Matthew Stover in ROTS novelization: This story happened a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. It is already over; nothing can be done to change it.
I’m back on my occasional longer Andor meta bullshit, and while I’m more active for this sort of thing over on Reddit these days I thought this might be of interest over here … plus, I can use some of the lovely gifs! 🙏
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Where Cassian Andor needs to be: an interpretation of the Force healer scene
Introduction and thesis
I’m a big fan of this scene, especially as I had been nervous as to how they would introduce the Force into this very grounded series. Even so, I have read a few takes that don’t like it and for a very sound reason: in a story about everyday people making a difference, why does the Force healer appear to single out Cassian as some kind of special individual with an herioc destiny? She says that he “has some place he needs to be,” and for those of us who know Rogue One that place would appear to be Scarif, and perhaps specifically at the top of the tower at the end when it would seem that all hope is lost: shooting Krennic just in time to save Jyn and the Rebellion at large.
Did the Force healer see this as a vision of the future? That Cassian as a ‘Messenger” will literally help send the most important message of his life one day? Maybe, but I want to propose an alternative or perhaps supplemental interpretation of this scene.
Thesis, please…
“The Force healer doesn’t see the future so much as sense emotions in the present. What appears to be a prophecy is an assessment of character. The Force may be guiding her in this, but she is acting on what she knows now. She is sensing something of what Maarva in season 1 and Bix in season 2 already knew about Cassian, and the ‘place he needs to be’ is as much metaphorical as literal.”
Continued below
The details of the scene.
Cassian has a blaster burn that is not healing, and one evening Bix tricks him into visiting a woman who works in the kitchens but who provides what we’d probably call faith-healing or alternative medicine clinics after hours (this seems to be a free service). Most of the time she makes no difference to her patients’ ailments, but “sometimes it even works”. The Force healer senses Cassian from a distance and he is immediately spooked by this, and even more so when she correctly identifies exactly where his wound is. She then attempts to heal it… and thanks him “For the clarity”, saying that “It’s been a very long time” and that she had thought her Force sensitivity had gone for good. She then asks if Cassian has felt it, his “strength of spirit… all that you’ve been gathering. Surely you must feel it? ”. Really unnerved by now, Cassian expresses deep cynicism, genuine irritation at Bix for subjecting him to this woo-woo stuff and snarks “I’ll work on that, I’ll let you know,” and exits in a very dark mood.
Bix knows him well and correctly identifies the source of his anger: he’s frightened. “You scared him… that’s not easy to do,” Bix observes. Alone now the two women discuss what happened. The healer then asks who he is and is told that he’s a pilot and soldier - so, no-one particularly special.
Then comes the key part of the scene. Bix says “Tell me what you saw”.
Force healer: “I sense the weight of things. Things I cannot see. Pain, fear, need.”
She explains that most beings are shaped by the past but that “some, very few, your pilot” are “gathering as they go”.
She concludes with: “He’s a Messenger. There’s some place he needs to be. Maybe you’re the place he needs to be.”
Analysis
1. The Force healer’s powers
I think the key here is that she identifies her abilities according to being able to sense three key feelings: “Pain, fear, need”. I think she demonstrates her ability with every one of these in this scene.
Pain. Quite literally, she can tell where Cassian is feeling pain: his right shoulder. I think she can ‘see’ it there, sense a flux in the Force. Perhaps the healing gesture with her hand is to try to rebalance the Force in that precise location. The fact that Cassian was in pain was shown by his being unable to rotate his arm. Bix chastised him for trying to “pretend nothing’s wrong”, adding that if she were in pain she would try anything that might help. Either way, the crucial thing for the viewer is that whatever exactly happens, it works. Cassian is seen rotating his arm fully in the next scene and staring at the burn in a mirror where it looks visibly less red than in the opening scene of the episode.
Fear. As Bix says, it isn’t easy to frighten Cassian. But we’ve seen before exactly what he does fear: loss He fears being someone who leaves people behind. And at this stage of the story the thing he fears losing the most is Bix, and that chance of happiness together. What is frightening to him about this encounter is that he very much resists the idea that he still has some part to play that might necessitate giving up their relationship, especially just when she has finally left the worst of her trauma behind, and they have very likely been tempted to contemplate longer term plans for the future.
Need This is the interesting one: “There’s some place he needs to be” says the healer, so she senses need in that sense. But I think she might sense need in Cassian too. So what does Cassian himself need here? The Force healer doesn’t seem to know. She says hesitantly to Bix “Maybe you’re the place he needs to be,” but it seems that Bix isn’t convinced by that - quite the opposite. I’ll come back to this one.
