Recap / Andor S1E12 "Rix Road"

"Fight the Empire!"

"No game. Kill me. Or take me in."

— Cassian Andor

The people of Ferrix proceed with Maarva's funeral while the ISB watch it like a hawk, hoping to catch Cassian Andor's return. Luthen, Vel, Syril, and Mosk have also returned to Ferrix seeking him — Luthen to kill him, Vel to check on Cinta, and Syril and Mosk to bring him to justice. Cassian, who has silently arrived on Ferrix, continued listening to Nemik's manifesto. He reconvenes with his allies, avoids the procession and opts to rescue Bix from her imprisonment in the hotel.

Meanwhile, Anto Kreegyr's faction is obliterated by the ISB trap. Mon accuses her husband of a bad gambling habit within earshot of their driver, who reports it back to the ISB, who (as planned) consider that it may be the reason for her suspicious finances. Mon and Perrin introduce Leida to the Sculduns.

After the funeral procession marches down Rix Road, B2EMO plays Maarva's final holographic message to the crowd. In her speech, Maarva encourages them to rise up against the Empire. A riot breaks out. In the chaos, Syril rescues Dedra, Cinta kills the ISB spy Corv, and Cassian spirits Bix away to an old ship where Brasso, B2EMO, and a few other allies (Wilmon, Jezzi, and Pegla) are waiting. Cassian instructs them to head to safety. Afterwards, he meets with Luthen and offers to join the Rebellion.

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Tropes:

• All for Nothing: The various traps and machinations to try and grab Cassian by all the various factions fail utterly. The funeral descends into complete and total chaos, leaving many dead. Cassian didn't even bother showing up to the procession, as he used the event to go and save Bix from capture, and he even more or less just walked out carrying her without encountering any trouble or so much as a second glance. The only faction that actually walks away with anything is Luthen's, as it's implied at the end of the episode that he recruits Cassian after being given a Kill Me Now, or Forever Stay Your Hand ultimatum.
• Angry Guard Dog: During the night when Andor first sneaks into Bix's scrapyard, Pegla's two Corellian hounds chained there bark at the intruder and pull against their tethers trying to reach him.
• Armor Is Useless: One stormtrooper is downed by a headbutt from Brasso while wearing his helmet.
• Arranged Marriage: The end of the episode shows Leida Mothma formally meeting the son of Davo Sculdun, following in Chandrila's tradition of arranged marriages. Unlike most examples of this trope, however, it's been previously established that Leida decided for herself that she wanted to partake in their traditions despite Mon's wishes and Perrin's open-mindedness — and based on how the scene is portrayed in itself, Leida is very clearly shown as the one taking initiative in this specific case.
• Back for the Finale: Nemik is heard via an audio recording of his manifesto, after being absent for five episodes.
• Badass in Distress: A mild example, but Meero gets pulled into the riot on Rix Road and nearly beaten to death, before Karn shows up and pulls her out of the melee.
• Batman Gambit: Every plan to either kill or capture Cassian depends on him attending Maarva's funeral. Not only does he not show up, but nobody predicted that Maarva's holo-speech would set off a full-scale riot, further torpedoing everyone's plans and giving Cassian an opening to rescue Bix and escape.
• Beware the Nice Ones: Human teddy bear Brasso goes utterly ballistic when Captain Tigo knocks Bee over, knocking Tigo halfway across the square with a kick, tossing an Imperial soldier over his shoulder like a rag-doll and bashing another's skull in with Maarva's funerary brick, of all things.
• Bittersweet Ending: Cassian, radicalized by his imprisonment, Nemik's manifesto, and Maarva's final message, joins the Rebellion and offers Luthen his services fully — and Luthen even got to see that his hopes weren't unfounded, and that people would resist the Empire. Bix, Jezzi, Brasso, Bee, and Paak's son make it off Ferrix, but the massive riot has left many Ferrix citizens dead as a result of Maarva's speech and the usual Imperial overreaction.
