Spoilers: please read this piece only after you’ve seen “Narkina 5,” the eighth episode of the “Star Wars” limited series “Andor,” on Disney+. You’ll notice we’ve been doing weekly podcasts, ‘The Rogue Ones,’ instead of weekly recaps, but for episode eight, we couldn’t resist.
By now, you’ve hopefully seen “Narkina 5,” the eighth episode of the “Star Wars” limited series “Andor,” centering on the Rebel spy and Captain Cassian Andor (Diego Luna). A prequel to “Rogue One: A Star Wars Story,” set five years prior, “Andor” begins with the title character far, far from the heroic spy we see in ‘Rogue One’ (read our review here). In fact, he’s the polar opposite— a struggling grifter, scared, selfish, emotionally damaged, and basically having f*cked over everyone he knows, either emotionally or financially. “How does that shitbag become a leader? That’s the premise of our show,” creator/showrunner/writer Tony Gilroy (“Michael Clayton” the screenwriter of ‘Rogue One’) recently said candidly on an episode of The Q&A podcast (that’s a good interview, you should listen to it all).
The question that Gilroy poses seems really be coalescing by this episode named after the Imperial prison planet that Cassian Andor finds himself condemned to. Under hostile, inhuman, brutally fascistic conditions, coupled with everything that Andor has experienced so far, including the risky suicide mission they barely survived on the planet Aldhani, with plenty of casualties along the way, “Andor” is revealing itself to be a series about how its title character and many supporting characters around him became radicalized.
In episode eight—following a ridiculous six-year sentence for what should have been a misdemeanor, underscoring the severity of the Empire—enduring severe hardship and witnessing such cruelty, we essentially see Andor in the process of becoming radicalized by being exploited as slave-like wage labor for the Empire. He’s not quite there, but by the time “Andor” season one is done, you can bet the psychological needle has been moved. Eventually, as reluctant as he’s been, Andor will officially join Luthen’s rebel cell, which is part of the nascent beginnings of what eventually will become the Rebel Alliance. Mon Mothma (Genevieve O’Reilly) will be there too, soon realizing she has no choice but to join the fight as well, being radicalized in her own way throughout.
Three “guest stars” appear in this critical episode, though one might be just considered a cameo. The first is Andy Serkis, and no, he’s not appearing as the embryonic version of Snoke or anything that has to do with “Star Wars: The Last Jedi.” Playing a human character far from the Sith clone of the later ‘Star Wars’ trilogy (Serkis voiced Snoke), he plays Kino Loy, essentially a senior prison foreman on the prison planet of Narkina 5.
He knows the drill, he’s scared, and he’s rough. Still, he knows what to do to ensure his unit survives, given that the Empire incentivizes these prison workforce divisions by terrifying them with the threat of failure, fear always being a tool of the Imperial war machine. Their successes are collective, but their failures and the harsh punitive measures that follow are also collective. So Kino Loy is adamant about running a tip-top operation so his unit isn’t severely punished for falling into last place on the prison labor line they are doomed to. It’s rough, dehumanizing stuff, but again, it emphasizes the Empire’s “the cruelty is the point” modus operandis and the manner in which Andor will eventually become radicalized.
There’s also a fan-favorite character returning in Saw Gerrera (Forest Whitaker), the radical terrorist rebel seen in ‘Rogue One,’ briefly crossing paths with Cassian Andor and Jyn Erso (Felicity Jones). We’ve confirmed that Gerrera only appears in this one episode in season one (though who knows about season two). In many ways, his appearance is perhaps just meant to explain his absence throughout the rest of the series (and maybe season two, too?). Rebel dissident Luthen Rael (Stellan Skarsgård), the man with the master plan, is trying to get separatist cells and partisan rebel factions to join together and form what will eventually be the Rebel Alliance. But Rael’s brief scene with Gerrera illustrates that the fundamentalist rebel doesn’t play well with others, has deep contempt for many of the other fighting factions, and doesn’t want to play ball, even when offered money, arms, and other temptations. It’s certainly possible we’ll see Gerrera, but perhaps like his appearances on “Star Wars Rebels,” they are brief and mainly to highlight the fact that Gerrera is never invited into “the big tent” of the rebellion as Gilroy put it in my interview with the creator in late August.
There’s one more major cameo from ‘Rogue One’ in this episode, but it’s one that most have seemingly missed.
You obviously saw Serkis; he’s hard to miss. But look closer, and you’ll see a supporting character from “Rogue One: A Star Wars Story.” In these punishing prison conditions, in Serkis’ prison division is Ruescott Melshi (Duncan Pow), later known as Sergeant Melshi. He’s a Rebel Alliance commander and one that led Bravo Team to rescue Jyn Erso from the labor camp on the planet Wobani at the beginning of ‘Rogue One’ (see below). He later joined the Rogue One team, led the command team, and was killed during the Battle of Scarif. Melshi isn’t a major character in ‘Rogue One’ per se, but he’s clearly on the fringes of all the action involving all the major characters, and he’s an essential part of the Rebel Alliance fabric.
So yes, Gilroy is world-building and connecting his dots. Sure, there’s a very distinct possibility we’ll see ‘Star Wars’ characters like Senator Bail Organa (Jimmy Smits), Admiral Raddus, General Dodonna, and maybe even Galen Erso (Mads Mikkelsen) or Director Orson Krennic (Ben Mendelsohn) —they are after all part of the fabric of the ‘Rogue One’ story that connects to “Andor.” But with the appearance of Melshi, an obviously important character who never really had the room to get his due in the movie, perhaps we’ll see more deep-cut ‘Rogue One’ characters in season two, people like General Davits Draven, General Antoc Merrick, and similar commanders in leadership positions, or foot soldiers and spies like Jav Mefran, Lieutenant Sefia, and Tivik.
If you want a great breakdown of supporting foot soldiers that could pop up, I suggest you check out this informative YouTube video below, which also goes into deeper details about Melshi and some of the lieutenants around him.