TV Recap / Review - Cassian and Bix Settle Into a Safe House in "Andor: A Star Wars Story" Season 2, Episode 4 - "Ever Been to Ghorman?"

This evening saw the debut of the second arc of episodes in season 2 of Lucasfilm’s live action Disney+ series Andor: A Star Wars Story, and below are my recap and thoughts on the fourth installment.

Andor season 2, episode 4– entitled “Ever Been to Ghorman?"-- begins one year later from the previous arc, in “BBY 3" (three years prior to the Battle of Yavin). Bix Caleen (Adria Arjona) is still having nightmares about her torture at the hands of Dr. Gorst. She “awakens" and grabs her blaster, walking out through a hallway into a living area, where Gorst (Joshua James) is torturing another captive. “Wasn’t much of a soldier, was he?" Gorst asks. “I forgot to ask his name. Might be a bit late now." As Bix prepares to fire her blaster at Gorst, she is awakened by Cassian Andor (Diego Luna), who tries to talk with her about her nightmares. “It’s been a while now." Bix says the nightmares come when she relaxes, and when the camera zooms out we begin to understand that they’re living in a safe house on Coruscant. Then we cut to the planet Ghorman and an apartment occupied by Syril Karn (Kyle Soller), who is getting ready for a day at work, but also keeping an eye on someone clearly surveilling him through his bathroom window.

As he leaves for work, Syril attaches a wire to the bottom of his door so he’ll know if someone has entered while he’s away. Then he walks through the plaza of Palmo, and we begin to hear a conversation he’s having with his mother Eedy Karn (Kathryn Hunter) via holo-call. Eedy tells her son that his Uncle Harlo thinks he’s deluded for having accepted the transfer to Ghorman as a promotion within the Imperial Bureau of Standards. Eedy complains to Syril about him having left Coruscant, and then she gives her opinion on the Ghorman people, to which Syril responds that she is watching too much Imperial news filled with anti-Ghormanism. “This place is hardly a threat to the Empire," says Syril, ending the call with his mother. Then we see that Ghorman freedom fighters have been monitoring Syril’s call to Coruscant, and they speak in their own language with captions translating the dialogue for us.

Back on Coruscant, Cassian and Bix go shopping but Cassian is paranoid about being discovered as a rebel agent. “The mission is dinner. I think we can handle it," assures Bix. They enter a market and buy some melons and hot peppers, though Cassian still looks wary about being out in public. On Ghorman, Syril leaves work and walks back through the plaza past a group of protestors. A local peddler attempts to sell him a spider sculpture, telling him there’s information inside about a meeting that he should attend. Back on Coruscant, Cassian cooks while Bix cleans their equipment and weapons. They talk about their continued use of the safe house and whether Cassian should talk to Luthen Rael about “what happened on the mission [with] the soldier." It’s clear that Bix regrets having killed someone during their most recent task– “I can’t stop seeing his face." “It fades," responds Cassian. “We’re in a war. People die. He was a soldier. He was an Imperial threat. You and I are here now because he’s dead. It had to be done."

On Ghorman, Syril walks through an alleyway in the evening and enters his apartment building, finding the wire disconnected from the bottom of his door. Inside, he opens the spider and finds the message, placing the statue on a shelf. On Coruscant, it’s raining while our heroes eat and Bix asks Cassian if they can go for a walk the next day. He hesitates because “I don’t want to lose you again." “You can’t protect me," says Bix. “I’m not Maarva. I’m not your sister," she asserts, accusing him of killing that soldier because he saw her face. “If I’m giving up everything, I want to win. We have to." Back to Ghorman and Syril walking through the plaza once more, this time returning to his Imperial office after hours. He asks the security guards if he can retrieve some files from his office but he is initially denied, so he has to talk his way in. Once admitted, Syril dodges a cleaning droid and then visits a communication room, making a call to Dedra Meero (Denise Gough) on Coruscant. He tells her about the Ghorman Front, who he believes broke into his apartment and are tapping the comms in his office. He says he will attend the meeting he was invited to the next day, but Dedra says this isn’t enough to brief Major Partagaz with.

