Andor Episode 12: Finale Release Time and Season Recap

The season finale of Star Wars: Andor will be here before we know it. Here's everything you need to know before episode 12 hits Disney+

Star Wars Andor Diego Luna
Photo: Lucasfilm

This article contains spoilers for Star Wars: Andor

Season 1 of the Disney+ series Andor is coming to a close, with episode 12 marking the end of this chapter of Cassian Andor’s (Diego Luna) story. So far this season, we’ve seen Cassian slowly become the Rebel we know from Rogue One as well as a glimpse of the growing Rebellion against the Empire. Meanwhile, the ISB and the Empire have proven to be formidable opponents, as their officers show little mercy in their singular goal of galaxy-wide obedience.

Even though we know how Cassian’s story will end in Rogue One, there are still plenty of questions regarding where we’ll leave him this season. Will Luthen and Cassian reunite on Ferrix? Will Mon Mothma (Genevieve O’Reilly) have to cross her own moral lines in order to move forward with the Rebellion? Will Cassian ever find his sister?

While we don’t yet know how the season will end, at least we don’t have to wait too long to find out. Below you can find out when and where to watch the season finale of Andor, and catch up on everything that happened in this Star Wars series.

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When Does the Andor Season Finale Come Out?

Episode 12 of Andor will be available to watch on Nov. 23, 2022 on Disney+ at 12 am PT, 3 am ET, and 8 am GMT.

Andor Recap

Here’s everything you need to know before the season finale of Andor

Kenari, Ferrix, and Morlana One

Through flashbacks in the first few episodes, we see that Cassian was born on a Mid Rim planet called Kenari while the Galactic Republic was still in power. During the Clone Wars, a ship crash landed on his planet. It was while investigating the wreck that he met Maarva (Fiona Shaw) and Clem (Gary Beadle) Andor, salvagers who decided to take him with them rather than leave him at the mercy of an approaching Republic cruiser.

In the present day, Cassian’s story begins on the planet Morlana One. He is looking for his little sister, whom he unintentionally left behind on Kenari. After his lead to her whereabouts goes nowhere, he’s stopped by two of Morlana’s One’s private security officers. Cassian kills them during a scuffle.

Retreating back to his home on a junkyard planet called Ferrix, Cassian tries to lay low until he finds out about the warrant for his arrest. He reaches out to his friend Bix Caleen (Adria Arjona) about finding a buyer for a stolen Imperial Starpath Unit so that he can pay off his debts in Ferrix and make a new start elsewhere. Bix’s insecure boyfriend Timm (James McArdle) is worried that she and Cassian are sneaking around behind his back, so he informs Morlana One’s security officers that Cassian is on Ferrix.

Bix’s mysterious buyer, Luthen Rael (Stellan Skarsgård), and Pre-Mor security forces converge on the planet. Luthen offers to buy the Starpath Unit from Cassian, but sees that he could be a valuable asset for a Rebel operation he’s planning off-planet. With Pre-Mor cops closing in, Cassian has no choice but to leave Ferrix with Luthen.

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Oh, and insecure boyfriend Timm? He is killed in the chaos. We never have to think about that rat again.

Aldhani

Luthen convinces Cassian to join a Rebel cell on the planet Aldhani that is set to steal the payroll from the planet’s Imperial base. The Aldhani group is hesitant to trust Cassian at first, but ultimately they loop him in on their plans. When the time comes, the pull off the heist successfully but not without a few casualties. Cassian, Rebel cell leader Vel Sartha (Faye Marsay), Cinta Kaz (Varada Sethu), Skeen (Ebon Moss-Bachrach), and Nemik (Alex Lawther) are the only ones who survive the operation.

But after zipping away from Aldhani, Cassian is forced to kill Skeen, who plans to betray the other Rebels and steal the money. After Nemik dies from injuries suffered during the frantic escape from Aldhani, Cassian ditches Vel, leaving with the cut he was promised by Luthen. He tries to live a chill life on the tropical planet Niamos, but finds himself in the wrong place at the wrong time when going out to get groceries.

Narkina 5

Cassian is arrested on Niamos for loitering around a crime scene, and thanks to the Empire’s new Public Order Resentencing Decree — a law put into place after the attack on Aldhani to punish any and all dissenters — receives six years in prison. He is taken to a work camp on the water moon Narkina 5, where he and his fellow inmates are forced to build parts for the Empire in 12-hour shifts. 

