Andor – Season 1 Episode 7 “Announcement” Recap & Review

Announcement

Episode 7 of Andor starts with Syril trying to stave off his mother’s nagging. However, he’s snapped to attention by news spreading across the empire of the Aldhani raid. He takes this with him while he heads for a job at the Bureau of Standards.

The Empire works swiftly, enacting new rules with immediate effect. There’s a tribute tax equal to five times the amount stolen from Aldhani to be levied on any sector harboring partisan activity. The use of any place as cover for rebel activity will also trigger massive repercussions for those keeping them safe.

Furthermore, The Emperor is going to be convening an emergency session with the Senate to propose a package of bills and amendments that will help free their hands in matters of surveillance and seizures. They’ll also be invoking the Public Order Resentencing Directive as well, PORD for short. Any criminal act is also going to be cracked down and outstanding fines need to be paid in full too.

Mon Mothma shows up to see Luthen in the morning, shocked to learn he’s the one responsible for the attack on Aldhani. He originally told her it was just going to be a “network”, but this is too far for Mothma. Luthen bites back, telling her there’s no rules going forward. They also need every credit they can get their hands on.

The obviously can’t do this alone and Mothma is meticulous over who she tries to recruit to the cause, keeping things quiet and making sure Perrin is none the wiser either.

While all this is going on, Andor returns to Maarva and B2EMO following the Aldhani raid. Maarva warns that Ferrix is under Imperial authority now and as such, he really shouldn’t be there. They’re there to stay and everything has come undone. Andor though excitedly brings up the sheer amount of credits he has and decides they should get out the system and find somewhere to go together. Maarva is rattled and conflicted, deciding they should wait until the morning.

The thing is, Andor isn’t welcome in the system anymore. Bix points out that he’s caused chaos to descend on their planet and she reminds him that he killed 2 corpo guards to start this whole mess. It’s a bitter pill to swallow but after handing over the 12k credits he owes, he heads back home.

After evading stormtroopers, Andor returns to Maarva’s. She’s decided not to go with him after all. She’s staying on Ferrix. She’s decided to be part of the Rebellion and the recent rounds of bills, not to mention the Aldhani raid, have pushed her to boldness.

Andor isn’t sure it’s a good idea and worried about the repercussions. However, every rebellion needs a spark and this raid is the start of what we know to be the rebel alliance.

Dedra speaks up at the next Imperial council meeting, spilling whatshe’s kept bottled up for a while. She points out that this Aldhani raid was part of a focused rebel effort to acquire highly-restricted Imperial components. By accessing Sector Crime Reports, she can actually prove a link between the theft of their equipment and the distribution across rebel groups.

She also throws Blevin under the bus too, and gets some praise from Partagaz for taking the initiative. When he walks with her Outside, he mutters quietly “Watch your back.”

On the planet of Niamos, Andor is living it up, with a new alias under the name of Keef. The thing is, the Empire have stretched far and wide, and he’s stopped by a couple of Shoretroopers who believe he’s part of the rebel group. Keef/Andor is arrested, and thrown in lock-up for six years. What was originally a six month sentence is now far stricter, and things don’t look good.

The Episode Review

The fall-out from the Aldhani Raid is now being felt and boy are there going to be repercussions. As we know, if you corner a caged animal, at some point it’s going to lash out and that much seems to be true with this rebel alliance.

The Aldhani Raid has started the Rebel Alliance as we now know it’s going to become, although this chapter is pretty slow overall. That’s perhaps to be expected, especially after last week’s action-packed chapter but I stand by the fact this series should have dropped more than one episode at a time.

Either way though, this is another decent chapter, and one that starts the set the scene politically for what should be an intriguing second half to this season.