Andor’s incredible first season has come to a close with a fittingly great episode, but it had one more surprise to reveal after the credits. While most of this show has remained (relatively) free of Easter eggs, the finale engages in some tried-and-true Disney teasing with a post-credits scene that seems like it will be key to the show’s second season, which means you should definitely stick around to watch it.
But in case you’ve already seen it, or are just looking for the short version, here’s what happens after the credits in Andor’s season 1 finale.
[Ed. note: This post contains spoilers for Andor season 1.]
The second to last arc of Andor’s first season sees Cassian trapped in an Imperial prison factory where he and his fellow inmates are tasked with monotonously building the same pieces over and over again — at least until they break out. We get the sense that it’s all in service of some giant unknown project, and while we certainly had a few guesses at the time, the show didn’t confirm what they were working on until season 1’s credits rolled. But we now know that the pieces Cassian has been constructing are for nothing less than the Death Star itself.
As the credits fade out, a close-up of a machine in the middle of space fades in. In fittingly Andor fashion, the shot starts by focusing on a small droid welding a piece into place on a larger metal sheet (a nice parallel to the episode’s opening bomb-making) before pulling back to reveal hundreds of droids doing the same thing all along the surface of the mystery spaceship. Finally, we get a shot of the entire project and the Death Star is revealed, with its massive laser cannon still under construction — and just so happening to look a lot like Andor’s opening titles and logo.
While the scene is clear in its intention, Andor creator and showrunner Tony Gilroy gave Polygon a few other details about how the reveal came to be.
“We came up with the prison, and the building of the part, pretty early on,” Gilroy told Polygon in an interview. “It was like, Oh, they should be building the Death Star. And then, you know, you follow it forward, and it’s like, Oh, you know what? We oughta show that. So the visual effects department just loved that idea. And they ran with it.”
Andor’s second season is being filmed now and, as anyone familiar with Rogue One: A Star Wars Story knows, it’s probably going to include a lot more of the Death Star than season 1’s brief tease. There’s no word yet on when Andor season 2 will be released.
