The actor looks back on the emotional journey of portraying Cassian Andor’s ally and bringing her full-circle this season with a decisive victory against the Empire and a heartbreaking choice.
As the start of filming on Andor Season 2 neared, actor Adria Arjona struggled to find her way back into the right headspace to return as Bix Caleen.
Reprising a role for a second season of a television series was a career first for Arjona, and the enormous expectations after the popularity and critical acclaim of Andor’s first season brought enormous pressure. Acting opposite scene partners Diego Luna (who stars as Cassian Andor) and Stellan Skarsgård (who plays Luthen Rael) required matching serious intensity as would the storylines delivered by creator and executive producer Tony Gilroy and his writers involving Bix’s psychological trauma after torture at the hands of an Imperial interrogator. Arjona would have to channel painful emotions.
“There’s no way really to prepare yourself other than just diving in head first and trusting in Tony’s writing,” Arjona tells StarWars.com. “Really putting yourself in Bix’s shoes, through all that Bix has gone through. It’s a challenge.”
So Arjona put herself in those shoes quite literally.
“I asked [production] to lend me her boots, so I borrowed those boots, walked around [the studio] in them and I tried to find her again,” she says.
Arjona also returned to the exact perfume she wore in Season 1 to trigger memories of what it felt like to embody the mechanic-turned-fugitive. “The second I sprayed it, I was back to Bix,” she added. “I sounded like her. I was walking a little bit like her.”
That walk and those boots took her down a dark path for the new season of Andor, with Season 2 now streaming on Disney+.
Spoiler Warning: This article discusses story details and plot points from the second season of Andor.
As the first three-episode arc opens, Bix is a year removed from her desperate escape from Ferrix and hiding out on the farming planet, Mina-Rau, with fellow fugitives Brasso (Joplin Sibtain), Wilmon (Muhannad Bhaier), and everyone’s favorite brooding droid B2EMO (voiced by Dave Chapman). Though Cassian is away on a vital mission for the fledgling rebellion, the others are enjoying an idyllic existence. There are worse places in the galaxy to hide. But the trauma Bix endured is never far from her mind.
"I wanted them to go someplace that was really peaceful and friendly and community. I wanted them to be in something utopian,” says Gilroy. “I wanted Bix to be someplace utopian and still be suffering."
More suffering comes to Mina-Rau with the arrival of an Imperial platoon for an audit of the harvest. The stormtroopers aren’t just counting stalks of grain; they are also stalking undocumented refugees hiding on the farms and the fugitives from Ferrix end up in the crosshairs.
Our heroes, despite the timely arrival of Cassian in a stolen TIE Fighter prototype, don’t escape unscathed. Brasso is a casualty of Imperial blaster fire.
Bix faces her own ordeal during the tense climax of the first arc of episodes.
Arjona says she put a lot of trust in Gilroy: The storyline culminates with a brutal attack on Bix when an Imperial officer tries to take advantage over what he sees as a vulnerable woman. Cassian may have the superior firepower, but he’s not close enough to save her in time. It’s up to Bix to save herself.
“She gets sexually assaulted. That's something that I would never, I would never have imagined seeing that in Star Wars,” says Arjona.
The power dynamic quickly shifts, however, as Bix fights back and ultimately kills her attacker in a violent action sequence that is cathartic for the character, the actor, and the audience.
“It’s a very dark scene and the themes around that scene are very real and complex,” recalls Arjona. “But to be able to throw a punch was very gratifying.”
Dr. Gorst, I presume
In the second arc of Season 2, another year has passed, and Cassian and Bix find themselves hunkered down in a safehouse on Coruscant when they’re not off on missions for the cause. Though the couple are still together and still very much in love, the isolation is becoming increasingly damaging for Bix. So is the cumulative effect of all her trauma: She endures waking nightmares featuring her tormentor, Dr. Gorst (Joshua James).
The post-traumatic stress drives her to rely on sleeping drops, and drives the show into another weighty, timely subject — addiction.
“She's broken, she feels defeated, and that's sort of where she goes into substance [abuse] and tries to numb herself,” says Arjona. “Because the only other thing she could do is become more and more part of the rebellion, and kill more and more people and get more and more vengeance…. but it's gonna get her to the exact same place.”
Gilroy said the only way for Bix to ascend from the depths was for her to take revenge on her tormentor. The arc ends with the sight of Bix and Cassian walking away from the explosion that seals Gorst’s fate, a small smile visible on her lips.
“It’s like the first time this season that you see her sort of back,” Arjona said during the recent finale livestream on the Star Wars YouTube channel. “She’s strong and she has a heartbeat when she walks.”
Sacrificing love for the Rebellion
A year later — in the third arc of the season — Bix and Cassian have built a homestead and a life in the jungles of Yavin. Star Wars fans will recognize the setting as the Rebel base from Star Wars: A New Hope. At this point in the timeline, two years before the Battle of Yavin, both the base and the Rebellion are a work in progress.
And so is the relationship between Cassian and Bix.
Tired of all the sacrifices he’s made for Luthen and the cause, Cassian announces that he’s going to give it all up for Bix, to build a life together that they both deserve.
Shaken by a cryptic prophecy from a Force healer (Josie Walker) that suggests that Cassian has a vital role to play in the defeat of the Empire as “a messenger,” however, Bix makes her own choice. Her partner wakes up to find a pre-recorded goodbye message and fights through the tears to rush to a launch bay — only to find the shuttle bearing the love of his life has already departed.
Arjona calls it, “the ultimate price of love.”
As heart-breaking as the scene was for viewers to watch, it was as devastating for the cast and crew to film.
“It’s a pretty good feeling to make people cry,” Gilroy said during the recent livestream. “The saddest thing she says at the end,: ‘And then we will have time to be together, when it’s over, when it’s done.’ “I’m crying now,” quipped Gilroy.
The silver lining to the tragedy of Cassian Andor is that his legacy will live on in more ways than one.
The very last shot of the second season of Andor, and of the series itself, reveals Bix back in Mina-Rau cradling a baby. Their baby.
And Arjona now says goodbye to the character with the knowledge that Bix lives on in the saga — and in her heart. The actor has a memento of the experience: A Bix-themed tattoo.
“I’ve never spent this much time with a character ever,” says Arjona. “It’s a chunk of my life that I take with me. I love her. I love her so much. It was hard to say goodbye, but I have her with me for life.”
Second time is the charm
The opportunity to tackle such a memorable Star Wars role is the culmination of a different kind of hero’s journey for Arjona. Being cast as Bix came years after she had narrowly lost out on another high-profile role elsewhere in that galaxy far, far away.
That rejection “really crushed me, because all I wanted was to be part of Star Wars and to be a Latin American woman in Star Wars,” says Arjona, the daughter of a Puerto Rican mother and a Guatemalan father.
“Years later, I’m in Andor, and it was just meant to be. This is the Star Wars that I was meant to be in, and I was meant to play Bix. I just feel happy. And I've had so many beautiful interactions, especially with Latin women who love Star Wars that just come up to me and hug me,” she adds. “I’ve always wanted to be a part of Star Wars, it’s been one of my biggest dreams, and to now be a part of it is a pinch-me moment.”
