. Baby steps, folks. Given Lucasfilm’s current track record, I’ll take it.