• Bookends: The story takes place primarily on Ferrix, the focus of the first three episodes, and the final beat of the episode has Luthen take a speeder out of the city and across farmland to where his ship is hidden very similar to the ending of episode 3. Except now Cassian is waiting for him, and interested in learning more of this game.
• Break the Cutie: We see the end result of Bix's torture session(s?) — suffering from delirium, believing past events to have been mere dreams, uncertain if people are alive, dead, or even present, utterly terrified of anything that would anger her captors, and having great difficulty moving by herself. Cassian has to practically drag her out of the hotel by himself to a ship that would take her off-planet.
• Call-Forward:
  • Mon Mothma tells Perrin that if he has to indulge his gambling habit, he should go to Canto Bight instead of visiting the casinos on Coruscant.
  • To Rogue One; a cargo shuttle like the one that will carry Cassian to Scarif is parked at the landing port where Meero's shuttle lands, and Meero is accompanied by a pair of Death Troopers like the ones who will massacre many of Rogue One's members. Cassian guns down one of those Troopers here and will do the same to a pair of them on Scarif base.
• Can't Stop the Signal: The Imperial forces at Ferrix were hoping to catch Cassian attending the funeral, and Luthen was hoping to find Cassian himself to kill him and maintain his own anonymity. No-one expected Maarva to have recorded a speech inciting the attendees to rise against the Imperial garrison, and open fighting breaks out. The Empire sees first hand what an angry population is capable of and Luthen sees the Rebellion he was hoping to form is starting to grow.
• Character Death: A few minor characters die during the riot:
  • Xan, one of Cassian's friends, is gunned down by stormtroopers.
  • ISB spy Corv is shanked by Cinta after confronting her in a back alley.
  • Nurchi, the local to whom Cassian owed money prior to the Aldhani heist and that has turned ISB informant, is killed by shrapnel when Wilmon's IED causes secondary explosions from a small Imperial munitions cache.
• Crowd Hockey: Dedra Meero's blaster gets knocked out of her hand during the riot, and when she tries getting it back it keeps being kicked out of her reach by the rampaging crowd.
• Damsel in Distress:
  • Bix is delirious and unable to move under her own power and still locked in a hotel room when Cassian finds her. Cassian saves her and helps take her to a ship that's leaving Ferrix.
  • Dedra goes from sternly overseeing the funeral to being caught in the middle of a riot, as she gets knocked to the floor and out of reach of her gun. She is nearly torn apart by the furious crowd, until Syril comes to her rescue.
• Destination Defenestration: One stormtrooper gets kicked out of the city's bell tower during the riot on Ferrix.
• Didn't See That Coming: Every faction planning to use Maarva's funeral to draw out Cassian failed to account for all the other people who were going to attend it with their own thoughts and feelings on the subject. They also failed to consider that Cassian might not even show up for the funeral. When months of pent-up resentment over the Imperial occupation boils over into a riot, it's the end of any hope of capturing Cassian. Luthen himself simply leaves after the chaos begins.
• Diegetic Soundtrack Usage: The music played at Maarva's funeral is a brass and woodwind rendition of a leitmotif throughout the show, most commonly played in the Title Sequence.
• Dirty Coward: Captain Tigo orders the stormtroopers to open fire only after he's safe behind the line, away from the Ferrix civilians and the line of fire.
• Dramatically Missing the Point: The Empire on Ferrix is fixated on finding Cassian and Luthen, viewing them as key figures of the nascent Rebellion who must be killed before they can incite widespread revolution. As a result of their obsession with these individuals, they fail to pay much attention to an actual uprising forming by the entire population of Ferrix City, until it explodes out of control and mobs the underprepared Imperial forces by surprise. Meanwhile the targets Cassian and Luthen are little more than bystanders to the entire battle.
• Dramatic Irony:
  • The depiction of Mon's conversation with Perrin is split between showing the conversation directly and showing their chauffeur, who's an ISB spy, eavesdropping. One of the lines of dialogue experienced from the latter perspective is Perrin's confident assertion that the chauffeur can't hear a word they're saying.
