I really loved Star Wars Andor's finale, but I really have an issue with its final treatment of Bix, and I've been trying to articulate it for my video essay - but I'm curious about people's thoughts.
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It reminds me a little of the studio notes for Contact to make it about Ellie Arroway being a mother (e.g., giving birth at the end or having an estranged teenage kid)
I recommend "Social Reproduction Theory: Remapping Class, Recentering Oppression" edited by Tithi Bhattacharya. I am not approaching this from a religious perspective but from a historical materialist point of view that takes into account productive forces.
Under genocide and fascism marginalized women (racialized women, poor women, colonized women, etc.) are denied reproductive rights. Fannie Lou Hamer was subjected to forced sterilization.
Given the spectrum of oppression people of Ferrix experienced, it wouldn't be out of the realm of possibility that they would have forced women from that society to be sterilized. Taking that into account, Bix giving birth is an act of resistance.
Also you are predicting that future storylines will only emphasize Andor's genetic contribution to the child's merits. Given that Bix is the child's only surviving parent clearly she will be the primary influence. Her revolutionary spirit will inform the child's destiny.
Love this analysis and def don’t disagree, but I don’t really think this is the intended framing of the moment, especially given the perspectives of the writers, the visuals at the end, and the broader context of how Bix was treated by the narrative all season - or Star Wars generally.
I think all the women aside from Kleya & Dedra really had their storylines suffer from the condensing of 4 seasons into 1. Vel was a non-entity after arc 2, Cinta's main development was off-screen, Mon's resolution with her family was cut. Seeing Bix in the last arc after leaving Yavin would have...
helped significantly, but not for one second do I think that she would have given up on the Rebellion she was active in before Cassian ever even thought of joining. Far more likely to do what Poe's parents did and find someone to take care of her son while still serving the cause.
I get doing 5 seasons was too much of a commitment, but I think they would have been better off doing 3 instead of 2. Have 6 month timeskips instead of a full year. We could get Syril being discovered by the Ghormans, Cinta's accident and recovery, Mon and her family, Bix after leaving, etc.
The thought behind it is obviously the bittersweet family that never was, but something survives, but by accident, the traditional family is emphasized, which feels not great, so it could have used a rework for the tone if nothing else.
I think it does a few things that are meaningful and good and a few things that are really bad. It shows her having been traumatized and tortured and resorting to violence for revenge getting an ending that she chose and has meaning for her. It shows her choosing to sacrifice her ability to be…
… with Andor because she believes in him, and his role and the rebellion. It shows a world of people living idyllically and in apparent freedom as a result of Andor’s actions, despite his cynicism and pain and desire to leave. It provides a positive note for the ending of the show…
… but it’s a bittersweet one in that it’s a happiness Andor himself will never experience. All of those things worked for me.
I completely agree that the existence of the child opens up all kind of fated / chosen one / legacy character bullshit which is deeply uncomfortable and annoying.
I also agree that as an end to her story it’s a bit belittling and almost infantilizing. There’s a tinge of, “she got out of this life and now has fulfilled her purpose as a woman” which is creepy and unpleasant.
For me, I think, how that part of this story generates meaning will depend a lot on what happens next. If her story is never again examined with this being the teleology of her life - supporting this weirdly mixed reading, I wouldn’t hate it but it wouldn’t sit 100% right with me.
If she comes back in another show at some point and is more of the lead character in her own story, then I’ll be more comfortable with this being a meaningful stopping point along the way. If she is skipped over and we get a story about her kid, my reading will skip completely in the other direction
I think this is a consequence of compressing the show to two seasons. We don't get to see what Bix was up to after she left. We don't know when she learned she was pregnant, or at what point (if there is one) that she stopped working with the rebellion. We just get a brief "Bix is ok! + Baby!"
That leaves people free to read into it whatever they want, which goes down a very specific path for you, which is 100% valid. That said, all of us are projecting what we think happened, what we wanted to happen and what we're afraid or angry happened into that tiny snapshot of Bix at that moment.
