Andor Season 2, Episode 5 Recap

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Revolution is a noisy business. It isn’t always gunshots and bombs. In the world of Star Wars, hange very often occurs through static and coded conversations, scrambled signals, and a bunch of hot air sent through the cold vacuum of space. At the top of Andor season 2, episode 5, “I Have Friends Everywhere,” the show’s logo is scored to a montage of radio snippets—phone calls, entertainment junk, chatter. How do you cut through the noise? Well, the secret is… you can’t.

“I can’t keep track anymore!” yells Luthen (Stellan Skarsgård) to his flummoxed assistant Kleya (Elizabeth Dulau), the two bickering like a married couple. (One wonders if their relationship is anything more than co-rebels in disguises.) “All these lines we’ve laid. All this information. The radios, the frequencies, the messages flying around! We’re drowning.”

The difficulties of communication is the thrust of “I Have Friends Everywhere,” a simmering hour of Andor that dishes up the show’s wartime espionage spirit more than any episode yet. Squint and you might think you’ve put on a World War II flick or a John le Carré adaptation. Absent of shootouts and daring rescues, the fifth episode of Andor season 2 is all intrigue and suspense, trust and mistrust. It’s proof that even in a galaxy far, far away, there are still magazine morning shows that are nothing but background noise. Truth is valued currency in a rebellion that would very much like to topple the Galactic Empire—and right now, even the wealthiest have empty pockets for honesty.

There is a lot teeing up in episode 5, and not enough time to unpack it all. So let’s dive into the who, what, where, and why of Andor while we still can. And there’s no better place to start than with the man whose name is the title of the show itself.

Amateur of DisguiseIf the premise of Andor is to bear witness the birth of a revolutionary, then “I Have Friends Everywhere” is to see him undertake one of the most precarious situations for any spy: being in disguise.

Now on his mission to Ghorman as assigned by Luthen, Andor is given a false identity as a semi-successful fashion designer on a pilgrimage to the one planet in the galaxy with the finest materials. A few weeks ago, we might have wondered why we were subjected to an elaborate tourism video for a planet we’d never seen or heard before. Now, we’re maybe glad to have done the homework.

As “Varian Skye” (a cool fake name, honestly) Cassian links up with Carro Rylanz (Richard Sammel) and his daughter, Ezna (Alaïs Lawson), learning their intel of Imperial shipments which we know–and get confirmation almost immediately afterward–that it is not totally true, and is really a ploy deployed by fascist lovebirds Syril (Kyle Soller) and Dedra (Denise Gough). “They’re inexperienced, but eager,” speaks Syril to his Imperial bosses. What is Cassian Andor walking into?

Lucasfilm Ltd.Anyone want a free spider?

A Web of Lies Ghorman’s spiders are a great metaphor for the tangled webs Andor is threading with its interconnected stories. Once again, Syril and Cassian are on intertwining paths. Syril’s recruitment by the Ghorman rebels, who believe him to be a disillusioned Imperial, deepens as the Ghorman try to use him as their man on the inside. And sure, we glean there’s a part of Syril that’s sympathetic to the Ghorman, based on his defense of them in his appointment Zoom calls with his mother. But where is Syril’s heart, really?

It’s likely with Dedra. When we entered this new batch of episodes, certainly some of us (me) were horrified to find out that Syril and Dedra had allegedly broken up, or so Eedy (Kathryn Hunter) is led to think. And then some of us (me, again) breathed sighs of relief when we learned that Dedra and Syril’s “breakup” was another ruse to carry out Dedra’s remote control over Ghorman. “I Have Friends Everywhere” is catnip for anyone (me, one more time) strangely obsessed with this romantic pair, with Syril’s quick and steamy rendezvous with Dedra hitting like crack.

Full of GasSpeaking of addictive things, Wilmon (Muhannad Bhaier) is tangled in his own spider’s web with Saw Gerrera (Forest Whitaker, reprising his role from Rogue One). Still a few years away from the debilitating damage to his lungs over his habitual inhalation of rhydonium fumes, Saw is nonetheless merciless in his leadership over the Partisans—see the suspenseful way he offs a guy that we so easily thought was just one of them.

Wilmon is no friend of the Empire, but his discomfort with being so far from home and subject to a raving madman is exactly the kind of scenario that leads people astray. Saw encouraging Wilmon to “let it in, boy!” to the tune of ominous gongs feels like a funeral dirge. Saw has gotten someone high on his supply, and it just might be the death of them. (We’re guessing, anyway.)

Also addicted is Bix (Adria Arjona), who has opted to suppress her nightmares with a little something courtesy of Luthen. But Luthen warns that the nightmares get worse once you get off the drugs, which Bix believes is a necessary evil to get “healthy.” Luthen, quite cryptically, agrees, though one has to question if Luthen actually has Bix’s best interest in mind. Luthen can be trusted but he isn’t family, and there are no friends in rebellion.

Bugging OutOf lesser importance (for now) is Luthen and Kleya. Of the many pressing matters they have to deal with, Davo Sculdun (Richard Dillane) has caught onto the fact that one of his purchased pieces was a fake—and his insistence on the hasty reappraisal of everything in his collection might give away the fact that Luthen’s gift to him is bugged. Time is now running out for Luthen and Kleya to retrieve the piece before Davo is any wiser. Revolutions are noisy, and Luthen rages that the effort has given them barren fruit. But in war, you’re thankful for every bullet you can hear.