One of the captivating things about Andor's tonal grief is the places we never go back to.
Once Cass & friends leave Ferrix, we never see it again. Kenari, Aldhani, Narkina, and most hauntingly Ghorman- once the characters leave, there's no going back.
The excellent production design made these places tactile, vivid, real. And then, once the characters survive the horrors and count their dead, the places are left behind. And we grieve them just the same. When Cassian and Vel toast to their lost, they toast to Ferrix, the Dhanis and Aldhani itself.
Star Wars is a franchise that struggles to leave just about anything behind, its places among them. How many times have we returned to Tatooine, somehow the most galactically important middle-of-nowhere? It's evident in the RotJ special edition and TRoS celebration montages, and in the countless video games, comics, and series that keep finding contrived ways to return to the same five-or-so planets, even those presented as specifically backwater or secluded.
But Andor makes us familiar with these spaces, planets, peoples and cultures, and lets their stories end in potent uncertainty. And it's more powerful than seeing what became of them. Cassian's life and story is one of constant displacement and motion. We feel it.
It all comes to mind as I face my own displacement from a location and community that I loved and hoped to be able return to. My path ahead will be a change, but it looks stable. It's not the end of the world, or of my world, but it is an ending. The nooks and crannies and oddities I'll never see again. The faces and names that might be sequestered to memory. There's a bell you'd ring to mark the end of your time there, and I never did get to ring it myself.
Sisyphus learns to push a new boulder. One always finds one's burden again.
Cassian's ashes will never be bricked.
Bail bids the force be with him.
Can't toast them all, can we?