For me, Bix kept working with the Rebellion, but in a less "die at any moment" way. Mechanic, Instructor, anything she wanted that they needed.
As for the fields, throughout the whole show, that is the only place I saw peace in her eyes (briefly). Choosing that place to raise a kid makes sense.
As for stripping her of her power, I disagree. If anything it's an act of control & defiance & strength. Cass would have gone with her had he known. She brought a child into the world believing she & the Rebellion were making it a good one to grow up in.
I admit my take is colored by my single mom.
Honestly, despite the implications and interpretations, I was just happy Bix was OK. She's not alone, not pining or mourning Cassian with nobody but B2 to tell.
Yes, the kid is a piece of him, but it's a piece of her as well. Tropey? Yes.
Star Wars is a giant trope cake with trope frosting.
This is so well said. I hate the idea of just using Cassian's kid as a character in sequels, too.
I also found the idea of him having a child that he died without knowing about really devastating, as a new parent. And that beatific smile on Bix's face feels more like propaganda about parenthood...
...than anything else. Her child will never know his/her/their father. She doesn't know that yet in that scene, but still--why is she presented as this untroubled madonna figure, totally flattened from the complexity her character used to have?
I hated how she left Cassian just to make sure he...
...stayed in the fight. Like her whole purpose is in motivating a man. Having her be pregnant explains WHY she did this otherwise fairly inscrutable thing, but it still sucks. Women and children aren't just there to give meaning to men's lives, and that's how her story ends up feeling to me.
Maybe I'm weird, but I disagree with her being a prop. She seems to be her own person with just lesser focus put on her. The weird focus on biological lineage was absolutely out of place in a show that pretty exclusively features found family.
I do really feel she is a victim of the 3 episode arc format, there are moments that needed more fleshing out. I find it hard to criticize her character because her arc makes sense but doesn't feel earned. If they would have the time, would it have feel earned? I can't say, but it's had me wondering
Also, we're so trained in media to look at biological lineage as a story component, especially in a universe like Star Wars where force sensitivity seems to be passed down genetically. How much does our interpretation of media literacy color our perspective of that final scene?
I genuinely hated it and you put it so well why, this "genetic lineage" notion is bothering me and the implied idea that we should feel comforted by it, no it's not a lineage if you're not there to nurture your child and I don't feel hopeful about a random child Bix never expressed desire for
On the one hand, 21st SW has been shit to women. It’s killed a lot of its lead and supporting women. On the other hand, this is the same ending they gave Hera in Rebels. I’m happy she survived and I hope they tell more of her story and not just her kid’s but its the one sour note for Andor.
this exact thing was my biggest problem with the entire series, to be honest. i hate it so much and i think you did a good job of articulating why here. it just feels... gross.
Metatextually I agree, though I chose to read it that Bix left Cas because she knew she was pregnant and wanted away from the trauma. She has agency and made a choice. Personally I hope we never see them again, b/c that means her plan works - they get free for good.
Hmmm, or it could be a nod to the fact that this is not the end or the beginning but a slice in time of an everlasting cycle. Good wins, bad wins, rinse, wash, repeat.
I’ve seen that moment read as Bix and the baby representing the resilience and survival of Ferrixian culture. Through that kid, she can pass on the knowledge of her people. It literally represents a new hope. Same goes for Wilmon and the Ghorman rebel.
Back to Bix, I think the culture thing would be better if she was shown post-ROTJ with an older kid placing a brick of placeholder Cassian ashes into the wall of a Scarif memorial.
Her end seemed obvious the moment they made her “the woman”.
Because she is what happens to women not out on the front lines in their minds. She is meant to be left behind and suffer without the safety/care/whatever they want to call it. She must survive the loss and carry on.
I wouldn’t say she was Padme bad because Padme only existed as Anakin’s 13th reason.
But she went from being Luthen’s connect to “woman”, a figure who exists to suffer and procreate. And it wasn’t even subtle—which is most insulting. The rape attempt was “needed”to show “women’s plight”.