2. What does the Force healer mean by calling Cassian a ‘Messenger’?
Messengers in the healer’s description are apparently rare but not unique. Obviously, we know that Cassian has been taking literal messages across the experiences of his life: Nemik’s manifesto, the truth about Narkina 5, in all the missions for Luthen etc etc. Each one of these is spreading the word of rebellion (often through his ability simply to survive and therefore spread word of atrocities) and leading up to the stealing of the Death Star plans, eventually to be transmitted to the Rebel fleet and Leia.
But I don’t think the Force healer sees these details. I don’t think she knows that he has or will be carrying literal messages.
In short, I think it’s more about who Cassian is rather than what exactly he will do.
A ‘Messenger’ in the healer’s sense seems to be more about a person who ‘gathers’ as they move through life, ie. profoundly changes, and ultimately improves in some way, every time they have a key experience. “All that you’ve been gathering” is after all linked to her observation about his character - “the strength of spirit” she says immediately afterwards - rather than something more literal. But the ‘message’ is crucial because the person he has become through these experiences will enable him to have a profound effect on people he meets, from Vel on Aldhani, Melshi in Narkina 5, Niya the young Sienar engineer at the start of s2… and likewise for others to have a profound effect on him. For example, he listens to Nemik’s manifesto in the wake of Narkina 5; he wasn’t really ready before but now he has indeed become Nemik’s “ideal reader”. And those who know him best see him slowly become the man he could always have been had circumstances in his early life been kinder and he had not turned away from fighting back simply because it hurt so much. This role was dominated by Maarva in season 1, and in season 2 it’s taken on by Bix.
The Force healer was inspired by Whoopi Goldberg’s character in Ghost - a fake clairvoyant whose genuine powers are awakened by the presence of a real ghost. So in that sense there’s definitely *something* about Cassian. Perhaps she can feel that the Force is with him, not to make him a Force user or even Force sensitive. But if it’s all about restoring balance, perhaps there’s a reason why she feels something so strongly here. Even if he’s more Force-used than Force-user.
The impact on Bix and the consequences of her faith in Cassian and the Force
The whole scene is a really moving one, especially on a rewatch as it’s possible to pinpoint it as the moment when Bix realises that she will probably have to make a choice for Cassian, that the need for him by the rebellion and the galaxy is more important than her own desire for the life with him they’d always wanted. It’s also really on-the-nose when the Force healer’s hand touches Bix’s, held over her belly. A hint at the child who Cassian will never know about because if he did the galaxy is doomed to Imperial oppression, and that child’s own future with it.
It’s possible to read Bix’s choice as extremely cruel and prescriptive, removing Cassian’s agency and forcing him to commit to the cause that will ultimately kill him, well-intentioned though the choice might be. Two things about that. Firstly, - yes, that’s kind of the point. “We’ve all done terrible things on behalf of the Rebellion,” Cassian tells Jyn in Rogue One, and the post-Andor reading includes all our new characters who have done some pretty shitty things for the cause. And this is one of them. Moral choices that would be repugnant in normal cases become far more complex when made in a time of war. Secondly, there is a very good case for saying that Bix - like Maarva before her - knows Cassian (“I don’t remember not knowing him”, she poignantly says when asked how long she’s known him), perhaps knows him better than he knows himself. Maarva’s last words for him included the assurance that one day when his reason and emotion pull together “he will be an unstoppable force for good”. In her message, Bix echoes this with “we have to beat them, and I believe you have a purpose in making that happen”.
Could any of these three women see the future? Maybe, but I don’t think it’s essential and you might prefer the interpretation that they don’t, or at least not the details of it. But I think the ‘need’ the Force healer speaks of could quite simply be Cassian’s need to be a rebel. His need to fight these bastards, to bring them down or die trying. “I’ve been in this fight since I was six years old!” he will tell Jyn, and there’s no lie there… his commitment levels, however, have wavered throughout, and after the hell of Ghorman he just wants out. And who can possibly blame him.
The different meanings of ‘Need’
Cassian's poignant last scene with Bix opens with her saying that he “needs to sleep” as she gives him the Space!Sleepy-time tea. (she needs him to sleep too, to be able to do this, because she knows the power of persuasion he has over her). He tiredly teases, “Is that what I need?” But it turns out that Bix knows another thing that he needs.