  • When Cassian and Brasso reunite in the secret tunnels, Cassian tells him, resolute, that he's going to rescue Bix. Brasso asks Cassian in disbelief if he's going to take on a whole garrison and Cassian just gives him a look, because Brasso doesn't know that he has, in fact, taken on a garrison.
  • The post-credit reveals that the Narkina 5 prisoners were unknowingly building components for the Death Star's superlaser. In his own small way, Andor helped build the very weapon that will ultimately kill him on Scarif. Likewise, just as he played a small role in the Death Star's construction, he will come full circle by playing a role in its eventual destruction.
  • In "Narkina 5", Maarva fell trying to pry open the flood gates that leads to tunnels under the hotel, "so that the rebellion could sneak in and take them by surprise." Bix recounted this to Brasso, both of them obviously concerned that Maarva's new turn toward rebellion was a sign of her fading mind. In this episode, Cassian uses the exact floodgate and those tunnels to meet with Brasso and sneak into the hotel to rescue Bix, and he does indeed take the garrison by surprise.
• Drowning My Sorrows: After the riot has settled down, Mosk is seen slumped against a wall, alone, drinking something from a flask and looking very sad, whether due to the slaughter or because his old buddy Syril ditched him to run after Dedra.
• Due to the Dead: Not only does the entire city show up to give Maarva a funeral, Cassian stops by his father's brick to take a moment to honor the man who reared him.
• Dystopia Is Hard: Shown throughout the season, and pointed out by Nemik's manifesto. As he writes, "Tyranny requires constant effort," and the vast overreach of the ISB means a byzantine network of bureaucratic administration is needed to support it and is still not enough to keep people in line. Crackdowns lead to uprisings, leading to further crackdowns, etc.
• Epic Fail: When Maarva’s speech takes an incendiary tone, Prefect Tigo tries to cover up her hologram with his jacket, but he throws it on B2's projector so hastily it barely covers half the image. Not to mention doing absolutely nothing about the audio, i.e. the part actually telling people to riot. When all that fails, he resorts to knocking B2 over, which proves to be the last straw for the city.
• Evil Is Petty: As in the previous episode, Tigo continues to put arbitrary restrictions on the funeral, something he knows is fomenting resistance, even after Dedra gave it the go-ahead, seemingly just to show he can. Ferrix gets its own back by starting the funeral hours before it was officially scheduled, sending the Imperials scrambling to respond, and the procession being joined by hundreds of people across the city rather than the forty Tigo authorized (marked up from thirty after the Daughters of Ferrix pushed back).
• Fake Ultimate Mook: Two BFG-toting Death Troopers accompany Dedra to Ferrix as bodyguards. Cassian takes one out with a single shot while saving Bix, and the other is nowhere to be seen as Dedra is mobbed and nearly killed by the rioting locals.
• Feed the Mole: Suspecting that the ISB have her under suspicion, and aware that her driver is likely The Mole for them, Mon Mothma deliberately raises her husband's gambling problems in conversation within earshot of her driver. This information being passed along has the (intended) result of her recent large banking transactions possibly being attributed to covering her husband's debts, rather than their actual use of funding the nascent Rebel Alliance.
• Foreshadowing: The mourners wanted the funeral at noon, and the Imps pushed it back two hours. They also limited it to 30 people then upped it to 40 when the Daughters of Ferrix protested. The funeral instead happens at noon as planned and involves two seperate bands playing a dirge and leading a procession of hundreds of mourners into the city center.
• Framing the Guilty Party: Perrin has a gambling problem and a history of indiscretions that had to be covered up. Mon Mothma attempts to make it look like he is gambling again and her missing money was used to cover his debts.