I hear what you’re saying 100% and if they bring back the kid as a character, it will prove your point. But I also want to say, being a mother is badass. And passing on the hard lessons you learned in life to a new person is a small but vital sort of rebellion too.
Yeah, I also found the treatment of Bix (and a lot of women in the series) as surprisingly regressive.
If Bix had been given a clearer arc about wanting to start a family, it wouldn't have felt so outta left field.
Bix's ending seemed so tacked on. They didn't know what to do since she's not in Rogue One, so she can't stick around. I wouldn't have hated an ending where we see her inside a transport, which lands. The doors open to BLIZZARD! and a person enters and says, "Welcome to Hoth!"
I'm more worried about what this means going forward. SW has a real legacy problem, particularly with the sequels, where 2/3 of important characters have to belong to 1 of maybe 3 lineages. Makes the galaxy feel so small. Andor was a nobody, but now his kid can be another *destined progeny*.
I think it showed her having gone back to the one place she felt free and wanted to make a home there Cassian could come to when the war was over. Is the best angle I can take on that
I appreciate what that moment was TRYING to do. Felt like it was explicitly calling back to the line from Luthen’s speech:
“I burn my life to make a sunrise that I know I’ll never see.”
Given Bix and her kid are watching a sunrise together that we know Cass will never see.
It’s definitely my least favorite of any of the cast’s endings. But under the limitations of packing 4 years of story into 12 episodes, I understand the decision to fall back on shorthand. I’m just glad they didn’t kill her off between arcs. That was a mild concern of mine.
it's such a bizarre, uncomfortably regressive, and honestly rather clumsy note for the show to end on, especially in comparison to vel, mon, and kleya's endings which i found both more satisfying and way better executed. just left kind of a sour taste in my mouth right as the credits rolled.
Bix could've been depicted as a Rebel Trooper infiltrating an Imperial facility, or she could've been helping to build the v-150 planetary ion cannon on Hoth in secret. Those are acts of rebellion - As important as raising a child is I don't see that as a means of "winning" the Galactic Civil War.
I wrote a bad fanfic for Rouge One I titled "Rouge Legacy". I liked Jyn's speach on Scarif about a 'sharp stick'.
I wanted a character to survive that, and carry that message forward.
The legacy of fighting, a choosing to rebel is much more interesting to me than an issue of parentage.
Honestly most of what bothers me about it is the framing. If they had shown her working comms at some other rebel base and yeah she's got a kid in a sling at the same time I would be fine w/ it but nah they had to do the tradwife pastoral fantasy angle that's completely opposed to the show's themes
This this this this this this!!!!! She obviously cared about the rebellion so damn much that the first time she was shown CHOOSING to give up her life was to help it, just to go back to a place that must've held incredibly traumatic memories makes, quite frankly, nogoddmn sense!!
Yeah - I would've been fine if we’d seen Bix covered in grime as an engineer for the Rebellion or even just some backwater planet while also having a kid. But instead, she’s reduced to this idyllic visual that the show lingers on with a fetishistic gaze, indulging in the patriarchal fantasy.
I can’t really argue with that. It felt very stereotypical. On the other hand I was so happy at least one person survived, she has been through so much! I was really scared they wanted to kill her off.
If she had been more active on screen this season, it might have felt more earned?
Not only would the scene have been better in any other location, but ESPECIALLY since the specific idyllic landscape she apparently chose to return to was the one where she was almost r***d. That seemed like an incredibly tasteless choice for that scene
Yeah, when she left the message my first thought was that they had somehow found a way for her to (non-lethally) fridge herself for Cassian's character growth!
i think a piece of media that actually didn't fall into that was the spider woman comics where spider woman had to balance her life between being a superhero and being a single mom.
