K-2SO Returns: How ‘Andor’ Season 2 Rewrites ‘Star Wars’ Canon

One iconic “Star Wars” droid makes his long-awaited return in the eighth and ninth episodes of “Andor” Season 2. The episodes, released in another three-chapter batch on Disney+ Tuesday, bring “Andor” Season 2’s Ghorman plot to an explosive, tragic end in the form of the Ghorman Massacre. The Empire-manipulated political protest results in the deaths of countless Ghormans and the Empire’s best neglected boy, Syril Karn (Kyle Soller).

Not much positive comes from the Empire’s full, inevitable takeover of Ghorman. At the end of “Andor” Season 2’s eighth episode, however, Cassian (Diego Luna) does finally come face-to-face with the Imperial droid that will eventually become his courageous “Rogue One” partner, K-2SO (Alan Tudyk). Viewers have been waiting to see their first meeting realized onscreen for years.

“Andor” Season 2, Episode 8 finally gives them that moment, but not in the way “Star Wars” fans had been led to expect.

How do K-2SO and Cassian meet in “Andor” Season 2?

As Cassian makes his escape from the city square of Ghorman’s capital, he is chased and hunted down by a merciless, powerful KX-series Imperial security droid. Just when it looks like Cassian is going to meet his end at the droid’s metal hands, Ghorman rebel Samm (Abraham Wapler) arrives to save the day. He rams the droid with a transport vehicle, pinning it against a wall and effectively decommissioning it.

Cassian asks Samm and Wilmon (Muhannad Bhaier) to help him take the droid’s destroyed metal corpse with him. When he returns to Yavin, he gives the droid to the Rebel Alliance. At the end of “Andor” Season 2, Episode 9, Cassian is then present when the rebels turn the reprogrammed, refurbished droid back on. Confused, K-2SO (voiced, once again, by Tudyk) asks Cassian if he could point his blaster away from him — bringing “Andor” Season 2’s third, penultimate arc to a charming, fateful end.

This sequence of events is, notably, not how Cassian and K-2SO were said to have met in a previous, canonical-until-this-very-moment “Star Wars” comic book.

“Andor” rewrites K-2SO’s origin story

In August 2017, Lucasfilm released “Rogue One — Cassian & K-2SO Special 1,” a one-shot Marvel comic that claimed to reveal the true story of how its two eponymous characters met. In the comic, Cassian runs into K-2SO while on an intelligence mission with two other rebels. Cassian and his allies try and fail multiple times to reprogram K-2SO — hitting the droid’s “kill switch” every time he wakes back up and professes his urge again to detain or kill Cassian.

Cassian does eventually succeed in reprogramming K-2SO. The comic then ends with him telling the droid about his plan to extract K-2SO’s Imperial programming to update the Rebel Alliance on the Empire’s latest wave of security protocols. “Andor” Season 2 has effectively erased this version of Cassian and K-2SO’s meeting and, consequently, rewritten “Star Wars” canon. 

That may irk some viewers, but the “Rogue One” tie-in comic in question was not a particularly beloved or memorable addition to the “Star Wars” canon in the first place. If it was, then Lucasfilm would not have let “Andor” creator Tony Gilroy erase it. The fact that he was allowed to speaks volumes about just how inconsequential its erasure actually is — and how little of a lasting impact the comic book made among fans.

“Andor” Season 2 airs Tuesdays on Disney+.

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