Star Wars Finally Gets Queer In Andor Season 2, But It Embraces A Miserable Trope

This article contains spoilers for "Andor" season 2, episode 6.

Being a queer Star Wars fan is kind of like riding in the Millennium Falcon in "The Empire Strikes Back." Every time we punch the hyperdrive to actually get somewhere, it fizzles and dies. The messy character work of the latter Star Wars sequels is due in no smart part to an implicit "no homo" philosophy that seemed determined to keep Finn and Poe away from each other. And despite the drag couture of Queen Amidala's high Naboo fashions, explicit queerness has typically had to hide in implication or the less public corners of Star Wars.

Things have gotten a bit better over the last few years, with queer representation getting more attention in the Doctor Aphra comics and the High Republic novels. And "Andor" season 1 brought that energy to live action with a layered relationship between fellow rebel fighters Vel Sartha (Faye Marsay), cousin to Mon Mothma (Genevieve O'Reilly), and Cinta Kaz (Varada Sethu). The Aldhani arc from last season made their romantic involvement clear, and the later episodes feature some great exchanges where they grapple with the ways in which the cause is pushing them apart. But we didn't get a kiss, or any of the other concrete moments that mark straight relationships on screen.

That explicit gratification finally arrives in the second arc of "Andor" season 2, in which Vel and Cinta work together on a mission stealing Imperial weapons with a group of rebels on Ghorman. The mission comes after a long time spent apart, and Cinta apologizes for her past callousness, making herself truly vulnerable for the first time in their relationship. The two re-consummate their love, only for Cinta to then get killed by a random shot in a moment of brief, unforeseen chaos during the robbery. It's heartbreaking, and it follows a long, miserable trend in how queer relationships often get written in Hollywood. But at the same time, it's also kind of gorgeous? It's complicated.

We all know what fridging is at this point. The number of times I've had to give the definition in articles over the years is a testament to just how much progress still hasn't been made. For decades, queer romances often ended with death and tragedy — a moral asterisk on "deviant" relationships that became a cheap tool for easy drama. The chain of events in "Andor" season 2 is beat-for-beat the same one we've seen time and time again: a queer couple breaks up, gets back together for a moment of brief joy, only for unforeseen violence to shatter them forever. We all remember Tara from "Buffy the Vampire Slayer." Cinta is sadly just a new character in the same, tired mold.

The knife turn is only more painful because of what Cinta has just overcome. In season 1 she told Vel, "The rebellion comes first, we take what's left." In the first arc of season 2, she assassinates Tay Kolma (Ben Miles) to keep him from spilling rebel secrets. She's a deeply wounded person who has done violent, brutal things in the name of revolution, and when she reunites with Vel in the middle of season 2, she has finally broken under the pressure and rebuilt herself with an actual conviction for living.

Then, while the Ghorman group is stealing blasters off a dismantled Imperial transport, one of the young, trigger-happy rebels gets heated with another local who stumbles onto the robbery by happenstance. They get into a struggle, and in the commotion Cinta gets shot by mistake. She's dead by the time Vel reaches her, and our latest best hope for some sustained queer joy in Star Wars evaporates into the Ghorman night.

Here's the thing: I love "Andor." I don't shut up about "Andor." It has a deftness of style, an attention to detail, that I obsess over. It's genre fiction taken to its theatrical, artistic extreme. So while I will call a fridge a fridge, I also have to give this show the benefit of the doubt that it's earned.

I wish Cinta were still alive. As a queer Star Wars fan, I would argue that the context of past misery demands a gentler hand, at least for now. At least until seeing a gay kiss on Disney+ doesn't feel like getting away with something. At the same time, I love that Cinta's death means something, and not just something about how queer people are doomed to be sad. I love that her arc is about identity of a different sort, about the cost of radicalization and the inevitable changes that time brings. It's a moment with real weight, stabbing you in the chest with the inherent randomness of violence. I love that a queer character in Star Wars gets to have all of those layers. I just wish she could also be alive.

"I don't know who I am sometimes," Cinta tells Vel early in episode 6. In the midst of confusing times, her internal compass spinning wildly from different magnetic poles, Cinta comes back to Vel. She comes back to herself as a queer woman – an inherent resistance in her blood. After she dies, Vel makes sure the man responsible will never forget. "This is on you now," she tells him in yet another Beau Willimon banger of a monologue. "This is like skin." And in that moment, it's clear that Cinta is still doing something from beyond the grave. She is pushing the story in powerful, meaningful directions.

In a better world, I don't watch this arc and think about yet another fridging. And maybe one day Star Wars will live in that world, but it isn't there yet.