The fan in me wanted her to be setting up a meeting with a Bothan faction, the small amount of optimism left in my heart wanted her to start learning to fly an x-wing, the cynic that is most of me now saw it coming a little bit 🫤
Hate that i called it at the beginning of the season cause her writing was Off imo (despite everyone creaming themselves over “finally a weak feminine character who’s not a badass girl boss uwu”) but i didn’t think it was gonna be so direct and obvious about the hetslop
She could have died between rogue one and Andor. No one would question that.
She didn’t have to leave for him to be fully committed. The lone hero thing from spaghetti westerns doesn’t really work in Star Wars.
Ah I see. Well Jessie is right. And I hope they never try to dig deeper into Luthens Lore. Keeping him a mystery is part of his appeal and also it destroys his speech.
I think all of your points are valid. But my take was different. Bix got to live a peaceful life after surviving years of trauma. She was even thriving in a place where some of that trauma was inflicted. That's a better ending than I expected from those writers. I'm not down with the baby, though.
I’m in agreement with this interpretation, I’ve actually been pretty disappointed in the lack of agency showed to all the female characters in S2. Mon and Kleya less so, to an extent, but largely… yeah. I at least do think Bix was able to reclaim some of hers by choosing to leave, and I have little
doubt she knew in her heart Cassian wouldn’t make it. So removing herself from the situation was taking control of it in a way she hadn’t been allowed to up until that point.
But putting her where they did was problematic. I disagree it was Padmé levels of problematic, but it definitely was.
Bix just highlights Gilroy’s blind spots where a rape attempt was necessary to show “what women go through”—when we last saw her being tortured already.
Or how the options were “revolution” or “pregnant”, nothing else.
It annoyed me - the one fault I found with Andor was substituting the final shot of Cassian walking to his final mission with that shot and I very much disliked it, for much the same reasons here
I can completely relate to your point of view. I would much rather have seen Bix fighting a battle somewhere, actually rebelling. That's what I expected to see after her decision to leave in episode 9. I agree with your thoughts on Cassian and his "legacy" having to continue on through his child.
I also really loved the Andor finale, but Bix's ending got a bit of an eye roll from me. "Oh how nice, the Andor bloodline will survive" is a weird thing to leave the audience with, but also classic Star Wars?
And besides, Bix already had a kid. B2EMO was RIGHT THERE living their best Droid life.
Same. I watched Rogue One again right after and it's an interesting contrast with Jyn Erso who became her father's surviving legacy but never got to procreate.
The final has a scene where Cass and Velle* toast his mother and Sinta*. Luthan also left behind someone too so there's room I believe...
to not see her as just a trope , sadly that's the most obvious reading, but to see her as choosing her own path FOR HERSELF. They were both done w/ war, they had both decided to leave but she felt he had a bigger role to play so she left.
"The rebellion comes first" vs "the rebellion only."
Yeah, pretty much this. She effectively chose the Rebellion over him, over the stereotypical idyllic life they would have had if they both had run away. But she couldn’t in good conscience do that. That’s what makes her very different from Padmé, but the way they presented it was not great.
To me it was two things.
One, reframing her choice to leave as more than just acknowledging some kind of “grand destiny” for Cass and instead as a desire to protect a life from the constant danger of a rebels life.
And two, affirming that Cass’s story may have ended, but it will never be forgotten.
I can see why the latter feels icky to some, but I find it kind of beautiful and I feel like it honors the story of the small people in the rebellion. The people Cass worked with, the people he met, the stories of rebellion throughout the galaxy—they won’t be erased by Luke’s victory over the empire
I super agree with this and I would add that this insistence on lineage etc goes beyond patriarchy into actively being the kind of eugenic ideal that fascism and the empire would unquestioningly promote, which undercuts the show’s critique of fascism. If she wanted kids great for her I guess, (1/2)
Especially if the audience could have heard that from her —but then why can’t we glimpse her having a full life, especially in service to the rebellion, with her skills and talents? Literally all she does is *have* a child on the screen and we are supposed to read so much into it. The last shot.
another franchise that avoided this trope was Pokémon horizons when that show was announced and people saw the new characters, they specialty that the new character Liko was going to be ash's daughter, thankfully that wasn't the case she was allowed to be her own character in her own right.
