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Andor’s Participation in One Tired Trope Is Uniquely Infuriating
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Andor’s Participation in One Tired Trope Is Uniquely Infuriating
Those final shots really pull the rug out from under the whole thing.
By Emmet Asher-Perrin
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Published on May 22, 2025
Image: Lucasfilm
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Image: Lucasfilm
Since its premiere in 2022, Andor is a series that critics and fans haven’t been able to stop talking about. The show’s combination of aesthetic grit, prestige TV-style scripting, immaculate design work, and tonal deviance from the source material had a certain stripe of viewer spellbound. And though the concept was sadly compressed from several seasons into only two, the show still managed to tell the (highly abridged) story it was intent upon. Andor is miraculous for the fact that it exists at all.
But it still managed to throw me right out of its narrative in its final frames with a choice that just about ruined the entire experience.
[Spoilers below, for the endings of Andor and Star Wars: Rebels]
The final moments of Andor feature Bix Caleen, Cassian’s erstwhile paramour, safe on Mina-Rau—the planet she’d once sheltered on with her fellow Ferrix refugees. She is seen carrying an infant child, assuring the babe that everything will be alright, despite the audience’s knowledge that the father of her child is flying toward his destiny. A destiny that ultimately leads to his death.
Cassian Andor has a child he doesn’t know exists, and Bix will raise that child in a galaxy (eventually) made safer by the man she loved. She will never see him again, and he will never meet this member of his family. It isn’t an uncommon story: in fact, it’s told over and over, with only very minor variation. Man heroically dead. Woman with child. Their baby: a physical representation of the future, but also of the love between two people, one of whom must go on in the other’s absence.
It’s the worst story. And I cannot believe that Andor chose to end on that thought, because it undercuts so much of the meaning in the story it already told us.
Let’s not forget: Star Wars is, has always been, and will always be a story about parents and their children. The original narrative of the Star Wars trilogy centers around the question of whether a son can save his father. The Expanded Universe novels and the sequel trilogy asked the reverse question of whether a father and mother could save their son. The sequel trilogy also asked (whether we wanted it to or not) if a granddaughter could fight her grandfather’s legacy within herself. The Mandalorian and The Bad Batch showed us how becoming a parent on accident could be the greatest thing that ever happened to you. Rogue One showed us a daughter who made up for her father’s greatest mistake. There are countless other examples I could list here—the point is, Star Wars is never lacking for stories that center on familial dynamics.
Andor already had many stories about parents and children built into it: Mon Mothma’s tension with her daughter; Cassian’s kidnapping and adoption by Maarva and Clem; Luthen’s sort-of adoption of Kleya. There’s Dedra’s lack of parentage (with Partagaz serving as a warped substitute), Syril’s nightmare relationship with his narcissist mother, Lonni’s fear for his newborn daughter—again, I could just keep going here. The series is not shortchanging its audience on parent-kid angst.
I have three points of pain in the decision to end the series on a shot of Cassian’s secret baby and they are: it undermines the emotional throughline that leads the series directly into Rogue One; it undercuts another Star Wars narrative that did the exact same plot better; and it’s a tired and thoughtless storytelling choice with tons of casual sexism and trite thoughts about life and legacy built into it. And I’m gonna get into every single one of these points because I’m on a roll and can’t stop.
The entire premise of Andor as a series was that it would end on a lead-up into the events of Rogue One. That was always the plan, one that had been touted for years by the creative team. And yet, showrunner Tony Gilroy claims that the choice to end the show on a shot of Bix and the baby was due to his desire to “end on hope”:
“It’s a very rigorous ride. We’ve done all kinds of things in this show all the way through, but it would be a crime against nature to not finish with something hopeful, because what else do we have?”
I find it telling that Bix’s survival itself, her creation of a home, was not deemed hopeful enough. It could have something to do with the fact that her character was thinner on the ground than drops of rainwater throughout the second season. But it sure does say something about how Gilroy thinks hope is communicated to his audience.
It’s more aggravating for the fact that leading directly into Rogue One makes the film the actual ending of this narrative thought. Which is ironic as all get-out because Rogue One does, in fact, end on hope—in concept (the Rebellion gaining traction in this fight), in action (Princess Leia receives the Death Star plans), and in the actual honest-to-the-Whills word (Leia is asked what she was given, and her uncanny computer-generated visage says “…hope”).
The story already ended on hope nine years ago when the movie came out! We saw the hope! The hope is both implicit and explicit! Why do we need extra hope??
Oh, is it because we’re supposed to be sad because we know Cassian is about to die? …Weird. For some reason, I thought that was the entire point of making this show.
I had plenty of quibbles with Rogue One when it first debuted, but one thing that I appreciated without reservation was its choice to show how many good people die for their causes. Because it’s a real cost to fighting fascism, and it’s not something that Star Wars spends a lot of time examining. The series is, by its conceptual nature, a more upbeat sandbox to play in. Star Wars is a place where untold atrocities are committed every second, but we’re all mostly in it for neurotic robots, cannibal teddy bears, gorgeous space dogfights, laser swords, and bad jokes. Rogue One does end on hope, but the hope is won with sacrifice, and the sacrifice isn’t made by tertiary characters or a villain with a change of heart—it’s made by every single central character of the film.
The point of watching Andor was learning how its eponymous character got to a place where he was willing to make that sacrifice. Hope wasn’t what was needed here; I tuned in to feel that loss all over again. And that rug got pulled so hard, I heard a slapstick whistle in my ears.
