i've been thinking about the last shot of andor a lot and there's been a lot of debate about how it was handled, particularly within the constraints of bix and her role this season. regardless of personal opinion, gilroy has said the shot was supposed to be hopeful and i get it. you fight today for the children of tomorrow so they can live peacefully. i think, regardless of how i feel about bix's story as a whole, i can get behind that. as cliche as it may be.
what i can't really get behind is star war's commitment to signifying hope for its characters in the most heteronormative way imaginable. each and every single time. it is so incredibly boring and it's been done so many times. let's not insult one another by pretending star wars doesn't have mothers in it and that motherhood doesn't get addressed often. padme is a mother. mon is a mother. maarva is a mother. leia is a mother. hera is a mother. there are a lot of mothers in star wars. motherhood and its connection in signifying hope runs deep within star wars.
what makes it particularly awful this time around is there are actual, canonical, queer characters in andor and, as expected, they do not get even a minuscule amount of hope in comparison to the heterosexual characters around them. cinta's arc happens entirely off screen before she's killed off in the most insulting way you can imagine and vel is relegated to being a megaphone around yavin to encourage cassian and bix into their roles. that's not to say i don't love faye marsay and what she did with her limited screentime. she really fucking sold that vel's lost her will to live for anything but the rebellion. but if we're making an anti-fascist show, you can't just ignore how you handle your queer and poc characters. you just can't.
my point is, the traditional family has always been the pinnacle of hope for star wars. and it's fine. but it completely ignores that for many people -- queer or otherwise -- the traditional family isn't that. vel's entire character screams that isn't that for her by her two most important connections being cinta, her girlfriend and mon, her cousin. the finale does try and balance this with vel reaching out to kleya and her being a constant source of connection and family with mon. but let's be honest with one another, it doesn't hit as hard as it could have if cinta and vel had been alive and together. or, if we really needed to kill them both ('everyone dies in this show' comments truly have aged like milk lmao) if they had sacrificed themselves fighting for that tomorrow. not because romance is inherently 'more important' than platonic relationships, but because cinta is a HUGE part of vel's character and vice versa for vel. you truly cannot have one without the other because andor never tried to write either of them otherwise. vel gets away with a little more because she's mon mothma's cousin and her beef with kleya and luthen helps bring tension and resolve to that. but cinta? outside of her threadbare backstory, vel is all she has (which is tragic by itself).
i've gone off topic a little, but my point is, vel's ending in andor shows her as a rebel commander willing to fight for what she truly believes in. outside of the title, this is not a huge jump from the vel of s1 (arc-wise, personality and character is a whole other story). the major difference is that vel no longer has the hope of fighting for a better life with cinta like she had in s1. instead she is the sole queer person in the cast (i'm sorry kleya fans, i love our girl but headcanons do not count here) and has to live with this utterly senseless tragedy until she's dead. now, i love doomed yuri (and for the billionth time, i am not asking for velcinta to be treated with kids gloves) and i'm well aware cassian/bix also gets this ending, but the difference between how vel and cinta are treated and portrayed compared to their heterosexual counterparts is so staggeringly different. like, you need to be willingly obtuse not to see how.
as a white lady, i'm not going to too deeply into how misogyny and racism plays a key part here -- someone far more clever than i no doubt will -- but if you think cinta's arc was well-respected in compared to the white women of andor (her background literally parallels kleya's, but guess who gets that examined. not cinta!) then i just really don't know what to say to convince you otherwise. it's not even about her being a minor character (kleya was too in s1). it's about how qwoc are only used as tools to further their white counterparts because their stories aren't worth examining by themselves. as much as i tell myself i'd kill for a cinta novel/comic, i know it's not going to happen because that would require cinta to be considered worthy of exploring. and i don't know if lucasfilm publishing will ever think that. maybe i'm wrong! i'd like to be proven wrong!
and so, vel's arc (or lack of it) and the mishandling of cinta is ultimately, why that last shot just didn't land for me. even as i understand why it was there and what it signifies and can even get behind it... i just don't think hope = the children of tomorrow hits for me as much as it used to, even though it's still incredibly relevant.
this was a lot of rambling. maybe it doesn't make sense or maybe i'm entirely wrong. but i think yeah. it's an okay shot. it's probably not what i'd end my anti-fascist show on though when you've not taken the time to examine (or care) why queer characters are only allowed to be miserable. it's 2025, man.
