Editor’s note: The below recap.contains spoilers for Andor Season 2 Episode 10.
Andor has officially reached its final arc — and it’s perhaps the most devastating out of the batch. The weight of Rogue One has been present from the premiere, but the heaviness of the approaching tragedy is much more apparent. The sense of dread is almost palpable as the Time Grappler ushers in another jump forward to BBY 1. While Cassian Andor (Diego Luna) may have a date with destiny, Andor’s titular character is entirely absent in Episode 10. Penned by Tom Bissell and skillfully directed by Alonso Ruizpalacios, the episode’s focus revolves almost entirely on one of the series’ best characters: Kleya Marki (Elizabeth Dulau).
The episode opens early in the morning, with a pajama-clad Kleya ambling into the backroom of the gallery where one of the comms is going off. This is the “big bell,” as Luthen (Stellan Skarsgård) later describes it, and they both respond accordingly. Kleya arms herself with one of the blasters from the arsenal, while Luthen dons his wig and prepares to meet with Lonni Jung (Robert Emms). Luthen warns Kleya to keep her distance during the meeting, and she’s well aware of just how dangerous this meeting is. She cautions him to leave if anything feels off, and the two exchange an emotionally-charged look that reveals just how risky things have become for them in the intervening year.
Lonni seems genuinely surprised that Luthen actually came to meet him in the plaza. After all, they’ve been rendezvousing on the lower levels of the city for years. But this is a dire situation that requires immediate attention. Lonni reveals that Dedra Meero (Denise Gough) had contacted a friend of his in Tactical last night about putting together an operation on Coruscant, and he strongly believes she’s coming after Luthen. Luthen seems skeptical of the information, but Lonni insists that his friend told him because Dedra is always bending the rules, and he wanted his advice about whether he should comply. But that isn’t everything Lonni has for Luthen: He’s been burned, and he is confident that the Empire will be on to him soon. He had to make a decision, and he did. But, before he’s willing to tell Luthen about what he knows, he wants assurance that he, his wife, and his daughter will be given safe passage off Coruscant.
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Luthen presses him for more information, and Lonni admits that for the past year, he has had full access to Dedra’s code cert. He had a two-hour window to access her private storage, and he took it and discovered something critical. He’s confident that he hasn’t been followed because if they knew what he knew, they wouldn’t have let him out of the building. Once they know, they will come after them with everything they have. Lonni reveals what audiences have known from the very start — the Emperor’s energy program is a lie. All of it is a lie. The rebellion on Ghorman was a cover to strip mine for a mineral; and the Empire isn’t really looking for Partisans on Jedha, they need kyber crystals. Lonni references the increasing crackdowns, the Public Order, the labor camps, and lastly, Scarif. He tells Luthen that Orson Krennic (Ben Mendelsohn) has been building a “secret weapon” for over a decade that even Colonel Yularen only learned about a month ago. In exchange for even more information, Luthen promises to take Lonni and his family to Yavin, but it isn’t a promise he intends to uphold.
As Luthen leaves the plaza to rendezvous with Kleya, it’s revealed that Lonni has been shot dead where he sat. His body is discovered by a passerby walking an adorable loth cat named Pix. Luthen seems largely unfazed by what he just did to one of his long-term informants, as well as one of the most integral pieces of numerous operations throughout the course of Andor. Instead, he’s focused on relaying the information to Kleya. She tries to memorize everything he’s told her: Ghorman, Scarif, Kyber, Krennic, Erso. (Luthen underscores the fact that it’s Engineer Galen Erso.)
Luthen asks Kleya if she knows where to go, and she starts to panic; it’s the first time we’ve genuinely seen her crack. But Luthen tells her this isn’t something to argue about. She’ll go, and he’ll stay behind to do the burn, and he means that literally. While she heads to the rundown safehouse, which no longer shows the evidence of the love that Cassian and Bix (Adria Arjona) once filled it with, Luthen heads to the gallery to burn all the evidence of the Rebellion. When the doorbell chimes, Luthen realizes that Lonni was right about everything. He greets Dedra Meero personally, and they play the game they’ve both perfected over the years. She marvels at how peaceful the gallery is, commenting on the fact that she always thought about coming in, and he entertains her questions about the provenance of the collection.
Dedra Meero’s Victory Is Short-Lived in ‘Andor’ Season 2 Episode 10