Which brings me to the other Star Wars story that Andor (unknowingly or not) is ripping off with this choice: its animated contemporary, Rebels. Set in roughly the same part of the timeline, Rebels followed the crew of the Ghost as they slowly folded their freedom fighting activities into the official Rebellion. At the head of this crew was pilot Hera Syndulla and her former-Jedi partner, Kanan Jarrus. The duo were effectively mom and dad to a crew of scrappy misfits (and they were some of the best parents on Star Wars record), and the show was never shy about the fact that they adored each other. The only trouble was that Hera was devoted to the Rebellion’s work, while Kanan often wished they could settle down and live their lives.
Screenshot: Lucasfilm
While Kanan grudgingly came around to Hera’s choices for their crew, the two did acknowledge that they were moving toward a joint future. And then, of course, Kanan died on a mission rescuing Hera. The fanbase grieved, and the show sped toward its inevitable finale. When the series ended and showed us where each character wound up in the coming years, a heartwarming coda was revealed: Hera and Kanan had a son named Jacen.
You know why that’s moving, despite the annoying trope-ness of it all? Because there was indication beforehand that having a family was something that both of these characters wanted together. They were already parenting two emotionally distraught teens (and sometimes Zeb) before any of this happened. They enjoyed being a team—this kind of team specifically. And it’s heartbreaking that Hera doesn’t get to have that life with Kanan, but the audience knows she would likely rather have a piece of that future than none of it at all.
That’s hopeful.
And that’s all well and good, but I still cannot stand when writers make this narrative choice. It’s necessarily predicated on the woman being left behind—and yet the reveal still treated like a fun little surprise. Because a woman can be pregnant, but it usually takes a while to find out, and sometimes no one will know but her! Gotcha! Story kapow!
Stop using womb mechanics as a way of planting big “reveals” in your story. It’s insulting, demeaning, and also not as inspiring as the writers seem to think it is. It reduces one of the most complex aspects of human existence into a cutesy footnote.
Here’s another thought: If you’re going down that road, you should be spending a considerable swath of your narrative digging into what that feels like—to be a woman who has suddenly realized that she’s going to bear her partner’s child in his absence. To be subjected to all the fear and sorrow and unimaginable pain and loneliness that you would go through in having to carry, give birth to, and raise that child on your own. Because if you don’t dig into that, what you’re essentially saying is, this child only exists for the sake of their father. Their mom doesn’t really come into it.
Which is cowardly in the extreme, by the way. But I guess bringing up the thought that raising a child alone isn’t all sunshine and daisies isn’t very uplifting, is it?
Again, I keep getting stuck on the idea that Gilroy thought the existence of a child was more hopeful. The use of that word specifically. Because it speaks to this belief that children are a piece of their parents—that it’s hopeful because this means a part of Cassian lives on, that his legacy continues.
Of course, a person’s child contains a literal piece of their genetics. But that child is their own autonomous being—they are not a convenient 50% slice of each parent. Even the ways a child might remind you of their genetic family are often a projection, or the result of raising that child within the confines of the same family. And I’m not saying this to suggest that people shouldn’t feel like their children are a part of them, only to point out that suggesting a person “lives on” through their children is in many ways a disservice, particularly if that child never knows said parent.
All of which is to say that Cassian Andor is not living on through that child—Cassian Andor is dead.
Can everyone actually sit with for a while? Because it’s a fact that this little coda is meant to conveniently push aside. The entire series builds on the knowledge of an inexorable end, then literally bars its viewers from feeling any of it.
All of Cassian’s potential, his purpose, his uniqueness, his history, has been lost and cannot be regained. I know that death is the most difficult aspect of existence to reckon with, but it feels like such a mockery to suggest that this can all be ameliorated with the presence of a brand new life. Bix doesn’t have Cassian because she had this child—Cassian is gone. And that child might bring solace to her down the years, but that’s also a heavy burden to place on a kid.
Screenshot: Lucasfilm
What’s more, it’s just the latest example in a long list. At least Morgan Stark got to spend time with Tony. (But Pepper had to say goodbye to him a dozen different ways, each more horrific than the last.) Zoe Washburn got that piece of Wash whether she wanted it or not. (She didn’t, by the way, at least not when they discussed it—she thought their lives were too chaotic for that.) Elizabeth Swann finally got the pirate queen life of her dreams… only to wind up with a young kid, waiting for her Davy Jones’d husband on a random beach for their five-year hookup in the tag scene. (Fans like to believe that she stayed a pirate queen even so, but that clearly wasn’t what the writers were aiming for.) Beverly Crusher raised Picard’s son on the down-low for decades, and all the work she put in alone was incidental by the time they appeared back in Jean-Luc’s life. (Only his father’s love had any meaning to him when the Borg queen assimilated Jack, despite the fact that they’d only hung out, like, twice.)
Women are not vessels for the legacies of dead men. It’s not hopeful to suggest that someone’s death is made right or bearable by the presence of progeny. There is nothing wrong with sitting in the knowledge of death and learning how to welcome it—in fact, it’s something that every person needs to learn how to bear.
I guess this is a long-winded way of saying that whenever I rewatch Andor, I’ll be skipping that final scene. But it sounds petty to say so, and my desire in that is anything but petty. I had hoped (there’s that word again) that the creative team involved with this show understood the importance of letting its audience wrestle with difficult ideas. But in the end, this show turned out to be more afraid of its own premise than Return of the Jedi—a story where a father dies, and his children’s survival does nothing to erase the tragedy of that simple truth.[end-mark]
The post <i>Andor</i>’s Participation in One Tired Trope Is Uniquely Infuriating appeared first on Reactor.
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