Star Wars: Andor consistently reminds us that the Empire takes and takes and takes, and episode 10 of the Disney+ series is no different. “One Way Out” continues the story of Cassian Andor’s (Diego Luna) quest to free himself from Narkina 5, and while he has Kino (Andy Serkis) on his side, it still isn’t an easy battle to be freed from the imperial hands that are keeping them imprisoned no matter what.
While this episode is one that is going to stay with audiences for a long while, there is one moment in the it that feels like the punch to the gut I’ve come to recognize as that “Cassian” feeling I got in Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, and it felt like whatever hope the episode had given me was so very quickly ripped away.
**Spoilers for Andor lie ahead.**
Throughout the entire episode, we’re gifted with Cassian’s connection to Kino as the two actually start to work together to overtake Narkina 5 to escape. The problem is that there is one way out. For Kino, I can’t be sure if he knows what that means throughout the episode, but it packs a pretty heavy punch at the end when the prisoners are running to their freedom and jumping into the water below.
The prison break is successful due to Cassian and Kino’s willingness to do whatever it takes to get everyone out. It’s not a two-man mission. It’s them working together to do what they have to and defeat the officers holding them down. They see that their hope of escape by doing what the Empire asked of them isn’t going to work, and they take matters into their own hands.
The problem again comes with the “one way out” side of things—mainly because it involves swimming. As Cassian is running to freedom, happy with their success, he turns back to see Kino filled with dread and fear as he whispers, “I can’t swim,” to Cassian.
The pain of success and loss in Star Wars
Introducing a character and then killing him off a few episodes later shouldn’t work to really break me emotionally in the way that it did with Kino Loy, and yet I found myself gasping the minute I knew what this meant—which is the same feeling I had after one movie with Cassian Andor.
When it got to the end of Rogue One and all hope was lost, and we knew that this was the end of Cassian and Jyn and the team they’d made along the way, their success wasn’t something to scoff at because it was the reason that the Rebels won in A New Hope. But it still hurt because we knew what it cost now.
That same feeling is now associated with Kino Loy. If he really is dead (we didn’t get to see what happened since Cassian was pushed out of the prison with the rest of the prisoners before he could get to Kino), he will be the character who helped Cassian to freedom. He is, in turn, responsible for the success of the Rebellion and he doesn’t even know it.
Andor remains my favorite Star Wars show because it is just so incredibly good, and after this episode, I can’t wait for the emotional turmoil it is going to continue to give us for the rest of the first season and beyond.
(featured image: Lucasfilm)