I think it would have been much more fitting for the idea of Cassian's legacy to see her (and no kid) laying a brick for him after Rogue One before she heads out to rejoin the fight
Like we talked about elsewhere I think it's an issue where the narrative we usually have a re heroic ones. The people who die are heroic martyrs and the people who Win are Heroes. Andor rejects that, a lot of brave people die unremembered amd discarded. That's revolution.
Ok, go be miserable and read miserable lessons from all your media then. I can't stop you from sticking your head into a misery machine from dawn til dusk
the most charitable reading i could muster was that her denouement sits in hopeful contrast to the utter bleakness of cassian's end in rogue one
but i bump hard against any "meeting my wife in the elysian fields" Gladiator-type end, both for the cis-het reasons you said, and because it's so passive
I didn't see Bix getting diminished at all, nor did I think seeing her with what I assume was her and Cassian's child cheap (though more on that later). We see one snippet of a moment, yes, and that's what the show ends on, but I think the idea was playing off Luthen's "a sunrise I'll never see".
For me, it was a) a character you were hoping wouldn't meet a tragic end, and found at least for now a seemingly peaceful one, b) visually depicting those who were given a chance at the life by those who fought for it (which SHE also fought for), and c)...
The bittersweet knowledge that, despite how happy it seems in that moment, we know she'll likely learn the devastating truth of Andor's eventual demise. I think b/c we've seen "...and they had a baby" in other stories before used more cheaply, some folks might react that way here. But...
If I'm doing my math right, and assuming Star Wars humanoid take 9 mos. for babies to come to term... that baby looked like it could have been less than 1 yr old. Bix last saw Cassian 12 months prior. I think this might NOT be Cassian's. Not sure if that's some ambiguity on Gilroy's part.
Ultimately, though, I didn't see this as a "happy" ending. It was bittersweet. At least Bix has (we think) community in a (presumably) safe and familiar place, but she has pain coming no matter what. That was what I felt in that moment.
THANK YOU. I've been crestfallen reading a lot about the final few moments of 'Andor' as a trope to be despised when that wasn't the point. A bit of not seeing the forest through the trees.
thisssssss I thought of you INSTANTLY and couldn't help but agree it felt so cheap. if every other tragic hero story ended differently this might have felt poignant, but i kind of loved that Cassian was the one and only. His story should have ONLY ended with his sacrifice. FREEDOM is his legacy.
It would be easier to take this tropey mess in good faith if SW hadn't spent the last few decades being creepy and weird about women and genetic heritage.
It's also hard to believe that in the most cinematically focused 5 minutes of SW that has ever existed, they didn't know what they were evoking.
So this goes to how bad my rouge one memory was.
I thought she was a member of the heist team, reunited (which in my mind is why they had to break them up)
And they die together at the end making the kid an extra melancholy ending.
And honestly, like that ending more so I’m keeping it in brain.
I feel like I'm on a very different page from society re: nature vs nurture - our media often behaves like it's 50/50 or even 60/40, but in practice it's 10/90; your DNA deals you a starting hand, but who you really are is mostly environmental/experiential.
Who were Kleya's parents? How could that matter in the face of Luthien's brutal tutelage?
Cassian isn't going to have any real impact on this kid beyond how they look, but surely they're destined to be a brilliant pilot with no training/experience, right?
I wish The Force was used more to reinforce a sense of mystery/magic, instead of suggesting that if you swapped Michael Jordan & Neil deGrasse Tyson's kids at birth, They'd fail/succeed at hoops/math based on DNA no matter how much their dads tried to teach them.
I have a lot of issues with character choices in season 2. Don't give the incel a girlfriend... Ok, went a different direction with that one so ok. Happy lesbian couple making plans, don't... Oh. Don't make Andor a chosen one, ok but don't bring it up again... Oh.
