Andor Season 2 Episode 12 finally reveals where all of the show’s characters not named Cassian Andor (Diego Luna) or Mon Mothma (Genevieve O’Reilly) wind up.
Last week’s installments of the Disney+ show depicted the tragic demise of misguided Imperial fanboy Syril Karn (Kyle Soller). Before his death, Syril is horrified to realize that he’s been helping girlfriend Dedra Meero (Denise Gough) plot the perfect genocide on Ghorman.
While Andor showrunner Tony Gilroy told DECIDER last week that he felt “terribly sorry” for Syril, he laughed off what happens to Dedra in the Disney+ show’s series finale, noting that he thinks her ultimate fate is even “worse than death.”
**Spoilers for all of Andor Season 2, now streaming on Disney+**
The final three episodes of Andor chart talented ISB agent Dedra Meero’s precipitous fall from grace. Thanks to her obsession with hoarding intel, she managed to sneak the top secret Death Star plans onto her personal drive. A drive that ISB double agent Lonni Jung (Robert Emms) managed to hack into the night before Andor Season 2 Episode 10.
When Lonni goes to Luthen Rael (Stellan Skarsgård) with the information about the Death Star, he sets off a chain reaction of events that dooms almost everyone involved. Luthen kills Lonni himself, to cover his tracks. Dedra, overeager in her delight to capture “AXIS,” botches the arrest of Luthen, allowing Kleya (Elizabeth Dulau) to escape with the key information.
Luthen stabs himself to prevent caving under torture, Kleya infiltrates his hospital to kill him out of mercy for the cause, and Partagaz (Anton Lesser) is rightfully furious with Dedra’s actions.
Worse, however, is the fact that Dedra’s overzealous plotting has complicated Director Orson Krennic’s (Ben Mendelson) plans. By jeopardizing the Death Star’s success, Dedra has drawn attention on herself. Is she a Rebel spy? Is she just bad at her job? Neither, but she has nonetheless orchestrated her own downfall.
One of the final moments of Andor Season 2 reveals that Dedra is not killed. No, she is stuck for the rest of her life in the notorious hell that is the Imperial prison system of Narkina 5. That horrific jail that Cassian broke out of all the way back in Season 1.
“I think once we got our hands on the Narkina prison system, her fate was sealed,” Andor creator and showrunner Tony Gilroy said with a chuckle. “I think once we started building that, and once we had it up, and we were looking at it, there was a lot of decision-making, there was a lot of time to think about it. I was like, ‘You know what? Narkina’s worse than death, I think.'”
The last we see of Dedra is her sobbing in her cell, trapped in the maw of the monster she helped create.
Of course, this isn’t the first time this season we’ve seen the otherwise icy ISB queen flinch. Dedra pointedly freaks out at the end of Andor Season 2 Episode 8 “Who Are You?” You know, the episode where all her years of planning a genocide take off, successfully, except for the part where her boyfriend, Syril, dies in the ensuing melee.
“I mean everybody has chaos. It might be in small degree, it might be overwhelming. But characters who lack confusion in some element are really sort of tedious So I think it’s partially that,” Gilroy told DECIDER about Dedra’s Ghorman meltdown.
“I think it’s partially tactical. I think she’s really tactically wondering if this is a good idea. I think she’s also uncomfortable with not being in charge. I think that’s part of it.”
“I also think that whatever feelings she does have for Syril, she realizes that this is a breaking point,” he also said, acknowledging her relationship status. “Certainly by the end of the episode when she realizes that he’s dead, I mean, they’ve been together in some weird way for, you know, a while now. He saved her life. They’ve lived together. They’ve turned off the lights together.”
And now it’s lights out forever for Syril and Dedra.