• Gambit Pileup: The finale on Ferrix has no fewer than five factions in play at Maarva's funeral. The Empire, under Dedra Meero's supervision, wants to use the funeral as bait to trap Cassian when he comes back. Then there's Luthen and his operatives who want to kill Cassian once the Empire catches him but before they can interrogate him. Then there's Syril Karn and Sergeant Mosk, who are still trying to bring Cassian to Imperial justice for the deaths of the two Corpos in episode 1. Cassian, the ultimate target of everybody else, just wants to get his friends out of the planet. Finally, Maarva herself posthumously rallies the people of Ferrix to rise up against the Empire in her farewell holo, causing a city-wide riot that throws a wrench into everybody's plan... except Cassian's, who wisely doesn't actually go to the funeral and takes advantage of the chaos to get Bix, B2EMO, and many of his surviving friends off-the planet safely, presumably with some of the funds from the Aldhani heist. Finally, instead of fleeing with them, Cassian meets Luthen aboard his ship and offers to join the Rebellion.
• The Gambling Addict: Perrin is established as being a gambling addict in this episode. Mon Mothma harshly disapproves of it, claiming it creates a political vulnerability — and knowing that an Imperial agent is listening in, thus establishing an excuse for the money missing from her accounts.
• Gone Horribly Right: Luthen's plan at Aldhani was to push the Empire to crack down on everyone, thus inspiring resistance to the Empire and fueling the Rebellion. Here he gets caught in a riot inspired by both of those forces coming into play. Maarva, inspired by the heist on Aldhani, encourages the people of Ferrix to rise up against the Empire with her final message. The Empire, likewise inspired by Aldhani, are cracking down on the people of Ferrix at her funeral and try to stop that message, triggering a riot. Luthen gets caught in the middle of the whole mess and gets to see the results of his actions firsthand. He seems at once horrified at the actual cost and gratified that people are rising up.
• Good Is Not Soft: Mon frames her husband for her missing funds by claiming, where an ISB agent can hear, that he's gambling again. However, that only takes care of her past indiscretions, so she agrees to Davo's suggestion that they start moving forward with a betrothal between their children so she can take advantage of his criminal finances to keep laundering money in the future.
• Grievous Harm with a Body: Posthumously and somewhat indirectly. Brasso ends up using the brick into which Maarva's cremated remains have been ceremonially baked as an Improvised Weapon against a nearby Imperial agent. Considering how much she hated the Empire, it's likely that Maarva would have approved of her remains being used this way.
• Heroic BSoD: Luthen experiencing Maarva's posthumous defiant speech, then the actions of Ferrix's common civilians erupting in full defiance against the Empire, and then witnessing them suffering the consequences for their acts of genuine rebellion — all of which are exactly what he has sought all along with all of his decisions and actions to fight the Empire, but now witnessing it all happen very up close and personal — seems to have an effect on him.
• Hologram Projection Imperfection: As the hologram of Maarva addresses the people of Ferrix, it flickers and has portions glitch out at points. Justified by B2EMO being a rather old droid.
• Homage: The funeral march's confrontation against the Imperial troops leading to a street battle, invokes the demonstrators march also accompanied with musicians from Doctor Zhivago; but Inverted, in that the Czar's cossacks were expecting and ready for the demonstrators which results in a massacre, while the Imperials on Ferrix are caught off-guard and under-prepared against all the locals seething and ready to erupt and brawl. Also, just as the film's atrocity was prelude to war that would destroy the Czar/Emperor and Imperial Russia, events in Andor are prelude to war that will destroy the Galactic Empire and Emperor Palpatine.
• Home Field Advantage: In the end, both the Rebels and the Imperials are at a huge disadvantage in Ferrix, not knowing the terrain and not having the allegiance of the locals. Cassian has their affection and knows the city's secrets and can move through the city with ease.
• Improvised Weapon: Once a riot breaks out, Brasso, who was holding Maarva's brick during the funeral, knocks out a member of the Imperial garrison with it.
• I Need a Freaking Drink: Mosk is seen sitting in an alley sometime after the riot taking deep pulls from a flask.
• Irony:
  • The Empire pulls most of their forces on Ferrix to oversee the funeral procession, believing Andor is bound to show up. This causes their hotel base to be relatively abandoned save for a skeleton crew, which was Andor's real target and he is able to easily rescue Bix and escort her out.
