*Bix-related spoilers.*
Yes, another Favorite Characters post from Andor, and yes, the label continues to be 100% valid. One double-edged sword about Andor is the way the mini-arcs of the season move—while I love every story the show gives us, each with its own collection of great characters, it means that many of them are only in a handful of episodes, and I want so much more! That definitely applies to Bix.
First off, she’s a mechanic with her own salvage yard, respect. (Side note: Peli Motto says hi to all female mechanics in Star Wars!) Like a lot of Cassian’s friends on Ferrix, her life is a lot more on-track than his. While Cassian drifts and lets his pain get him into trouble, Bix runs a business and is in a steady romantic relationship (even if Timm turns out to be insecure and shifty.) Like Brasso, like Maarva, like B2EMO, she worries about Cassian and wants him to get his act together, but she doesn’t stop caring about him through his screwups.
Just because she’s got her life together, that doesn’t mean everything about Bix is squeaky clean. She accesses a secret transmitter to communicate with contacts for off-the-book purchases, stolen Empire tech and black-market goods. When Cassian is desperate for cash and a ticket out of town, he persuades her to call in Luthen to buy a valuable piece of tech he lifted. She seems to exist on the fringes of his less-than-legal activities, making calls and arranging meetings but not generally wading any deeper into getting her hands dirty.
Still, Bix is no great friend of the Empire. When Pre-Mor corpos swarm Ferrix looking for Cassian, she immediately does everything she can to warn him and keep him out of Pre-Mor hands. And she pays dearly for the help she offers. She’s detained by corpos and then Timm is shot in front of her. Later, when Dedra comes to investigate in Ferrix, she’s taken in and endures horrific psychological torture as part of her interrogation.
I like that Bix doesn’t brush off these things. She’s devastated when Timm is killed, although he’s the one who informed on Cassian in the first place. She’s deeply upset by all the harm caused during Cassian’s escape and the Imperial crackdown on Ferrix that follows. And when she’s tortured, it breaks her. She doesn’t maintain a stiff upper lip, she doesn’t spit out blood and ask, “Is that all you’ve got?” She is damaged by this experience in crucial ways, and she’ll probably never be who she was before this happened to her.
In the midst of all this, she gets very rightfully angry with Cassian. When he sneaks back into town after the Aldhani heist, she confronts him about all the damage left in his wake, and even though she knows none of it was his intention, she wants him to reckon with the fallout from his reckless actions. But as angry as she is, she still wants him to be safe, and she looks after Maarva when her runs again.
I don’t know what’s next for Bix. Like I said, the end of season 1 really messed her up, and it’s not the sort of thing she can bounce back quickly from. But away from Ferrix, I hope she’s able to start finding a bit of peace, beginning to heal even as she carries the scars left by the wounds.
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