*Kino-related spoilers.*
To paraphrase the immortal words of Dr. Mindy Lahiri, “A favorite character isn’t a person, it’s a tier.” And Andor is such an apt demonstration of that principle. If I were forced to rank the characters on that show, naturally I have to give it up to Cassian, but I can genuinely say there are many characters in the series that I wholly adore. What’s even more impressive is how many of them, like Kino, only appear in a few episodes.
When Cassian is imprisoned on Narkina 5, he’s assigned to Unit 5-2-D. Their unit is headed by Kino, who runs the floor during the work shift and is generally in charge of keeping the inmates in line. When we meet him, he’s an intriguing mix of resigned and optimistic. He flatly lays out the specifics of the hole that Cassian has been dropped into by the Empire, explaining how the shift operates and what will happen to the lowest-producing table each day. At the same time, he's counting down the number of shifts he has remaining—certainly, no one would describe Kino as cheerful about the impending end of his sentence, but it keeps him going in such a way that he still walks with his head up.
Kino is the “boss,” the authority figure for the unit. He’s the one barking orders and keeping an eye on the daily totals, giving warnings to the tables that are falling behind. But his actual power is negligible. As a fellow inmate, he wears the same uniform as everyone else, and his feet are just as bare. He might not be performing manual labor under high-pressure situations every day, but if the guards contrive a reason for it, he can be punished like any other inmate, receiving shocks through the electrified floor.
As such, he operates in a sort of in-between space. He’s one of the inmates, but he’s also quasi-aligned with the guards. He advocates for everyone to keep their head down and follow the rules. He trusts in the system; when rumors start flying about some sort of disaster that happened on level 2, he dismisses it as paranoid gossip, and when Ulaf experiences a health crisis on the way back from their shift, Kino urges the medic to get him back on his feet, noting that Ulaf only has a few shifts left and just has to power through a little bit longer.
He doesn’t completely buy into the system. As Cassian pesters him with questions about the number of guards assigned to each level, with escape obviously on his mind, Kino doesn’t give him the answers Cassian wants, but he doesn’t inform on him either. He just warns Cassian not to talk about things like this, wary of listening ears. He wants to trust that he’s getting out at the end of his sentence, and he’s afraid of possible reprisals for disobedience, but he does maintain some loyalty for the other inmates. He doesn’t want Cassian to get in trouble, and he clearly cares about Ulaf and wants to help him.
It's with all these in-betweens, these “almost but not quite” certainties in his mind that Kino hears the stunning truth. The guards did fry an entire floor, and they did it to keep word from spreading that there is no end to an inmate’s sentence. Upon being “released,” they’re taken away and simply shuffled around, trapped in an endless loop of prisons they’ll never get out of. Something cracks in Kino at this news, and when Cassian once again asks how many guards are on each level, he finally answers: “Never more than twelve.”
This doesn’t mean that Kino is transformed into an instant revolutionary. He almost immediately regrets saying anything, and he doesn’t want to deal with the reality of the escape plan Cassian and others are working on. He’s still afraid, and even though he’s just heard with his own ears that the system he wants to believe in is an elaborate lie, he still wants to cling to it, because what’s the alternative? But as Cassian argues and prods and pushes, Kino finds a well of resolve inside of him. He tells the rest of the inmates the truth they’ve just learned, and when the escape gets underway, at Cassian’s urging, he’s the one to step up to the intercom and urge the rest of the inmates to join them.
And of course, you know where this all is leading. Throughout the escape, the rallying cry is, “One way out.” As inmates break free of their rooms, as they push the guards back, as they race through the corridors and climb the stairs ever higher, they keep shouting it. “One way out.” That one way out is to jump into the waters surrounding the prison, swimming to freedom on an island where they might have a chance of getting off the moon. With inmates pressing in around them on all sides, shouting and surging and taking their fateful leaps, Kino calls to Cassian across the tumult: “I can’t swim.”
Even though that’s practically a textbook ending to his story, it still punches you in the gut. Kino did what he was supposed for so many shifts, staying out of trouble and keeping his fellow inmates in line. At the very end, he breaks from that and fights to free everyone…knowing that the only way out is one he can’t take. This realization adds even more gravitas to the speech he gives over the intercom. This is an absolute *chef’s kiss* of a character, he goes on a complete journey, and he’s only in three episodes! Just masterful from top to bottom.
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