  • Meero and Karn both converge on Maarva's funeral intending to find Andor, which they expect will then lead to the more significant and shadowy "Axis". Neither get anywhere near Andor, but both instead end up passing right near Axis himself — Luthen — on the streets without either knowing it.
• I Want Them Alive!: Dedra wanted Kreegyr and his men to be brought in alive, in order to interrogate them about Axis. She's none too pleased to learn that they were massacred, seemingly to appease the Emperor, and is therefore very insistent on Cassian being brought in alive as he's the one remaining lead she has. This backfires when a) Cassian doesn't even show up to Maarva's funeral, and b) those who do show up are far too numerous and angry for Dedra's forces to deal with properly.
• Kick the Dog: Captain Tigo covers and then overturns B2EMO to stop Maarva's recorded speech, providing the final push for the funeral mob to revolt against the Empire.
• Killed Offscreen: A scene at the ISB headquarters on Coruscant moves from Supervisor Blevin's office back to the main meeting room, where the various supervisors and Major Partagaz are celebrating the complete wipe-out of Anto Kreegyr's much-mentioned rebel cell.
• Kill Me Now, or Forever Stay Your Hand: At the end, Cassian confronts Luthen, telling him he knows he came to Ferrix to kill him — and that he can either do so now or recruit him into the Rebellion.
  Cassian: You came here to kill me, didn't you?
  Luthen: You don't make it easy.
  Cassian: I will now.
  Luthen: [pauses, then picks up Cassian's gun] What game is this?
  Cassian: No game. Kill me. Or take me in.
• Know When to Fold 'Em: Rather than get involved in the melee at the riot, Luthen walks back off through the city to his speeder bike, and with it back to his parked ship.
• Laser-Guided Karma: Nurchi, who tips Meero, Tigo and the Imperials off to Andor's roof-hiding space ends up getting killed by Wilmon's bomb strike on the Imperials. Averted by the officers Wilmon targeted surviving, though not unscathed.
• Liberty Over Prosperity: Ferrix's main economy is the scrapyard where spaceships are broken up and sold for parts. The town is working class, but prosperous enough for most to be comfortable, helped by taking money from anyone — including the Empire. Even when the garrison moved in, the town's business went on as usual, despite the Imperial troopers kidnapping and torturing its citizens and general dissatisfaction with the occupation. Maarva's posthumous speech calls out the town's complacency and rouses the Powder Keg Crowd into a full-on riot.
• Meaningful Funeral: Maarva's obviously, having been a well respected and beloved member of her community. Her farewell warrants a large funeral with a crowd and marching band.
• Mythology Gag: The Disney+ description for the episode refers to Ferrix as "a tinderbox that is experiencing a spark of rebellion", no coincidence given what series Andor takes place simultaneously with.
• Neutral No Longer:
  • Having spent most of season 1 ping-ponging back and forth on his views of the Rebellion, Cassian is finally swayed by Nemik's manifesto, his imprisonment on Narkina 5, what the Imperials have done to Ferrix, and Maarva's speech, and offers his services to the Rebellion without any hesitation.
  • In Maarva's speech, she calls out the fact that the residents of Ferrix themselves have spent too long keeping their heads down to survive the Imperial occupation, happy to be left alone and take Imperial money — even after the garrison moved in and started torturing locals. It takes her speech to galvanise them to finally take action and fight.
• Nice Job Fixing It, Villain:
  • Cassian learns that the Empire has imprisoned Bix and is interrogating her for information about him. This serves as the final straw for him, and he begins reading Nemik's manifesto, and subsequently commits wholeheartedly to the Rebel cause.
  • Meero's insistence on capturing Cassian alive drives her to remove the snipers her subordinates had assigned on rooftops. This means the roofs aren't guarded and nobody but one traitorous local notices Cassian, who is indeed hiding atop one of the buildings and is free to observe his surroundings before making his move. Her insistence on minimal use of force so that Andor isn't killed accidentally also allows Maarva's speech, though obviously treasonous, to be played nearly in its entirety and incite the crowd.
