Andor’s Dedra Meero is a character you love to hate.
On one hand, it’s not hard to sympathize with the woman. Her criminal parents were arrested when she was three years old, and she grew up in an Imperial kinder-block, conditioned to be a model loyalist. You can relate to her frustrations in the ISB—either ignored in favor of her incompetent (and mostly male) peers or stifled by superiors more interested in flattering a deranged Emperor than actually doing their jobs.
But that doesn’t erase the truth: Dedra is a cold, methodical, ruthless fascist. She’s perfectly comfortable committing atrocities, overseeing torture, and sending innocent people to die. She even lied to her boyfriend Syril Karn about the ISB’s operation in Ghorman, manipulating him into taking part in a genocide against the Ghors.
And in the final episodes of Andor’s second season, these very traits are what lead to her downfall.
Obsession with Axis
Dedra’s fatal flaw is obsession. Her hunt for “Axis” (a.k.a. Luthen Rael) begins to consume her. She crosses every line, bending and breaking every rule to find any scrap that might lead her to the Rebel leader.
Played by a Double Agent
But she’s not the only one playing the game. Lonni Jung, the ISB officer secretly working for Luthen, hacks into Dedra’s drive where he discovers files related to the Death Star and passes the data to Luthen. The only reason she has those files is because someone sent her the files by accident. She didn’t report the mishap, probably due to her hoarding files she feels are connected to Axis. Her ambition becomes a liability which leads to the Empire’s most important secret being exposed to the Rebellion.
A Botched Arrest
When she decides to launch an unauthorized raid on Luthen, everything goes downhill. Luthen kills himself to prevent the ISB from interrogating him. Any evidence that could help the Empire learn more about the Rebel Alliance has been destroyed along with Dedra’s credibility within the ISB. Worse, she’s arrested for treason and the Death Star’s exposure brings in Director Orson Krennic, who isn’t known for playing nice.
Interrogated by Krennic
Krennic gets straight to the point. He accuses Dedra of either being a traitor or a dangerously reckless fool. He points that everything that’s happened – her investigating Axis behind the ISB’s back, holding onto files related to the Death Star without reporting it, confronting Axis by herself – either makes her look like a traitor or a dangerously reckless fool. Her insistence that she was just doing her job falls flat. Krennic is looking for a scapegoat to save his skin. The fact that her actions put the Death Star project at risk is enough to seal her fate.
Stripped and Sentenced
The last we see of Dedra, she has been sent to a prison similar to one located on Narkina 5. Series creator Tony Gilroy has joked that imprisoning Dedra is a “fate worse than death”. She’s been discarded by an Empire she devoted her entire life to. She sacrificed everything that ever mattered but has nothing to show for it. Now she’s just another cog in the machine, trapped inside the very system she wanted to maintain and protect.
