Andor Season 2, a prequel series to Rogue One, revealed a key detail about Saw Gerrera's tragic legacy in Star Wars.
Episode 5 showed how Gerrara convinces engineer Wilmon to teach his partisans how to use and extract Rhydonium- a volatile spaceship fuel that has extreme and lasting effects on one's health if inhaled.
While Gerrera plans on teaching his partisans on using and extracting the volatile gas to create an explosion, it is later shown that he is addicted to the gas as a drug and willingly inhales it. He even convinces Wilmon to take a huff, asking him to bask in the insanity of the rebellion. The tragic reveal suggests how Saw Gerrera has completely surrendered his life to the rebellion.
More on Saw Gerrera’s tragic legacy in Rogue One in our story.
Andor Season 2 revealed a key detail about Saw Gerrera's tragic legacy in Rogue One
Saw Gerrera is inarguably an important character in the Star Wars franchise, and Andor Season 2 Episode 5 builds on his tragic legacy in Rogue One. As part of the Rebellion, when we see Gerrera in Rogue One, he is extremely ill and paranoid about everyone around him, and the prequel series finally reveals his tragic backstory.
After Gerrera coerces Wilmon into teaching his partisans how to use rhydonium, he reveals his backstory and recounts his first introduction to the dangerous gas. Before he fought in the Clone Wars for his homeland of Onderon, Gerrera was enslaved along with many others at a work camp that harvested this gas. He details its effects, saying that the gas was so volatile that it would melt off clothes on their bodies.
One day, a rhydonium leak poisoned the air and almost everyone at the camp was nearly killed, except Gerrera, who willingly inhaled the gas and discovered its addictive properties. He saw the rhydonium gas as a drug and started using it to drive his passion for rebellion, calling it his sister:
“She is my sister, Rhydo, and she loves me…. You feel how badly she wants to explode?”
While the statement highlights how years of rhydonium inhalation have taken a toll on Gerrera's mental health, it underscores the tragic tale about his actual sister Steela, who died in the Clone Wars while fighting for their homeland with her brother. This key detail and how Gerrera replaced her actual sister with a volatile gas to numb his pain suggests the lasting effects of war on a person.
Rhydonium inhalation changed Saw Gerrera for the worse in Rogue One
The final moments of Andor Season 2 Episode 5 showed Gerrera willingly inhaling rhydonium, which reveals the cause for his condition in Rogue One.
In Rogue One, Gerrera is shown with an oxygen mask connected to his armor with mechanical lungs. We now know that years of rhydonium inhalation have made his lungs weak and degraded his mental state, causing him to become paranoid and distrustful towards even his allies.
This Andor Season 2 reveal about an important character underscores the price rebels have to pay for their journey to strike against a powerful organisation such as the Empire and the toll it takes on their bodies and minds.
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Also Read: Andor Season 2 Episodes 4, 5 & 6 recap