  • Tigo tips over B2 in an attempt to cut off Maarva's posthumous holo-speech, only for the act to absolutely enrage the crowd and ignite a riot.
• Off-the-Shelf FX: The machine parts that Clem and a young Cassian are restoring together in the flashback scene appear to be cheap heatsinks used for computer processors in desktop personal computers.
• Only Sane Employee: Meero is the only one to point out that it would have been useful to take captives from Anto Kreegyr's group rather than massacring them to the last. Partagaz doesn't completely disagree with her, but was more concerned with "wiping the taste of Aldhani out of the Emperor's mouth" than taking captives for interrogation. Considering how cruel and evil the Emperor is and how he can eliminate or replace the Imperial bureaucracy and enforcers as he sees fit, Partagaz may view the potential loss of intelligence as a necessary sacrifice just to make sure Palpatine doesn't decide to do a purge of ISB or replace it with a new department.
• Percussive Maintenance: While prepping a derelict ship to escape in, Pegla has Jezzi hit the gauges to get them to show the actual fuel level when they stay on empty even after the tanks have been filled.
• Pet the Dog: Meero manages to express something approximating genuine gratitude through her panic after Syril manages to rescue her from the riot, despite her having warned him off involving himself in ISB affairs multiple times.
• Powder Keg Crowd: The townsfolk coming together for Maarva's funeral, already frustrated by the Imperial occupation, all look inspired and ready to take action by Maarva's Rousing Speech. Then Captain Tigo has to tip Bee over.
• Precision F-Strike: Near the end of Maarva's speech, she puts particular emotion and enthusiastic emphasis into calling the Empire "bastards".
• Preserve Your Gays: Despite a massive riot resulting in the deaths of many civilians (a riot which Vel literally ran into during the early stages of the riot), and Cinta having a one-on-one confrontation with ISB spy Corv, both Vel and Cinta end up surviving the episode to continue fighting for the Rebellion... though their relationship might not survive Cinta's intensifying devotion to the Rebellion.
• Properly Paranoid: Just the sight of Luthen lurking in Ferrix during Maarva's funeral at the same time the massive Imperial trap waits for Andor convinces Cassian (correctly) that Luthen's only reason for being there at the same time would be to find and kill him before the Empire could interrogate him.
• Rank Scales with Asskicking: Completely averted with Dedra Meero. She is a high-ranking Imperial intelligence officer, which means her job primarily consists of administrative duties and sifting through large amounts of data. When she is thrust into a combat situation with a gun in her hand against an unarmed civilian mob, she proves completely ineffective.
• Recruit the Muggles: In the season one finale, a neighborhood of Ferrix residents from many walks of life (mechanics, doctor, watchman, bellringer, etc.) who are among the people the Rebel Alliance is trying to free from the Empire's tyranny end up rising up to fight back against the local garrison at a time when it is threatening the rebel heroes.
• The Reveal: It turns out that Andor, Melshi, Kino Loy, Ulaf, and the other prisoners on Narkina 5 were building connectors for the lens of the Death Star's superlaser.
• Right Under Their Noses: The whole reason Dedra wants to capture Cassian alive is to use him to find "Axis", but she is completely unaware that Axis himself (Luthen) is also in town.
• Rousing Speech: Maarva's holographic Video Will reminds the people of Ferrix that while they have each other, the Empire is an overwhelming evil that must be fought no matter what. Even Luthen seems moved by Maarva's words.
• Rule of Symbolism: Beloved citizens of Ferrix are cremated and have their ashes backed into a funeral stone, a brick that's added to the wall of a building. They're part of the foundation of their community and honored as a permanent part of the city.
• Spanner in the Works: The Empire, Luthen and his agents, Syril and Mosk all have their own plans to use Maarva's funeral to trap Cassian. All of their plans are foiled by none other than... Maarva herself, whose last message rallies the people of Ferrix into causing a city-wide riot that allows Cassian to help his friends escape Ferrix while he enlists in the Rebellion.