“We have what we need,” Cassian says after telling her (not giving her a choice about this, I notice!) that they are leaving for “somewhere quiet” in the morning. But she doesn’t believe him, any more than she believes his next words, that “The only special thing about me is luck”. As far as Bix is concerned, there’s no such thing as luck. She is now a believer in the Force and has faith also that there is some place Cassian needs to be, and he needs to get there before they can ever be together…
…because she knows that if he did abandon the Rebellion for her, he would not be in the place he needs to be. We know that there’s a literal meaning, because we know about Rogue One, but Bix doesn’t. But I do think that Bix believes that there is a particular purpose for which he is needed but *also* knows that at the end of the day… he would not be happy if they ran away together to that “somewhere quiet”. After all, he wasn’t happy before when he tried this, even before he was a committed rebel. On Niamos, he seems miserable and apathetic, adrift and without purpose, as he’s apparently been for years recently on Ferrix. Bix knew him when he was like that - gave up on hopes of a relationship with him because he was so deeply uncommitted to anything. Or, more accurately, trying to convince himself that he didn’t care about anything.
But now, Cassian would be haunted with the knowledge that he could have saved people. That he could have made a difference. That he turned away from a cause greater than himself and his own needs.
Casablanca (1942) is the big influence here, according to the Andor s2,eps 7-9 writer Dan Gilroy. Spoiler, just in case you haven’t seen this classic: … When heroine Isla thinks that she’s about to abandon her war hero husband and with him the Cause, choosing instead to stay with her lover Rick, in the famous final scene at the airfield Rick tricks her into thinking she’ll be staying behind with him. She’s distraught when she realises the betrayal, but he tells her he had done the thinking for the both of them and had decided that her place was with the Cause. And that she will eventually realise this: “If you’re not on that plane with Victor, you’ll regret it. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but soon - and for the rest of your life.” Like Bix with Cassian, he decides that not only does the cause require this sacrifice but that soon enough Ilsa will realise it. So he, like Bix, “chooses for the both of us” because like Bix he knows Ilsa well and loves her enough to be able to want her to do the right thing and be … in the place she needs to be. Literally and metaphorically. Casablanca ends here but in Andor we see the impact of the words: a year later and Cassian is prioritising the cause, poignantly deferring any reconnection with Bix, ostensibly because of the risk to her safety but also, most likely, because he now believes that she was right and fully respects that choice.
Cassian’s little nod at the Force healer in the final montage can also be seen as a way of saying “You were right. There is something more to me than luck. I have a purpose - something I need to do. A place I need to be.”
But most importantly, the place he need to be is - right here. In the Rebellion. Ready to sacrifice everything, including his life, should it comes to that.
He’s a man with a purpose. He’s a force for good; unstoppable, except by death.
In this sense alone, the Force is with him.
Conclusion/TLDR
As far as the characters themselves are concerned, Cassian isn’t necessarily a special chosen one with a mystical pre-destined journey that is glimpsed in visions of the future. Instead, he’s a man whose path through life is made through choices - his own and others, and this is what can be seen as the Force guiding his journey. He’s not just where he needs to be literally at the end - he’s also the best possible version of himself: a man with a purpose, giving everything for the Cause. Burning his life to make a sunrise he’ll never see - but the next generation, including his own child, will.
the thing that you HAVE to understand about much ado about nothing is that beatrice and benedick are NOT COOL. they are HUGE DORKS and also major softies. they make everything loud and obnoxious and about themselves because they are SO hurt about what happened in the past between them and SO sensitive about it. Beatrice says this more explicitly but it’s also true about benedick. he gets legitimately so upset and angry when he thinks beatrice doesn’t know who he is at the party and she calls him a dumbass. he storms off stage when he sees her next. because he’s hurt!!! because it really really matters to him what she thinks!!!! and right after that Beatrice literally talks about how Benedick “lent [her his heart] awhile, and I gave him use for it, a double heart for his single one. Marry, once before he won it of me with false dice” HE BETRAYED HER and she’s STILL UPSET. “thus goes everyone to the world but I, and I am sunburnt” she is not railing against marriage because she’s principled against it or because she’s Strong Female Character (tm). she’s sunburnt!!! she loved benedick more than he loved her and she’s still torn up about it!!!! she would rather never deal with that again!!! which is what you have to understand here. they are putting up fronts that they don’t care all the time. they are putting of fronts of Cool Mean Witty Remark Girl and Living It Up As A Bachelor Dude but this is not who they are in ANY way and they are both so sensitive and get hurt so easily!!!!!! and this is why they almost don’t get together this is why they almost take it all back in the last scene!!! they can’t be vulnerable! they can’t risk it! it’s easier to be Cool Mean Witty Remark Girl than just Beatrice who got her heart broken and now can’t trust anymore. it’s easier to be Living It Up As A Bachelor Dude when you blew it with the girl you’re obsessed with and you survived war just to go back to her after you broke her heart and she calls you a dumbass to your face. the vulnerability necessary to their relationship only happens through their friends but otherwise they are actually hopeless. it is so so important to me that these two are both incredibly sappy losers
I cannot believe guy ritchie made me go back to my holmesian roots again but here I am in the year 2026 falling in love with these characters all over again sdhjks
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