Star Wars has lengthy had a rocky historical past with textual queerness—whereas LGBTQ characters have slowly however certainly begun to thrive within the pages of books, video games, and comics, on screens large and small the outcomes have been decidedly combined. It’s becoming then that Andor, a shock to Star Wars’ system as of late, is emboldened in its personal method.

This week’s episode, “The Axe Forgets,” largely follows the insurgent cell that Cassian (aka Clem) has been inserted into on Alhdani by Luthen, as all of them put together for a harmful mission to steal payroll knowledge from the Empire. As with a lot of Andor’s strengths to this point, it’s an episode that’s deft and wealthy in a grounded texture with the way it approaches its characters, as we get to study a bit of extra about simply why these individuals have been introduced collectively in a rebellious trigger.

We study of their anger, of their vengeance, of their ideology, all these completely different individuals all with legitimate purpose for preventing the Imperial machine. But in a equally deft scene, we rapidly study, as cell member Skeen fills Cassian in on the myriad private politics of his fellow rebels as they get up of their camp, that some connections transcend trigger. It’s a tiny, however important second: Cinta, performed by Varada Sethu, leaves one of many loosely constructed huts within the encampment, gathering issues. As Skeen describes her as more durable than she appears, Faye Marsay’s Vel walks out from the identical hut behind her, nestled in a blanket.

“She’s already sharin’ a blanket, if that’s what your wonderin’,” Skeen merely tells Cassian, and we now have, in such a quiet second, Star Wars’ second queer couple in live-action media.

Vel and Cinta’s relationship is just not introduced because the be-all and end-all of queerness in Andor. There isn’t any grand love confession, no express intimacy, however a relationship that’s painted quietly—in a line like Skeen’s, or the best way Vel’s angle to Cassian activates a dime when he briefly flirts with Cinta over his wounded arm. It’s there in glances as they stand with one another aspect by aspect, or it’s in appears of discomfort when, because the cell makes its technique to start their mission and Cassian reveals his personal mercenary goals for being a part of their trigger, Cinta softly admits that Vel didn’t even inform her that she already knew this. But it’s a relationship nonetheless, and albeit one sketched out loosely, it feels extra powerfully profound than a personality screaming it from the rooftop, or maybe a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it kiss at a victory celebration.

It feels, simply as the remainder of Andor’s messy, flawed figures do, whether or not throughout the Empire or with out it, identical to part of this world, seamlessly and with out query. It is introduced as no stranger than if Vel or Cinta had shared a blanket with Cassian, or Nemik, or Skeen, or Taramyn: it simply is. Andor excels at the lived-in feeling that Star Wars typically likes to evoke of its worldbuilding, however that’s often a descriptor it saves for props and alien designs, spaceships and blasters. Rarely a lot does it apply to its characters, particularly ones that tackle legendary standing like its grandest heroes and villains—deliberately larger-than-life subsequent to the common individuals of the galaxy. But Andor takes this sense, of creating a world that’s able to such fantasy as Star Wars and rendering it complicatedly human and actual, and certainly lived-in, and applies it to everybody. And that everybody, simply as in our personal world, contains queer individuals.

It’s maybe telling that Star Wars has been round for so long as it has, and it’s this subdued, barely touched and refined relationship in Andor that also stands as one in all its most seen queer relationships, on screens large or small. The franchise, for all it successes on the web page—which, cynically considered, will be pushed apart at a second’s discover by the behemoths of TV and flicks as not “real” Star Wars within the eyes of many—or for all its tiny, irritating steps in live-action and animation, has a protracted technique to go on the subject of giving us queer characters as richly detailed and celebrated as its heterosexual ones. We won’t know the way for much longer Vel or Cinta have in Andor’s world, life beneath the Empire is at all times a dangerous enterprise for any insurgent. But within the right here and now, their shared blanket brings very important texture to its world, and Andor is all the higher for touching upon it.

Want extra io9 information? Check out when to count on the most recent Marvel and Star Wars releases, what’s subsequent for the DC Universe on movie and TV, and every little thing you might want to find out about House of the Dragon and Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power.