• Spark of the Rebellion: Twofold:
  • The people of Ferrix rise up against the Imperial forces en masse after Maarva's funeral — prompted by the post-mortem airing of her pre-recorded speech encouraging them to rise up against the Empire — and give many of the Imperials a good thrashing in the process.
  • Cassian corners Luthen at the end of the episode, telling him to either kill him or let him join the Rebellion. Given that Cassian is Saved by Canon, no prizes for correctly guessing what Luthen decides to do with him.
• Spy Versus Spy: Cinta quickly realized that Corv is an ISB spy, and Corv seems to be catching on that Cinta is one for the Rebellion. Cinta stalks Corv during the rio and stabs him to death the moment he finally has her within reach.
• The Stinger: A scene after the credits reveals that the devices that the Narkina 5 prisoners were forced to build are parts for the Death Star's laser.
• Stock Scream: Played with. A bell keep is helping to motivate the riot by ringing their war cry, a stormtrooper comes out of the floor in an attempt to stop him and is punted off the tower for his troubles, screaming on the way down. Functionally it is the Wilhelm Scream (a longstanding Star Wars tradition), but either a new recording done as an homage or was pitch-shifted down to not be the exact scream.
• Stuff Blowing Up: Plenty of it on Rix Road, starting when Wilmon Paak tosses a homemade bomb at an Imperial vehicle, destroying it and sending cases of grenades tumbling, which also go off in rapid succession.
• Throw the Dog a Bone:
  • After going through absolute hell, Bix is saved by Cassian and evacuated off-planet with a number of other friends from Ferrix, including Brasso and B2EMO.
  • After spending the whole season going from one humiliation to another, Syril actually does something competent when he saves Dedra's life and gets genuine gratitude from her.
• Traveling at the Speed of Plot: Having deduced Luthen came to Ferrix to kill him, Cassian finds Luthen's ship and gets there before Luthen himself at the end of the episode.
• Use Your Head: Brasso downs a helmeted stormtrooper with a hard headbutt.
• Villainous Breakdown:
  • Captain Tigo loses it after he manages to crawl out of the rioting, brawling crowd and get back behind the Imperial lines to order a counterattack.
  • Dedra Meero follows suit by getting too close to the melee, knocked to the ground with her blaster tumbling out of her reach, and is nearly torn apart by the Ferrixians. She only escapes death because Syril Karn dashes in and drags her to safety, and even then she's still in a state of near panic until it dawns on her that she's safe again.
• Villainous Rescue: Syril saves Dedra during the riot after she gets knocked by an object thrown in her direction and she's grabbed by a couple of rioting civilians.
• Voiceover Letter: A literal example. Nemik's manifesto is at least partly a voice recording, so Cassian reading Nemik's manifesto is portrayed as Nemik narrating it over the scene.
• We Are Everywhere: A heroic version is mentioned in Nemik's manifesto:
  "Random acts of insurrections are occurring constantly throughout the galaxy. There are whole armies, battalions that have no idea that they've already enlisted in the cause. Remember that the frontier of the Rebellion is everywhere. And even the smallest act of insurrection pushes our lines forward."
• When He Smiles: After a season's worth of fake smiles as his antique's dealer front, we finally get to see Luthen crack a genuine smile when Cassian says that he's willing to join the cause.
• Where It All Began: Karn and Mosk return to Ferrix, where the botched operation to capture Cassian cost them their careers, for basically a second try at bringing him to justice. Circumstances mean they get nowhere near him, but Karn finally succeeds at something and saves Dedra's life.
• Wounded Gazelle Gambit: Cinta plays up being cornered and fearful when Corv catches up to her, to shank him after luring him into an alley.
• You Killed My Father: Paak's son Wilmon constructs a bomb and pitches it at the Imperials during the rioting to avenge his father's killing. While the explosions killed many and Wilmon safely escaped with Cassian and the others' help, his strike failed to get either of the main instigators of Paak's death, Meero and Captain Tigo.

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