By George & Josh Bate
The latest issue of Star Wars Insider spotlights the critically acclaimed final season of Andor with an episode-by-episode companion guide and interviews with / quotes from the core cast members. In a segment about the final episode “Jedha Kyber Erso,” Dedra Meero actress Denise Gough reveals details of an alternate ending for her character. Check out the quote below.
“In one version of the script, it panned in on her and you see the anger rising in her again. That would have been a really interesting way to go, but it’s the end. I don’t imagine she was going to become Kino Loy, you know. She’s done.”
While a seemingly subtle change to how Dedra’s final scene ultimately unfolded, this early version of the script would have left Dedra in a decidedly different emotional place. As it is in the final cut of the episode, Dedra sits in silence and shock, contemplating the series of bad and immoral decisions that landed her in the women’s equivalent of Narkina 5. After fighting for so long and losing her sense of ethics to fascism along the way, she is finally defeated and, rather than keep fighting, has given up.
Conversely, the originally scripted ending that Gough discusses would have had Dedra undergo little character development following the events of Andor. Dedra was fueled by anger and hate before she landed in prison, and this ending would have seen her continue to hold onto anger and hate in prison, presumably for the rest of her life. The ending that Tony Gilroy and company landed on is ultimately more effective as it truly hammers home that Dedra has been defeated and demoralized and can no longer resort to anger as an escape.