Andor Might Show A Key Rebellion Moment In Season 2
But without certain characters, it may be impossible.
From the very beginning, Star Wars has been filling in the blanks. The original trilogy established a baseline, but when the opening crawl of Empire Strikes Back revealed the story was “Episode V”, it was clear we were joining this story already in progress. The prequel trilogy fleshed out the Clone Wars and the rise of the Empire, things that were only referenced in the previous movies, and the sequel trilogy did the same on the other end of the timeline.
But in between, Star Wars has found little pockets to flesh out. Rogue One established what happened immediately before A New Hope, and then Andor Season 1 explored Rogue One hero Cassian Andor’s humble origins.
Now, Andor Season 2 is working in a relatively narrow window of the timeline: the four years between Season 1 and Rogue One. But is this painting the story into a corner? A fan theory may have just proven what will inevitably happen.
Earlier this week, Star Wars released the trailer for Andor Season 2. As the series will cover the four years leading up to Rogue One, it’s no surprise that it’s riddled with acts of guerrilla warfare, from explosions to invasions. Unlike Season 1, Season 2’s revolutionary moments are much larger, and we see plenty of scenes of crowds and protests, including one of Empire officers in riot gear trying to control the crowd.
For die-hard Star Wars fans, this brings to mind a major moment in the early days of the Rebellion: the Ghorman Massacre, a tragedy that essentially served as the first shots of what became an all-out war.
Ghorman has been mentioned in Andor Season 1, as well as other works like Rebels. But outside of canon, we have details of just what happened on the planet. In 18 BBY (18 years before the events of Rogue One and A New Hope), citizens of the planet Ghorman were peacefully protesting the Empire’s taxation. Captain Tarkin (yet to be promoted to Moff) was sent to the planet to keep the protesters in check, but the crowd flooded the landing pad. Tarkin landed his ship anyway, murdering many Ghormans.
Parts of the Andor Season 2 trailer clearly show crowd control.
In canon, this attack was shifted to 2 BBY — right when Andor Season 2 is set — and ties into the other half of Andor’s story: Mon Mothma. It’s this attack that leads the Senator to call out Palpatine outright as the person responsible for the attack, lending credence to the Rebellion and making her a number of enemies. Could this be the event that brings Andor and Mothma together at last?
It’s an exciting theory, but there’s one major issue: a depiction of such a major event like this wouldn’t make sense without the appearance of the power players of the time. It’s hard to imagine showing the Ghorman Massacre without Tarkin, and it’s hard to imagine showing a response without Leia Organa — or, at the very least, her father Bail.
Just as The Mandalorian couldn’t show Grogu becoming a brand-new Jedi without Luke appearing, these cameos feel like necessities to tell the story of the birth of the Rebellion. Fans are already speculating about all the events that could be shown, but anything major needs to have major consequences.
