Star Wars Somehow Makes Rogue One's Perfect Ending Even Better

Screen Rant

By Corey Larson

Published Nov 11, 2022

Cassian and Jyn’s sacrifice in Rogue One: A Star Wars Story gets a whole new meaning after Luthen's Andor episode 10 line, making it even better.

Warning! SPOILERS for Andor episode 10.Andor episode 10 featured a line from Luthen Rael that brought new meaning to the end of Rogue One: A Star Wars Story. While speaking with Lonni Jung, Luthen says that he burns his life to make a sunrise he knows he will never see. Cassian and Jyn’s epic robbery of the Death Star plans from a highly secured Imperial base embodies exactly the kind of bold defiance that Luthen always dreamed of.

Despite the fact that Andor changed the timeline for the Rebel Alliance and its formation, the core message of the Rebellion has remained the same. Luthen figuratively burns his life for someone else’s future, just as Cassian and Jyn literally burn in order to come one step closer to overthrowing the Empire. The end of Rogue One isn’t technically a sunrise, but the iconic explosion that consumes Cassian and Jyn on Scarif represents the culmination of Luthen’s work for the Rebellion: their sacrifice at the end of the movie is only made richer knowing that dozens of other Rebels—like Luthen—had sacrificed so much before them.

Andor Makes Rogue One Better In A Lot Of Ways

Rogue One focused on fleshing out a specific aspect of A New Hope—how the Rebellion got a hold of the Death Star plans. Meanwhile, the job of Andor is to flesh out the new characters that Rogue One presented. Andor has foreshadowed its character’s fates since the beginning, but it also deepens the audience’s understanding of why the Rogue One squadron even came about. Crucial Rogue One characters like Ruescott Melshi and Saw Gerrera are given more history on why they're in the Rebellion. Cassian is obviously given a far more complicated backstory in Andor than Rogue One—which only scratched the surface of how far he will go for the Rebellion.

Andor is plagued with good characters being forced to make difficult decisions; decisions that are meant to change and grow each character for the better. Perhaps the biggest character from the original trilogy character that Andor is fleshing out is Mon Mothma. Andor episode 10 hints at a dark twist for the Mothma family in that Mon may have to betroth her own daughter to the shady son of Davo Sculdun. It’s astounding to see how much she has changed by the time Rogue One happens. She goes from being a secret Rebel funder to the leader of the Alliance’s operations.

Andor Avoids A Prequel Problem (While Improving Rogue One)

Rogue One was a prequel and led perfectly into A New Hope. But even as a prequel, it stood alone on its own as a thrilling heist movie of how the Rebellion managed to steal the Death Star plans. Similarly, Andor is a prequel to Rogue One in that it’s meant to flesh out its characters and lead up to it. Andor does not exist solely to provide backstory to Rogue One—just like Rogue One does not exist solely to provide backstory to A New Hope. Luthen’s speech on the Rebellion to Lonni proves why Andor’s characters stand on their own without relying on Rogue One: A Star Wars Story.