Andor Finale Post-Credits Scene Just Set Up the Future of Star Wars

This Star Wars: Andor article contains spoilers.

There was only one way Andor season 1 could end. Since we already know from Rogue One that Cassian eventually becomes a spy for the Rebellion and on the team that breaks into an Imperial stronghold to steal the Death Star plans, the first season needed to conclude with Cassian taking his first proper steps to join the Rebel Alliance. That happens when Cassian confronts Luthen Rael, the Rebel leader known as “Axis,” and asks to be brought into the fold. After what Cassian saw and suffered in the prison on Narkina 5, he’s ready to finally “fight these bastards,” as Luthen would say.

We don’t get to see what happens next, but we can guess that when the show returns it’ll follow Cassian on another Rebel mission for Axis. While Andor season 1 starts five years before Rogue One and covers a single year in Cassian’s life, the second season will chronicle the next four, meaning there’s plenty of time to explore how all the different groups that make up the Alliance united under one banner and how the Rebels finally established their secret base on Yavin IV. As of the end of season 1, Cassian and Mon Mothma also have yet to cross paths, another plot point the second season will have to cover as it rushes to the events of Rogue One.

A surprise post-credits scene at the end of the Andor finale teases yet another potential storyline looming for season 2, and it’s a moment that also answers one of the show’s biggest questions. Ever since Cassian entered the prison in episode 8 and was put to work on an assembly line building machine parts for an undisclosed purpose, Star Wars fans have been wondering what exactly the prisoners were building for the Empire. Many theories have been circulated on Reddit forums and social media. Were Cassian and the others working on TIE Fighter parts? Were they pieces of AT-STs? An even darker theory: some fans speculated the Narkina prisoners were building useless machine parts in one section of the prison and disassembling them in another as a particularly cruel form of torture.

Somehow, the truth is even worse: the mysterious parts are actually pieces of the Death Star’s superweapon, the same one that will eventually claim Cassian’s life in Rogue One. We watch in the post-credits scene as little droids in space use the parts to assemble a section of the space station, the exact one from which the Death Star will soon fire its laser. Yes, Cassian has spent a third of the season helping to build the weapon of his own demise. It’s one final grim twist for a series full of them, putting to rest the biggest question of the season.

Does this mean that the Death Star will play a crucial part in the show’s second season? We know from Rogue One that Cassian and Rebel Alliance leadership didn’t actually learn about the Empire’s planet-destroying secret weapon until a week before A New Hope. That means we likely won’t see Cassian on the hunt for those Death Star plans in Andor season 2 at all.

But the post-credits scene does still leave open the possibility that we’ll see more of the Death Star’s construction through the eyes of the Empire. Will ISB officer Dedra Meero pay the space station a visit during her quest to take down Axis and Cassian in season 2? Perhaps Uncle Harlo will get Syril Karn a job working security there? More questions to answer next season!

Star Wars: Andor season 2 is filming now.