Andor Episode 9 Name Drops A Planet That Will Help Lead Us Right Into Rogue One

There will be spoilers for "Andor" Episode IX – "Nobody's Listening!"

It's been no secret that the plan for "Andor" has been to lead seamlessly in to the events of "Rogue One: A Star Wars Story." We still have four years of narrative mileage to cover before we get there, but "Andor" is already giving us hints and clues that deepen our understanding of key locations, characters, and events in "Rogue One", but never spoon feeding us. in the ninth episode of "Andor," called "Nobody's Listening!", we get a tantalizing name drop to the planet of Kafrene. It seems like it's a throwaway line, but it's really a clue to something more and connects right into the beginning of "Rogue One."

Over the last couple of episodes, we've heard a lot about Anto Kreegyr and his pending raid on the facilities as at Spellhaus. It's something Luthen Rael tried to convince Saw Gerrera to help with, and it's something the burgeoning rebels are eager to accomplish. We don't know exactly what's at Spellhaus, but it must be important. 

When the information given to the Imperial Security Bureau (ISB) by Bix Caleen in this episode helps them identify some of these stolen parts on a fighter they picked up at a customs inspection, they realize they need to act quickly. The pilot was part of Kreegyr's crew and gave up the intel on the entire operation at Spellhaus. Where was he headed? Kafrene. 

The ISB infers this might be a staging ground on the way to the Spellhaus raid, and if Kreegyr's rebels know this pilot has been compromised, they'll scrap the mission and they'll lose their lead. Instead, Dedra Meero works to cover up the pilot's capture so the raid will go on without a hitch and they'll let the ship with the dead pilot drift into the spacelanes toward Kafrene and no one will be the wiser.

For those who remember "Rogue One: A Star Wars Story", they'll know that Cassian Andor's story begins on the Ring of Kafrene, a remote trading outpost. It seems as though Kafrene is a planet surrounded by an asteroid belt, and the Ring is a location on that belt. Cassian is meeting a contact from Saw Gerrera's partisans there for information he has about a "Planet Killer." This turns out to be the information that leads Cassian on the trail toward the Death Star plans on Scarif. But what does this mean? It means that Kafrene is a frequent stopping post for Rebels looking to get lost in the cosmopolitan but out of the way nature of the place. 

Will Kafrene feature in future episodes of the show as a lead up to "Rogue One" and the story we already know? With Kreegyr and Saw using it as a staging ground and Cassian meeting contacts there, it seems like we may well see it again before the show is over.

New episodes of "Andor" air on Wednesdays on Disney+.