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Luthen then shows Dedra a Nautolan bleeder (a ceremonial knife purported to be sixty centuries old), and she feigns interest. She’s far more interested in talking to him about consigning her own ancient artifact: an Imperial starpath unit, the very same one from Season 1 — and just like that, all pretense is dropped. Dedra tells Luthen that she has dreamt of this very day, and she can’t believe that all along, he was there on Coruscant, enjoying the safety of the Empire. They mince words over their individual opinions on freedom, with Dedra condemning his brand of freedom as chaos. Luthen isn’t the least bit phased when she informs him that the building is surrounded and that, soon enough, he’ll be telling her everything he knows. Instead, he proudly declares: “You’re too late. The Rebellion isn’t there anymore, it’s flown away: it’s everywhere. There’s a whole galaxy out there waiting to disgust you.” Dedra’s attention is pulled toward the backroom where she spots the console burning, and when she looks back, Luthen has turned his back to her. She orders him to turn around, threatening to stun him if he doesn’t, but it’s too late. He stabs himself with the Nautolan bleeder in an act not dissimilar to harakiri, hearkening back to Star Wars’ Japanese influences.
Dedra panics, calling for back-up and demanding that she wants Luthen to be kept alive. Things move quickly after this point. Kleya watches from the gathering crowd outside the shop as he’s brought out on a stretcher and loaded up onto the ISB shuttle. The ISB descends upon the gallery, gathering evidence, prying through Luthen’s personal armory and effects, and trying to recover the damaged evidence in the back room. It’s very CSI: Coruscant — which would make a great pitch for another series.
Back at the ISB, Supervisor Heert (Jacob James Beswick) arrives for a meeting, which Supervisor Lagret (Michael Jenn) informs him has been canceled. At first, he believes it is because of Jung’s murder, but he quickly learns from Major Partagaz (Anton Lesser) that it’s actually because Dedra Meero has orchestrated an unsanctioned raid that went badly. Partagaz seems skeptical about her belief that she has finally found Axis, and artfully nudges Heert in the direction of being upset with her for involving herself in his assignment, noting that she has been warned about stepping over boundaries. This results in Dedra’s victory lap being unceremoniously brought to an end.
At the hospital, Dedra harasses the nurses on the floor where Luthen is being treated. She demands they move all the patients off the floor to ensure that no one outside the ISB can get close to Luthen. Dedra attempts to brag about finding Axis when Heert shows up at the hospital, but he isn’t very amused that she waited until his day off to launch the operation, even if she was worried about leaks. Heert informs Dedra that he brought an ISB Marshal because Major Partagaz has authorized him to arrest Dedra for her actions. She hems and haws, but eventually goes quietly, feeling confident that she was entirely within her rights.
We Learn How Kleya and Luthen Met in ‘Andor’ Season 2 Episode 10

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At the safehouse, Kleya readies for a day she knew might eventually arrive. Andor has made it quite clear that she and Luthen have prepared for everything in the name of protecting the Rebellion. They haven’t shied away from killing off loose links or even trusted allies in the name of protecting what really matters. From the moment that Kleya starts looking back on her relationship with Luthen, it becomes clear that she has to kill him. Each flashback pairs perfectly with what she’s doing in the present, from gathering her stashed belongings in the safehouse to pretending to be an injured patient to stealing scrubs from the locker room.
The first flashback drops us right in the middle of a deadly firefight. Blasterfire and bombs fill the air outside of a ship, as soldiers relay scattered information via a scratchy radio playing inside the vessel. The soldiers sound almost gleeful as they mock the runners trying to escape up nearby hills, giving each other orders to kill anything that moves. A young Kleya (April V Woods) watches Luthen from where she’s stowed away within the ship. He’s begging for the fighting to stop, repeating, “Make it stop. Make it stop.” over and over again, including in his native tongue, “Rush ne luts. Rush ne luts.” He looks haunted by what he has seen — and undoubtedly done — and eventually shuts off the radio, but it doesn’t shut it all out.
In the distance, a soldier calls out for his sergeant. The shouts grow nearer and nearer until he’s on the ship talking directly to Luthen. Unsurprisingly, Luthen Rael wasn’t always Luthen Rael. In another life, he was Sergeant Lear. The soldier talks about clearing out another basement and burning down another street, and Luthen puts him off, feigning like he was fixing his blaster. After the soldier departs, Luthen starts to walk away from where Kleya is hiding, but then he hears her gasp. He opens the grate and finds her, dirty and terrified. He warns her to keep quiet as his Captain comes looking for him on the ship, and he replaces the grate to keep her safely hidden away. Luthen keeps up the lie about his converter malfunctioning when he’s pressed about why he isn’t out in the streets helping them destroy the settlement. As soon as the Captain is off the ship, he returns to Kleya, offering his hand, which she quickly takes hold of.

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“There’s some place he needs to be.”

