Note: This article contains major spoilers from “Andor” Season 2, Episode 12.
Throughout its entire second season, “Andor” viewers have worried about Bix (Adria Arjona). The Ferrix mechanic was tortured by the Empire in “Andor” Season 1, and while she fights and wins for herself several times throughout the “Star Wars” show’s second season, the odds always seemed slim that she would make it out of the “Rogue One” prequel alive. Her absence from that film, at least, seemed to suggest that she was not still breathing by the time “Rogue One” catches up with Cassian (Diego Luna), her partner in both love and revolution.
For all those reasons and more, it should come as a welcome surprise to “Star Wars” fans that Bix is still alive at the end of “Andor” Season 2. She is, in fact, the last character viewers see before the series cuts to black for the last time. In that final scene, a truth is revealed about Bix and Cassian’s relationship that does not so much change the ending of “Rogue One” as it adds new touches of optimism and bittersweet tragedy to that film’s conclusion.
How does “Andor” Season 2 end?
After leaving Cassian in “Andor” Season 2, Episode 9, Bix returns in the final moments of the series’ finale. As Cassian leaves to meet up with his contact, Tivik (Daniel Mays), on the Ring of Kafrene, which is exactly where “Rogue One” first finds him, the “Andor” finale suddenly takes viewers back to Mina-Rau, the agricultural planet where Cassian, Bix, Wilmon (Muhannad Bhaier) and Brasso (Joplin Sibtain) were hiding out on at the start of “Andor” Season 2.
B2 (Dave Chapman) is still there. So is Bix.
Director Alonso Ruizpalacios slowly moves closer to Bix as she makes her way through one of Mina-Rau’s many expansive grain fields before finally revealing that she is not alone. In her arms, she is carrying a baby wrapped in a blanket. The child, implied to be Cassian’s, rests its head against Bix’s shoulder. When it starts to cry, she rubs and pats the child’s back, soothing it. “It’s okay. It’s okay,” Bix says, looking up at Mina-Rau’s sunny, clear skies, and it will be, thanks in no small part to Cassian’s efforts and many sacrifices.
Viewers have known ever since “Rogue One” came out that Cassian dies at the end of that film, along with all of the rebels who go with him and Jyn Erso (Felicity Jones) to steal the Death Star’s schematics from the Empire’s base on Scarif. That knowledge has tinged many of the events of “Andor” with an extra touch of tragedy. When Bix, for instance, tells Cassian in “Andor” Season 2, Episode 9 that she will find him again after the Empire is defeated, viewers’ hearts can’t help but break knowing she and Cassian are never actually going to see each other again.
Learning that Bix and Cassian’s love lives on in the form of a child, one whom Bix gets to raise, makes it easier to see Cassian’s story in a more triumphant light. At the same time, the fact that Cassian not only never got to see Bix again but also never got to meet their child only makes his death all the more tragic. The “Andor” finale, in other words, does the same thing the series has done from the very beginning, which is make an already bittersweet story of sacrifice, courage and revolution both more bitter and more sweet.
That said, Bix’s return and the reveal of Cassian’s baby is about as hopeful a final note as “Andor” could have ever ended on, if only because it gives viewers one last revelation to celebrate. After all, what does a child represent, if not hope? And rebellions are built on hope.
“Andor” Seasons 1-2 are streaming now on Disney+.
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