Welcome To The Rebellion

"Welcome to the Rebellion" is the ninth episode of the second season of the American science fiction political spy thriller drama television series '' Andor''. It is the twenty-first episode of the series overall; it was written by Dan Gilroy and directed by Janus Metz.

"Welcome to the Rebellion" was released on Disney+ on May 6, 2025 as part of a three-episode block also including "Messenger" and " Who Are You?", and received widespread critical acclaim for its writing, emotional weight, and the performance of O'Reilly.

Plot

Senator Bail Organa witnesses as the Ghorman senator is arrested as the Empire frames the Ghorman Massacre as an insurrection. He and Mon Mothma converse secretly, where the latter insists they publicly condemn these actions. Organa chooses to stay behind to aid the Rebellion in secret, but urges Mothma to continue with her plans and relocate to Yavin IV. He prepares a team to safely extract her, whilst Kleya and Rael call in Andor for this purpose.

Mothma, with the help of her aide Erskin Semaj, removes listening devices from her office. Rael intercepts a practicing Mothma outside, revealing Semaj to be his agent. Mothma refuses to trust Rael due to his constant secrets, despite his insistence that Organa's extraction team are corrupted. A distraught Mothma then confronts and fires Semaj.

The following day, Andor, Rael, and Kleya meet to discuss the plan. Andor successfully infiltrates the Senate building under the alias 'Ronnie Googe', a reporter. Semaj also enters, and the pair identify each other with a code phrase. A worried Mothma questions Organa about his extraction team, and he admits to not knowing them personally.

In the senate, the Senators continue to position the Ghorman Massacre as an unjustifiable attack, focusing on the deaths of tourists from their worlds. Organa passes over speaking power to Mon Mothma, allowing her to deliver a speech. Mothma condemns the treatment of the Ghorman people and how the massacre is portrayed, describing it as 'genocide' before directly calling Emperor Palpatine himself as a monster.

Meanwhile, Imperial officers attempt to shut down the broadcast, but are hindered by obstacles from rebels. Organa's extraction team prepare, but the Imperial mole, Beska, sends an alert to her superiors and subsequently kills a member who discovers this.

Andor approaches Mothma, but she refuses to speak with him until he uses Rael's code phrase. He then wins her trust by describing his own complex feelings about Rael, and his history with her cousin, Vel. The pair are confronted by journalists and Organa's team, before Beska pulls out a gun. Semaj shouts that she is a rebel spy, allowing Andor the cover to kill her. Andor and Mothma then flee whilst Semaj stalls for time. Andor and Mothma run through the senate avoiding the crowds, and they are approached by her driver and Imperial spy Kloris. Andor pretends to have captured Mothma before killing him and escaping on his airspeeder.

Andor, Mothma, and Semaj reconvene in the Coruscant safe house, where the latter two reconcile. Andor reunites with Wilmon Paak and his Ghorman girlfriend Dreena, who have evacuated from Ghorman, although Wilmon is seriously wounded. Kleya greets them and prepares to have Mothma and Semaj be collected by Gold Squadron whilst the other three head to Yavin.

On Yavin IV, Andor gives the rebels his stolen KX unit and reunites with Bix Caleen. Andor informs her of his intentions to leave the rebellion to live a proper life with her; she is initially reluctant then seemingly agrees. The following morning, Andor awakens to find her gone, leaving a video recording iterating her belief that the rebellion is too important, and that when the war is over they can be together. A distraught Andor heads to where the KX unit is being rebooted and arms himself with a blaster. To his surprise, the Unit awakens and politely greets the crowd.

Production

Writing

The episode was written by Dan Gilroy, in his sixth writing credit for the show, and directed by Janus Metz, after directing the previous two episodes of the series. The episodes of '' Andor'' second season, like those of its first, are split up into blocks, or story arcs, of three episodes; however, unlike in season one, each arc begins with a time skip of one year from the previous episode. Series showrunner Tony Gilroy decided to structure the season this way after concluding that the original five-season plan for the show was unfeasible, and needing some way to bridge the four years between season 1 and ''Rogue One'' (2016) in a single season. As proof of concept, he wrote the first and last episodes of each would-be arc, and eventually decided on this structure for the season.

In May 2022, series showrunner Dan Gilroy said Cassian Andor would meet Rebel leader Mon Mothma in the second season after the pair had separate stories in the first. The two lead characters finally meet in "Welcome to the Rebellion", with Cassian convincing an endangered Mon that he is her best chance of escaping the Senate building. William Hughes of ''The A.V. Club'' noted, "''Andor'' likes to play a very long game with keeping its main characters disconnected from each other, and ... there’s a base-level charge to seeing O’Reilly and Luna getting to share a scene together that elevates the entire sequence."

For K-2SO's introduction in the episode, Gilroy originally wrote an entirely self-contained story for the season's ninth episode that played like a horror film, with a KX unit hunting over a huge tanker ship on Yavin IV with K-2SO involved in the scenario, but budget issues meant the show's crew couldn't afford its production and consolidated things instead, so they opted to move up Mothma's Senate speech to "Welcome to the Rebellion", as it had been originally slated to occur in " Make It Stop". Genevieve O'Reilly, who played Mothma, provided Tony Gilroy with input when writing her speech denouncing the Galactic Empire's role in the Ghorman Massacre in "Welcome to the Rebellion". While Gilroy had initially only written sections of the monologue which were to be spliced into a bigger montage, O'Reilly convinced him to write an entire speech.

Mothma giving a speech denouncing the Ghorman Massacre was previously depicted in the ''Star Wars Rebels'' episode "Secret Cargo." When writing the episode, Dan Gilroy expressed frustration with having to work with the canonicity of ''Rebels,'' remarking, "Do I have to stick to this fucking speech?" The events of ''Rebels'' was eventually referenced in the final product, with dialogue in the episode indicating that Mothma would be handed over to the Gold Squadron of the Rebel Alliance, as depicted in "Secret Cargo."

Casting

By March 2023, Benjamin Bratt had been cast for the episode in an undisclosed role, later revealed to be Bail Organa, replacing Jimmy Smits in the role.

Filming

In March 2023, director Janus Metz filmed the episode in Xàtiva and Valencia. According to O'Reilly, filming also occurred in May 2023.

Music

The original score for "Welcome to the Rebellion", as with nine other episodes of the season's twelve, was composed by Brandon Roberts, replacing Nicholas Britell, the composer for the show's first season, due to scheduling conflicts.

The soundtrack for the episode was released alongside that of the other two episodes in its block on May 9, 2025 via Walt Disney Records as part of the third of four volumes of the second season's original score.

Release

"Welcome to the Rebellion" was released on Disney+ on May 6, 2025 as part of a three-episode block, alongside " Who Are You?" and "Messenger".

Reception

Critical response

The review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes reports a 100% approval rating, based on 9 reviews.

William Hughes of ''The A.V. Club'' gave a positive review, writing "''Andor'' reminds us how much fun it can have when it's locked into pure spy mode ... this is the stuff ''Andor'' most frequently excels at: moving parts and rising tension, moment-to-moment improvisations and whispered plans." Mike Redmond of ''Pajiba'' also gave a positive review, summarizing that "I know I was really hard on this arc, but to its credit, it was a breezy watch unlike last week. Episode 9 was particularly great, and I did not feel chained to my couch".

Accolades

At the 77th Primetime Emmy Awards, Dan Gilroy received a nomination for Outstanding Writing for a Drama Series for writing "Welcome to the Rebellion".

Notes

References

External links

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Andor (TV series) episodes
2025 American television episodes
Television episodes directed by Janus Metz Pedersen
Television episodes written by Dan Gilroy