Kleya’s next memory seems to be a few months after their first meeting. Luthen and Kleya arrive at a settlement deep in the forest, looking to trade. Luthen cooks up some tall tale about acquiring the “pure kilo” from his wife. When the trader questions if his wife knows he’s bartering it away, Kleya sweeps in with a new layer to their cover story: the wife is dead. Tinch (Juliet Cowan) is a tough sell and an expert haggler. Luthen notes that what he’s trading should be worth 40, but he’s willing to take 20 for it. Tinch counters with an offer of 7, and no room for proper negotiation. Kleya tells her they’ll walk, and the trader teases her with an offer to go higher if she gives her a smile. She also asks if Kleya is Luthen’s daughter, which he confirms. Kleya tells Tinch they got an offer for 15 from Sooli by the gate, who Tinch characterizes as a “thief” in an effort to dismiss her counter, but Kleya drives a hard bargain — a skill she carried into adulthood.
With a little negotiation, Kleya manages to get an offer of 18 out of Tinch, with a glib remark about a smile not being included in the price. It’s a great exchange that sheds new light on the dynamic we already sort of understood. Luthen might be determined, but Kleya is on another level. As they walk away from a satisfactory trade, Kleya asks if she’s his daughter now. There’s a flicker of genuine emotion there, but Luthen’s response forces her to tamp it down and never let it show again. He tells her that she’s his daughter only when it’s useful. All that matters is that they’re Luthen and Kleya now.
In another flashback, Kleya recalls a time when they were in a walled village trying to sell off a Devaronian victory necklace. They hear a woman cry out and watch as the Empire’s goons march a row of prisoners through the town. The vendor, Grenwig (Jem Wall), explains that a trooper recently “bit the bolt,” and the Empire “keeps finding more people who did it.” Andor certainly hasn’t shied away from reminding audiences how authoritarian regimes will use any excuse to exact some friendly neighborhood government overreach to snatch people off the streets. Kleya is drawn to the scene playing, particularly because she spots a boy around her age (Andre Tamakloe) among those in the chain gang.
Luthen warns her to leave it, but she doesn’t want to. He tells her she’s on her own and leaves her to follow the procession down to the wall, where they execute the alleged criminals by way of firing squad. Kleya’s gaze is unwavering as she witnesses the brutality of the Empire. When Kleya catches up with Luthen, she’s fired up. She’s angry that he just walked away, and she wants to know: “When do we start fighting?” Kleya doesn’t get the answer she wants. Luthen warns her that they have to wait, advising her to take her hatred, bank it, and hide it, and wait until she knows how to use it.
The last of Kleya’s memories appears to be on Naboo — or at least a planet that looks similar to Naboo’s architectural and cultural aesthetics. Kleya and Luthen sit at a busy café, watching stormtroopers and their transports on a bridge across the lake. Luthen is putting her through her paces, testing her to see if she’s capable of doing what must be done for their personal rebellion. He tells her to look around and pay attention as, “Life shows us what we stand to lose.” She seems more irate that he isn’t taking immediate action, and accuses him of being afraid. He admonishes that notion, telling her instead that the only thing he’s afraid of is what he’s doing to her. A clear allusion to the fact that he is, essentially, raising up a young girl to be the perfect tool for the still-growing Rebellion. He presents her with the detonator, and she waffles a bit about taking it, but once she does, he stops her. Luthen sets off the bomb, and talks her through how to behave in the aftermath: don’t watch, look surprised, walk away.
Luthen Rael Gives Everything to the Rebellion in ‘Andor’ Season 2 Episode 10

Kleya’s memories bleed into the present, informing every one of her choices. After stealing scrubs, she slowly works her way through the hospital. She uses a patient to make her way to the 17th floor, which is as far as the officers will let her go. She puts on the perfect act of being a frustrated nurse who isn’t able to tend to her patient’s needs, and plots a new course up to the 19th floor. Even in the midst of the high-stakes operation, Andor still manages to embed a little humor into the episode. If you watch with your subtitles on, you’ll catch an amusing instance of [Granny scatting] after Kleya leaves her elderly decoy waiting in a random room.
Once Kleya makes her way to the 19th floor (after killing a stormtrooper along the way), she stakes out the wing where Luthen is being kept, identifying where all the officers and stormtroopers are posted up. In order to create a distraction, Kleya plants a handful of bombs throughout the hospital, and this time, she’s the one who sets off the detonator. As the explosions rock the hospital, most of the stormtroopers and officers rush toward the commotion, and pay Kleya very little mind as she rushes toward Luthen’s room. Those who do pay her mind are quickly dispatched with a well-aimed blasterbolt.
Luthen has been such a larger-than-life character from the start, and it’s sobering to see him reduced to a comatose patient lying in the middle of a stark white room. He’s a colorful character who lights up every room he enters, but all of that color and life have been drained from him in the name of the greater good. Andor loves a poetic tragedy, and Luthen’s end is a perfectly executed one. The fact that one of the last things he saw was the starpath unit — the very artifact that led him to cross paths with Cassian Andor — and that it was essentially his undoing is a full-circle moment. The tragedy is even greater when you consider his history with Kleya. He was responsible for the loss of her home and her people, and in return, he raised her, shaping her into a revolutionary even more passionate and clever than he was. In the end, she is ultimately the one who has to make his final sacrifice for him. A single tear tracks down Kleya’s cheek as she takes Luthen off life support and waits until he flatlines. It’s a somber beginning to Andor’s final arc, and a harbinger of heartbreak yet to come.
The entirety of Andor is streaming now on Disney+.

Andor

Andor Season 2 Episode 10 culminates in a devastating end for one of the show’s greatest characters.

Release Date

2022 – 2025-00-00

Network

Disney+

Showrunner

Tony Gilroy

Pros & Cons

Kleya has been one of the most underrated characters in Andor’s ensemble, and it’s fitting that the final arc gives her a well-deserved chance to shine.
Luthen Rael’s ending is the perfect culmination of his entire arc, and the end point of his illuminating speech in Season 1.
The way Andor showcases the beginnings of Luthen and Kleya’s relationship is perfectly handled for a series forced to speed-run its ending.