The next day Dedra is sitting in a meeting at ISB headquarters, where Supervisor Heert (Jacob James Beswick) has taken over the Axis investigation, though Partagaz (Anton Lesser) is disappointed with the progress on that matter. Lonnie Jung (Robert Emms) speaks up and suggests that the problem is that the ISB is arresting too many people– there are more in custody that they can process. Partagaz actually agrees with the assessment and thanks him for his input. After the meeting, Heert and Dedra walk through the hallway talking about Axis, and Dedra says she doesn’t care how it happens; she just wants Andor to be found. She wants to be included in the investigation and tells Heert that her door is open. Then Heert asks Lonnie how he can repay him for getting him out of hot water in the meeting, and Lonnie asks him to buy him lunch. Next we see Senator Mon Mothma (Genevieve O’Reilly) meeting with a representative from Ghorman, followed by a montage of her discussions with other senators about supporting a new bill opposed to the persecution of Ghorman. “If we do not stand together, we will be crushed," says Mon. But the other senators are reluctant to go along with her plan. “I am constantly begging my people to remain calm and do nothing that would make the occupation worse," insists the Ghorman senator.

Then we’re with Lonnie in the elevator back to the lowest levels of Coruscant once again, where he meets with Luthen Rael (Stellan Skarsgard). Luthen has become impatient with the amount of information he’s gotten from Lonnie, and he’s trying to figure out what the Empire’s obsession with Ghorman actually is. “I need the endgame!" Luthen yells at Lonnie, but the ISB officer doesn’t have much to give him. On Ghorman, the Front holds an anti-Imperial meeting that Syril attends by invitation. There are murmurs among the crowd as the speakers make their complaints against the Empire known, sometimes butting heads with each other, while Syril is approached by a member of the crowd named Samm (Abraham Wapler) who asks him how much of the meeting he understands. Then he translates a woman’s speech about the “Tarkin Massacre." One speaker accuses the Empire of building an armory or a fortress in the town square. Samm jokes about Syril being an Imperial spy, but he laughs it off and after the meeting he is allowed to meet with the Front’s leader Rylanz (Richard Sammel).

Rylanz wants to know what the new building is that the Empire is building in the middle of Palmo, but Syril insists he doesn’t know. Then they spell out what exactly happened in the Tarkin Massacre, which matches the “Ghorman Massacre" from the Star Wars Legends timeline. “Maybe we can do some good together," Rylanz tells Syril, and then we cut back to Coruscant, where Cassian awakes to find Bix looking out the window at the city skyline at nighttime. She points out a signal tower that’s flashing in the distance– indicating that Luthen wants to meet. Next we see Cassian talking with Luthen, who gives him a new assignment to assess the situation on Ghorman. “You have to go alone," Luthen says when Cassian asks to bring Bix along. “Ghorman would be a remarkable place to turn our way. I need to know more before we get involved." Cassian leaves without fully agreeing to the mission, but Luthen still tells him he wants it done quickly.

Then we cut to D’Qar, which will become the Resistance base later on in the timeline in Star Wars: The Force Awakens. Here it serves as the current headquarters for Saw Gerrera’s (Forest Whitaker) extremists. Wilmon (Muhannad Bhaier) has arrived with some equipment for Saw, providing his rebels with a means of extracting the explosive fuel rhydonium from stations around the galaxy. Saw describes what happens when a living being is exposed to rhydonium, and then insists that Wilmon stay behind to teach one of his men named Pluti (Marc Rissmann) how to safely extract the fuel. “You’re here until I get what I need," demands Saw. On Coruscant, Cassian bids an emotional farewell to Bix with a series of mutual hand gestures, and the two embrace before he leaves. Then we see him riding an elevator down, intercut with Bix tidying up the safe house apartment. Cassian walks through the corridors of Coruscant, and we cut back to Bix as she drops some sort of liquid drug into her mouth. That’s where this episode cuts to credits.

I thought this episode was kind of a slow start to the second arc of season 2, but knowing that Andor is a slow-burn series in general I still have faith that it’s all building to something. It’s tough not to empathize with Bix’s post-traumatic stress in the wake of what she’s been through, and it was interesting to see a decidedly different take on the famous meeting between Luthen and Lonnie from last season. But I suppose the most intriguing part of what’s going on here is Syril and Dedra’s plan on Ghorman, though I do sort of wish the production team had chosen to make the Ghor an alien species rather than just another bunch of humans. I know that likely would have been more expensive for Lucasfilm to pull off, but my biggest pet peeve about this show is that as the human-to-alien ratio gets larger, it feels less and less like Star Wars to me. It is quite funny that Ghorman is basically “Space France," however, and extremely interesting that showrunner Tony Gilroy has chosen to incorporate the Legends version of the Ghorman Massacre (now referred to as the “Tarkin Massacre") as perhaps the most significant event in the planet’s recent history.

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