TV Recap / Review - Chaos Erupts On Ghorman in "Andor: A Star Wars Story" Season 2, Episode 8 - "Who Are You?"

Today saw the release of the third arc’s worth of episodes in Lucasfilm’s live-action Disney+ series Andor: A Star Wars Story, and below are my recap and thoughts on the eighth installment.

Andor season 2, episode 8– entitled “Who Are You?"-- begins on Ghorman, where Cassian Andor (Diego Luna) is prepping his rifle for the assassination of Dedra Meero (Denise Gough) in his hotel room. Outside in the plaza, Imperial troops set up barricades as Captain Kaido (Jonjo O’Neill) oversees the operation to take further control of the planet. Cassian communicates with Wilmon (Muhannad Bhaier) at the Ghorman Front headquarters about what’s going on: “They’re building a fortress," says Cassian. Next we see Dedra calling Major Partagaz (Anton Lesser) on Coruscant, and he tells her, “We’re done with local rumors. The only story that matters is local aggression. We need what’s in the ground. The Empire has been patient long enough." We see the Ghorman Front preparing for a fight, gathering their weapons as outside in the Palmo plaza reporters spread propaganda about the insurgency. Then we cut back to Coruscant, where Syril Karn’s mother Eedy (Kathryn Hunter) watches the HoloNet news reports.

At Syril’s (Kyle Soller) apartment on Ghorman, he is ordered to report immediately to the ISB building. We see more barricades being installed in the plaza as Rylanz (Richard Sammel) is approached by his daughter Enza (Alais Lawson) and tells her she could have stopped this by encouraging the Front to back down. Protestors from the Front begin marching on the plaza as Cassian finishes setting up his weapon in his hotel. “We are the Ghor! The galaxy is watching!" shout the protestors as Syril makes his way toward his office. Rylanz approaches him shouting and Syril backs him into a wall. “You’ve destroyed us," Rylanz tells Syril. “People know what you’re doing. There’s mining equipment being dropped all over the planet." “It’s a rumor!" shouts back Syril. “What kind of a being are you?" Rylanz asks Syril, who shoves him to the ground and walks away in stunned silence.

At ISB headquarters, Captain Kaido talks to Dedra about the chain of command: “I’m the trigger supervisor. You’re the finger. Make sure you’re available." In the hotel lobby, Cassian tells the clerk that he’s not sure whether he’ll be back. “Not to worry; you were never here. Didn’t log you in," replies the clerk. “Rebellions are built on hope," he also says, foreshadowing the same line that Jyn Erso will say in Rogue One: A Star Wars Story later on in the timeline. Kaido watches out over the plaza as the protest grows and Cassian surveys his surroundings as well. Cassian calls in to Wilmon, who is among the protestors, and then Cassian spots Dedra on the ISB balcony overlooking the plaza. Syril ducks as a TIE fighter zooms overhead and then fights his way through into the ISB lobby, pausing to observe the HoloNet reporters as they continue to spread pro-Imperial propaganda.

After entering the ISB building, Grymish (Kurt Egyiawan) puts Syril into a room filled with KX-series security droids, and he looks extremely uneasy about his current situation as one of the droids stares him down. The “We are the Ghor!" chant continues outside as Kaido orders his troops to close all the exits. Cassian observes as stormtroopers bring civilians further into the center of the plaza and the gates are closed. Kaido orders his subordinate to march his troops out into the crowd, though he is reluctant to do so. Among the protestors, Lezine (Thierry Godard) begins to sing what I can only assume is the Ghorman anthem, and everyone else begins to join him passionately, raising their fists in the air. Syril looks shaken as he leaves the droid room and walks upstairs to his office, while outside the entire crowd sings loudly and defiantly. Inside the ISB office, Syril confronts Dedra about how long she has known about the Empire’s true plans: “You are going to tell me what the mining ships are doing here," he demands, grabbing her by the throat. “You tell me it’s a rumor and I will throw you out that window. What have we been doing here?"

