Andor Season 2 reveals Saw Gerrera's origin

Andor Season 2, episode 5 revealed one of the most heartbreaking origin tales: that of Saw Gerrera, played by actor Forest Whitaker. Whitaker has been playing this character for almost a decade now, since 2016’s Rogue One: A Star Wars Story. The closing minutes of the fifth episode of the series, “I Have Friends Everywhere,” reveal the haunting origin tale of this character.

In the closing minutes of this Andor Season 2 episode, Whitaker’s Saw Gerrera breathes in the highly volatile starship fuel rhydonium. This moment shockingly reveals that Saw can withstand the effects of the fuel, which is dangerous for others. This might have something to do with his experience with the fuel on his home planet of Onderon.

Andor Season 2's Saw Gerrera's origin explained:

Saw was introduced for the first time in the fifth season of the animated show Star Wars: The Clone Wars. After being trained by Anakin Skywalker ((before his fall to the dark side) in the art of combat, Saw went on to become a major thorn in the Empire’s side until his death in the 2016 movie Rogue One: A Star Wars Story. However, when the 2016 movie was released, fans were shocked to see him using mechanical breathing equipment.

That’s because he was enslaved on Onderon and made to work in a labor camp. A rhydonium leak one day at the camp poisoned the air, resulting in the death of most of the prisoners. Saw, on the other hand, embraced the pain and started considering the toxic rhydonium fumes his “sister,” a twisted replacement for his dead sister.

It was because of this traumatic experience that he was left in a state requiring the assistance of breathing equipment, but it also made him able to withstand rhydonium’s immediate effects. By the time of Saw Gerrera's death in Rogue One, which is set after the events of Andor Season 2, lifelong exposure to rhydonium had made him dependent on the breathing equipment.

What is Andor Season 2 about?

Consisting of twelve episodes, Andor Season 2 will build toward the moment we first meet Cassian Andor in Rogue One. Of those twelve, six episodes of the series are currently accessible via Disney+. The sixth episode of the series had the rebels successfully steal an Imperial weapons cache. With that, the Empire might tighten its grip over Ghorman, leading to a massacre.

This massacre will unite the divided rebel force under one umbrella and prompt Mon Mothma to finally join the rebels publicly. Gilroy teased this in a March interview with Entertainment Weekly:

"Canonically, there's the moment where she leaves the Senate, and that's in our timeline. So we're definitely dealing with that, but I would say, of all the characters in the show, of all the hellacious things that people go through, and all of the difficulties and hardships, I don't think anybody has a harder road than she does. Because she has to do everything that everybody else does with all the tension, fear, and anxiety and she has to do it in public."

Thus, considering how the sixth episode played out, we may see this major event in Andor Season 2 either this week or on May 13, 2025.

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Stream the first six episodes of Andor Season 2 on Disney+.

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