There are a lot of great moments across Andor season two—there’s a good reason that the show, one of our absolute favorites of last year, made regular appearances throughout our supporting celebration of our favorite TV moments of the year too. But in a series filled with giddy, gut-wrenching highs, it’s easy to forget that it was immediately enchanting from its opening sequence—a full-circle moment that becomes even better with the hindsight of knowing where Andor ended.

The first scene of Andor‘s sophomore return in “One Year Later” introduces us to Niya, a low-level technician at an Imperial test facility on Sienar, the hub of ship manufacturing for the Empire’s navy. After a hurried check on a prototype TIE Avenger, Niya checks in with the reason for the season, Cassian himself, who has infiltrated the facility with her inside help as a new test pilot.

It’s a far cry from where we left Cassian at the end of the first season, his eyes determined but slick with tears as he gave Luthen Rael the choice of bringing him into his circle of rebels or shooting him where he stood. Not just for the cool figure Cassian cuts in his purloined pilot gear, but for how his persona turns throughout his conversation with Niya. Initially, he is the Cassian we know: that hand hovering right over his pistol the moment he feels someone passing the room, taciturn, eyes on the prize, strictly going over the details of the plan. But there’s a moment where he realizes before he says it to her that Niya is petrified. She can’t bear to look at him, because that’s what she’s been told; she can’t bear to look at him, because this is the person she’s trusting the total implosion of her life to.

So when she tells him part of the cover is that he’s an eager new test candidate flirting with her, he chuckles, his face cracking into a smile—and in turn, Niya’s whole body cracks. She’s so taken aback, she steals the glance she’d been told, and told herself, to not steal. She admits that, and then it all comes tumbling out of her as Cassian draws nearer and nearer, not intensely but to comfort her: she’s scared of what she’s doing, she’s scared to acknowledge this the moment her whole life changes, and she’s scared that, should she die that night, she won’t ever know if she made the right choice in rebellion.

© Lucasfilm

But that’s when Cassian becomes something different than we would’ve expected. For a moment, he is not the charged blaster bolt ready to explode at a moment’s notice, and he’s certainly not Luthen: this Cassian Andor is the hero you’d one day imagine the Alliance putting on a propaganda poster. It’s not about him; Cassian firmly puts all this on Niya’s choice and her bravery for making it. But he’s relishing the moment too, oozing charm as he waxes lyrical about what Niya is doing—and what he’s getting to do, too. “This makes it worth it,” he whispers to her, imploring her to look at him again. “This. Right now. Being here the moment you step into the circle.”

It’s not a moment Cassian was afforded in his own recruitment, but it’s one he’s willing to sell to anyone he meets now that he’s been brought in, because it makes people like Niya capable of making the small steps that push the frontiers of the rebellion forward, as Nemik once told Cassian himself. It’s the moment he gets to be the hope for someone else that he had to forge for himself across season one, and it’s as electrifying for him as it is for Niya and us as an audience to see. We practically see Cassian smile more in this scene than we did throughout the entire last season: fighting the Empire is always going to be worth it to him, we know that, but being the catalyst to someone else’s moment of rebellion is just as exhilarating.

It’s a moment of hope that is re-reflected in that final sequence of the show, as Bix looks out to the horizon on Mina-Rau with her child, hoping against hope that Cassian will come back to her, as we know that his coming sacrifice will give their child the hope of a free future. It’s just as crucial that we never see Niya again after that opening scene as it is that we never see Bix’s reaction to Cassian’s death, for similar reasons: what was important about those journeys was the hope Cassian gave them to keep going, not the endpoint of wherever they went. The season ends as it began, with a quietness after arcs of sound and fury, but more importantly, with that message of hope.

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