Dedra tells Syril about the mineral the Empire needs from below the Ghorman surface. “How long have you known this?" he asks. “They’ve been planning it for years," she says. “They’re doing it no matter what." But Syril is clearly not happy: “Good luck, Dedra," he says, walking away and leaving her shocked. Outside, Imperial riot-control troops enter the crowd, and we see Syril do the same as Wilmon watches. Inside Dedra orders Grymish to find Syril, but it’s too late as he has already left and Partagaz has called. Outside, we watch as Syril wanders through the crowd in a daze and Cassian communicates with Wilmon. A skirmish begins to break out between the protestors and the troops, the latter of which have stun batons at the ready. Inside the ISB, Dedra hesitantly gives the order to proceed, and Kaido orders one of his snipers to fire into the crowd. Another TIE screeches overhead as Syril struggles to make his way through the crowd.

The sniper actually fires at one of the Imperial troops, and an officer orders his men to open fire on the protestors. All hell breaks loose and at first Syril looks like he doesn’t know how to respond as blaster shots fire every which way from both the insurgents and the stormtroopers. But then he spots Cassian crouched in an archway just as he’s about to shoot Dedra on the balcony and, recognizing the man who started him on this tragic journey, Karn tackles Andor through the front window of the spider-themed restaurant. Grymish tells Dedra that he spotted Syril out in the chaos, and then we see the KX-series droids set loose on the riot, immediately demonstrating their strength by kicking one of the barricades into some of the protestors and sending Enza flying through the air to her death. Inside the hotel lobby, the clerk that helped Cassian earlier tosses an explosive toward some Imperial troops, while inside the restaurant Syril and Cassian have a knock-down, drag-out fight, shattering just about everything in sight in the process.

Another explosion goes off and breaks more windows, sending these two combatants to the ground. Cassian scrambles behind a counter in the chaos while Syril grabs for a discarded blaster rifle and raises it at his opponent, who asks him, “Who are you?" Syril doesn’t know how to respond, and in his hesitation he is shot in the head by Rylanz, who appears from off-camera. Then Wilmon shows up and drags Cassian out of the restaurant while he is trying to remember how he recognizes Syril. Cassian and Wilmon make their way through the city streets when the KX droids catch up to them. They fight back, but it seems almost impossible and suddenly one of the other insurgents drives a hovertruck into the droid that’s about to kill them. “You killed it," Wilmon says, as Cassian recognizes his savior as Samm (Abraham Wapler). Wilmon tells Cassian to leave as he is going back for his new girlfriend, and the two friends hug goodbye with another Ferrix farewell. But before he leaves, Cassian asks for one last favor: to help him load the dead KX droid into the flatbed of the truck.

We get a closeup on Cassian’s face as he drives away and we hear a broadcast from the Ghorman Front about the massacre as insurgents comfort each other in the streets and Rylanz lay dying in an alcove. “Is there no one who can help us?" Dreena (Ella Pellegrini) transmits as her boyfriend Wilmon returns to the headquarters. We cut to a wide shot of TIE fighters roaring over Palmo, and then back to the ISB, where Dedra recovers from the incident and her confrontation with Syril, loosening her collar and trying to steady her hand as she cries. Next we see a HoloNet broadcast about the insurrection as Eedy Karn (Kathryn Hunter) watches with two of her friends, crying for the fate of her son.

So this is the big “Ghorman Massacre" episode that everything has been building toward this season, and I would say it definitely lived up to my expectations based on what had come before. The most impactful moments here belong to Kyle Soller and Denise Gough as their respective characters Syril Karn and Dedra Meero both realize they’re in over their heads and that they weren’t prepared for the reality of the positions they’ve gotten themselves into. Cassian’s line “Who are you?" works on several levels, in that it’s devastating for Syril to realize that the quarry he’s been seeking for years doesn’t even remember who he is. But also Syril doesn’t know who he is himself at that moment, having just come from his violent breakup with Dedra and, theoretically, the Imperial regime. It’s a captivating turn and a fitting end for one of the series most despicable villains (or was he, in the end?), but the question remains what becomes of Dedra from this point.

The other thing I really want to talk about coming out of this episode is Cassian’s acquisition of the KX-series droid that will become K-2SO from Rogue One, but I plan to write a separate op-ed about that and why it does bug me a bit that Tony Gilroy and the Lucasfilm Story Group opted to overwrite an existing part of the current canon, so stay tuned for that coming very soon. But overall it’s pretty undeniable that this was an excellent, impressively crafted episode of television and that it likely sets in motion the motivation for what we’ll see in the remaining four chapters of Andor.

The first nine episodes of Andor: A Star Wars Story season 2 are now available to stream, exclusively via Disney+.