Andor has given us oppression, revolution, spy craft, politics, heartache, and romance. Strongly hinted at in Season 1, Cassian and Bix’s relationship fully blossoms in Season 2, even providing one of the biggest payoffs of the entire series.
This now retroactively helps justify (explain?) the absolute lack of romance in Rogue One between Cassian and Jyn Erso. Aside from a furtive look in an elevator shortly before they both died at the end of that film, the characters at no point explored anything romantic between them.
Series creator and writer Tony Gilroy (he also did re-writes on Rogue) addresses this with Collider:
“I knew very well what had happened with Jyn and Cassian in Rogue One and what had happened in the elevator. I knew that scene very, very well. I probably went back and looked at that. I was pleased to see that my memory of it was of all the other takes and other things, and I was really pleased to see how we’d edited that, that it was really ambiguous about what it was, and then I didn’t care anymore. I was like, ‘Okay. It makes sense.’”
Andor, more than any other Star Wars story, depicts its characters in a more mature and realistic manner. Gilroy continued to explain how he approached Bix and Cassian’s on-again-off-again relationship, saying:
“I mean, they’re both pretty sexually liberated in their way. I think that first kiss they had, I think the first person they ever slept with is each other. Who knows how old they were on Ferrix? Probably very, very young. And over time, they were together and not together. Timm starts off the show, and who’s in charge of that relationship, right?
Cassian certainly has a rich history in just the little bit we see, and has alluded to, and his mother calls him out on all his girlfriends, and there’s Windi on Niamos. I think they have a very healthy idea of what the different calibrations of love are.”
Rogue One has many fans, and it’s easy to imagine some of them dreaming about a would-be romance between its two heroes. Gilroy, by his handling of Cassian’s love life in Andor, essentially eliminated any possibility of romance between Cassian and Jyn.
“I felt bad for the people who had invested so much time in the fan fiction and stuff like that. The people who really had gone deep on it. It’s not considered canon, and it’s not something I have to pay attention to, legally, within the order, but people worked hard on that stuff, and it meant a lot to them. You don’t want to trample on somebody’s flower garden, you know? But I have to do what I have to do. I’m sure there’s somebody who will never get over that. I apologize. I really do.”
Star Diego Luna (who played Cassian), also speaking with Collider, spoke further about the relationship between his character and Bix:
“It is a very romantic second season. I mean, Tony is such a sarcastic and sharp guy with so much humor, vision, and critical perspective. But, also, he brought so much romance — so much love — as the core of most of these characters.”
In what was one of the most heartbreaking events in all of Andor, Bix chooses to leave Cassian, purportedly, so he can focus on his duties to the Rebellion. She does not tell him about the child, their child, that she is carrying. Diego talks about this and what was going through Cassian’s mind:
“During that moment where he has to defend Luthen in front of everyone — and this whole idea of what the beginning of Rogue One is, he has to prove right. He has to make sure what Luthen is saying is heard, and he has to find out, also, that it’s true. He believes fully in those words and in what Kleya said, but he has to prove it, and he has to see it. He’s not thinking any more ahead.”
Audiences are left with the impression that Cassian intended to reach out to Bix, had he lived. Luna confirms this:
“For me, that relationship is everything. It’s beyond what — at my age — I can call love. This is the first friend, the love of his life, the first kiss, the first person who was there when he did something wrong. She’s his home, his country. It is as vast and as rich as possible. That relationship is everything for him. It’s the last thing that connects him with the past. She is basically the only stamp of who he is. There’s no one else, you know, there’s no one else.”
He further elaborates how Bix was everything to Cassian. He discusses a scene in episode 4, in the safe house, where the two characters dance:
“There is no connection like the one they have. I think that dance says it really nicely. Obviously, if he ever has an opportunity to think for a second about himself, she will be part of that thought. Because there is no him without her.”
In a show that highlights and revolves around the sacrifices characters made in their efforts to fight the Empire, the Cassian-Bix romance raises the stakes even higher. It makes each sacrifice more difficult to endure.
“You can’t understand sacrifice without hope. And in this season, hope is there because love is around. I don’t think before these four years, you ever get to see Cassian experiencing love. When we find him in the first season, he’s in a very cynical perspective and position. He’s incapable of actually loving and completely opening for someone.”
In the end, literally the show’s last scene, we see Bix holding her and Cassian’s baby, putting an exclamation point on Cassian’s sacrifice.
All episodes of Andor are streaming on Disney Plus.
In 1977, Rob waited on line with his older sister for Star Wars and he has been experiencing and dreaming about the franchise ever since. A lifelong New Yorker, he is married with two grown daughters. And he anxiously awaits for that time once again, when the houselights dim and those magic words appear: “a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away…”
source: www.starwarsnewsnet.com