I don't understand that ending for her, it felt like it was from a completely different story. I just figured we wouldn't even see where she went and just leave it ambiguous, which seemed sad but appropriate for the show. The one good part about it is that I am glad B2EMO isn't alone.
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https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contact_(1997_American_film)
I had to check that my system hadn't somehow had a stroke and started playing Rebel Moon 2 on me.
It had straight Rebel Moon vibes it wasn’t funny lol
I completely agree that the existence of the child opens up all kind of fated / chosen one / legacy character bullshit which is deeply uncomfortable and annoying.
As for the fields, throughout the whole show, that is the only place I saw peace in her eyes (briefly). Choosing that place to raise a kid makes sense.
I admit my take is colored by my single mom.
Yes, the kid is a piece of him, but it's a piece of her as well. Tropey? Yes.
Star Wars is a giant trope cake with trope frosting.
I also found the idea of him having a child that he died without knowing about really devastating, as a new parent. And that beatific smile on Bix's face feels more like propaganda about parenthood...
I hated how she left Cassian just to make sure he...
Because she is what happens to women not out on the front lines in their minds. She is meant to be left behind and suffer without the safety/care/whatever they want to call it. She must survive the loss and carry on.
But she went from being Luthen’s connect to “woman”, a figure who exists to suffer and procreate. And it wasn’t even subtle—which is most insulting. The rape attempt was “needed”to show “women’s plight”.
But yeah, it's tendency to fall into some tropes was one of the weaker parts of this season.
Still loved it though.
If Bix had been given a clearer arc about wanting to start a family, it wouldn't have felt so outta left field.
And she has no baby.
“I burn my life to make a sunrise that I know I’ll never see.”
Given Bix and her kid are watching a sunrise together that we know Cass will never see.
I wanted a character to survive that, and carry that message forward.
The legacy of fighting, a choosing to rebel is much more interesting to me than an issue of parentage.
If she had been more active on screen this season, it might have felt more earned?
She didn’t have to leave for him to be fully committed. The lone hero thing from spaghetti westerns doesn’t really work in Star Wars.
But putting her where they did was problematic. I disagree it was Padmé levels of problematic, but it definitely was.
Bix just highlights Gilroy’s blind spots where a rape attempt was necessary to show “what women go through”—when we last saw her being tortured already.
Or how the options were “revolution” or “pregnant”, nothing else.
https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:ecb7yyr7iwv6o6mvy7njavua/post/3lp63h7r7ld2v
And besides, Bix already had a kid. B2EMO was RIGHT THERE living their best Droid life.
The final has a scene where Cass and Velle* toast his mother and Sinta*. Luthan also left behind someone too so there's room I believe...
"The rebellion comes first" vs "the rebellion only."
One, reframing her choice to leave as more than just acknowledging some kind of “grand destiny” for Cass and instead as a desire to protect a life from the constant danger of a rebels life.
And two, affirming that Cass’s story may have ended, but it will never be forgotten.
It’s ok small dick, you’ll be ok
but i bump hard against any "meeting my wife in the elysian fields" Gladiator-type end, both for the cis-het reasons you said, and because it's so passive
She ends up having a kid and we’re revisiting that shit too
Hell would’ve loved to see more of Dedra and Cyril’s evolution a bit more
But Bix did get the short end of it all
Like cool fulfill mom role (checkbox checked)
Gay characters put back in the never will get together ok maybe once trope
Kill the gay trope is back
That one character risking everything, for the cause, or to be a daughter to a father figure?
Gave Bix a drug problem just to write her off
Nah? Too scared? Oh we got the gay kiss out of the way (checkbox checked)
It's also hard to believe that in the most cinematically focused 5 minutes of SW that has ever existed, they didn't know what they were evoking.
I thought she was a member of the heist team, reunited (which in my mind is why they had to break them up)
And they die together at the end making the kid an extra melancholy ending.
And honestly, like that ending more so I’m keeping it in brain.
Cassian isn't going to have any real impact on this kid beyond how they look, but surely they're destined to be a brilliant pilot with no training/experience, right?