NO, Dedra Meero Is Not Flipping Out Over the Death of Syril Karn! (spoilers, obviously)

Go back and watch CAREFULLY, y'all.

It’s fascinating in the past week how many pieces I’ve seen from fans of Andor who are losing it over Dedra Meero’s breakdown in the waning hours of the Ghorman massacre.

Dedra was really in love with Syril! they feverishly write. She’s breaking down because he assaulted her and rejected her! She’s breaking down because he’s dead!

I wondered about that myself on first viewing of Episode 8, Season 2 of Andor this past week.

She does spend a good amount of time staring out the window at the carnage of the, yes, second Ghorman massacre. It makes the most sense to believe her nervous breakdown in her private communications room would be related to that.

But, yes, the normally meek and henpecked Syril Karn did finally lose it on her. He did finally stand up to her. He did actually get his hands around her neck and choke her, and when she finally divulged the actual details of his secret mission on Ghorman, he disagreed with her.

He was so repulsed by the Empire’s actual intentions for Ghorman that he ran from safety, back out into the crowd, to rejoin the Ghorman protestors in disgust.

It’s clear that Dedra actually does care for him. Anyone would reason then that’s the end of their relationship; she won’t win him back. He won’t forgive her. Yet, she sends troops to stop him from leaving, trying to protect him from the growing violence outside, even so, just as she intervened with his overbearing mother and stood up for him earlier in the season in a priceless scene I still like to rewatch.

Even though she seems very cold in the relationship—Syril only kisses her once that we see, timidly on the corner of her mouth, and she’s more the cold Hitchcock blonde than a Lana Turner temptress—Dedra has some remnant of a heart, at least where Syril is concerned.

But can that be the reason she’s breaking down in the “radio” room?

Um, y’all? For one thing, she doesn’t know he’s dead.

Think carefully back to what you saw. Cassian Andor is hiding in the front lobby of his hotel—which, yes, does have a view of Dedra’s observation windows. But, when the violence gets bad enough, Andor retreats into the lobby where she can’t see him. When Syril finds Cassian in the lobby and attacks him in a mad rage—there’s no way Dedra can see that. If she were even able to pick Andor out in that war zone to begin with.

I went back through the episode, waiting for some underling to find Karn and radio to headquarters that he’s dead. No one does.

So, I’m sorry, folks, but Dedra cannot possibly have a breakdown because she knows Syril has been killed. She can’t see him, and no doubt she hopes he’s alive down there somewhere and they will be reunited when the top brass pack up to leave Ghorman.

Yes, it looks like their relationship is over, but if she rounds him up and takes him back to Coruscant—and why wouldn’t she?—no doubt she hopes they can discuss. I’m sure that was part of her motivation in trying to prevent him from escaping the building to begin with.

So, no, the editing of the episode makes it highly unlikely that Dedra Meero breaks down over any loss, physical or emotional, of Syril Karn.

All that’s left is that she’s reacting to the carnage she’s masterminded, planned, and directly ordered.

One can only hope so. It serves her right.

I wonder if we will see her again before the end of the series, and how we will find her doing.

Probably not. It is Andor’s story, after all, not hers.