This article contains spoilers for Andor episode 9
Andor episode nine – “Nobody’s Listening!” – has just dropped, and it might be the darkest 45 minutes of Star Wars we’ve ever seen. There’s a brutal torture sequence involving the screams of murdered children, mass murder, euthanasia, and a sense of oppressiveness way beyond anything we’ve ever previously seen from the Empire.
The big reveal of the episode is what’s really going on in the prison manufacturing facility on Narkina 5, where Cassian Andor has been sent for being in the vicinity of a crime. Last week, we met his fellow inmates (including future Rogue One character Ruescott Melshi) and saw a nightmare life of forced labor and punishment by electrified floors. But now we know the shocking truth about what’s really going on in the prison.
The prisoners are counting down their shifts until release, with their eventual freedom all they have left to look forward to. But, not too long into the episode, we learn that something dramatic has happened on Level 2. Prisoners can’t easily communicate with one another, but word slowly spreads that bad things have gone down.
At the close of the episode, a medic reveals the horrible truth. After the Imperial crackdown post-Aldhani, inmates now aren’t being released, they’re being sent back into the system to work indefinitely. To keep the secret, the recycled inmates are meant to be kept alongside other men in the same situation, but a mistake saw a ‘released’ inmate from Level 4 sent back to the regular Level 2 population. Word got out, and in an effort to stop the truth from spreading, the guards electrified the floors and murdered everyone on Level 2.
This also explains the moment when the power briefly went out earlier in the episode – they were using that electricity to kill off an entire level of prisoners.
This hit Andy Serkis’ Kino Loy hard, as his character was focused on keeping his crew in order ahead of his impending release. Now that he knows he won’t ever see freedom unless he acts, he’s on board with Cassian’s escape plans, and the episode ends with him finally revealing what he knows about the number of guards on each floor: “Never more than 12”.
It’s going to be a painful wait for the 10th episode of Andor to drop.