After he and his supervisor Kino Loy (Andy Serkis) discover that the Empire isn’t letting people leave once their sentences are up, they put together a plan to take over the prison and escape. Things go according to the plan, and the prisoners easily overwhelm the understaffed Imperial guards. In the chaos, Cassian leaves with his bunkmate Melshi (Duncan Pow), but Kino is seemingly left behind as he can’t swim and the facility is surrounded by water (a truly devastating moment).

Melshi and Cassian flee the planet, stopping first at Niamos so Cassian can retrieve the credits and personal items he left behind when he was arrested. While there, Cassian tries to get a message to Maarva, letting her know that he’s okay, but he then finds out that she passed away. Melshi and Cassian part ways for now, with Cassian seemingly on his way back to Ferrix for Maarva’s funeral.

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Coruscant – The Growing Rebellion vs. The ISB

As Cassian tries to find his role in the galaxy this season, the Rebellion is also growing behind the Empire’s very nose on Coruscant. After leaving Cassian on Aldhani, Luthen goes back to his life as an antiquities dealer in the Imperial capital. It’s there that he meets with Senator Mon Mothma on multiple occasions as they try to fund and kickstart various Rebel cells across the galaxy. They don’t always agree on the “proper” way forward for the Rebellion, but they also know that the Empire can’t continue to operate unchecked.

Mon Mothma runs into issues with accessing her family fortune and partners with an old friend from her home planet of Chandrila to set up a charitable foundation through which she hopes to continue helping the Rebels undetected. (It’s also revealed that Vel is Mon Mothma’s cousin, so Rebellion seems to run in the family.)

After Aldhani, Luthen and his assistant Kleya Marki (Elizabeth Dulau) halt communication with Bix. They don’t know where Cassian ended up after Aldhani, making him a loose end that could connect them to the heist. The Rebels decide that Cassian must be eliminated before he can implicate Luthen or anyone else. During that time, Luthen also tries to enlist Saw Gerrera’s (Forest Whitaker) help for a raid on an Imperial power station led by infamous freedom fighter Anto Kreegyr, but Saw declines at first. More on that in a second.

Meanwhile, Syril Karn (Kyle Soller), the former Pre-Mor officer who has now made it his life’s mission to take down Cassian, is now living on Coruscant with his overbearing mother after being fired for the disastrous mission he led to apprehend Cassian on Ferrix. He becomes obsessed with helping ISB agent Dedra Meero (Denise Gough) track down Cassian after she asks him to clarify something from his report and refuses to take no for an answer.

Dedra is similarly single-minded, but can see the bigger picture beyond Cassian’s involvement. She is determined to track down every inkling of Rebel activity in the galaxy, and has set her sights on connecting Ferrix to Luthen’s operation. Though she doesn’t yet know that Luthen is the Rebel leader ( known by the codename “Axis”) she is looking for, Dedra won’t stop until she uncovers the larger conspiracy she believes to be at play. She oversees the Empire’s operations on Ferrix, torturing Bix for information and spying on Maarva in case Cassian reaches out to her. After Maarva’s death, Dedra insists that they let the people of Ferrix have a grand funeral for Maarva, hoping that the fanfare will draw Cassian back home.

She also helps her supervisor Major Partagaz (Anton Lesser) set a trap for Anto Kreegyr, who is planning a raid on an Imperial facility on the planet Spellhaus. One of Dedra’s coworkers, Lonni Jung (Robert Emms) disagrees with her idea to wait for Kreegyr to show his hand, insisting that it is more suspicious for the Empire to do nothing. But it is later revealed that Lonni is a double agent for Luthen, as he sneaks away to fill him in on the Empire’s plans to stop Kreegyr’s raid.

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In the penultimate episode, Saw changes his mind, offering air support for Kreegyr’s raid at the last minute, but Luthen does his best to talk him out of it. Luthen reveals the Empire’s plans to ambush Kreegyr’s crew, and that he’s not planning to warn Kreegyr. Saw doesn’t trust this information at first, and is paranoid that Luthen is a double agent for the ISB. Luthen insists that he is sacrificing Kreegyr’s crew for the well-being of the Rebellion – after all, if they warn Kreegyr, the Empire could grow suspicious, but if they don’t, then the Empire will still think they have the upper hand. For the first time, Saw looks at Luthen with reverence and understanding. He seems to finally realize that he and Luthen both recognize the gravity of the war to come.

We’ll see more of this war play out when the Andor series finale drops on Disney+ on Wednesday.