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We won’t know until next week, but “One Way Out” may have been the best way out of Andor Season 1. Had Andor ended last week with its all-timer of a 10th episode, dayenu. We would have sailed into the break between seasons celebrating Andy Serkis’s Kinote address and Luthen’s cursed cri de coeur; Cassian’s decision to take down the prison (and, perhaps, the whole Empire) and Kino’s confession that he couldn’t swim; and the prisoners’ revolt and Mon Mothma’s moral dilemma. Most showrunners would have made like George Costanza and gone out on that high note.

But instead of ending with Episode 10, Andor creator and conductor Tony Gilroy said, “Never fewer than 12.” With this week’s 11th episode, Gilroy began building toward what he envisioned as a still loftier peak. In light of what he and his collaborators have accomplished this season, I wouldn’t have wagered against them. Episode 3, “Reckoning,” seemed tough to top until Episode 6, “The Eye,” surpassed it. Episode 6 was the season standout until Episode 10 made mics and mouths drop. Episodes 11 and 12, Gilroy teased, would be the most momentous yet. “Hopefully, they’re the most powerful two episodes that we have in the show,” he told Rolling Stone. “It’s our emotional catharsis. It’s our physical catharsis. It’s our summing up for these 12 episodes. We’ve invested a lot in it, so we have high expectations that we’re paying it off.”

Season finales are built on hope, and Andor’s ending may yet fulfill those aspirations and expectations. If it does, though, it will have to be because of next week’s last act. There’s relatively little power, payoff, or catharsis in Episode 11—the weakest, least revealing, and most redundant installment to this point, including the season’s slow-burn beginning. “I have a constant blur of plates spinning,” Kleya tells Vel when the latter visits Luthen’s shop. If one wanted to be harsh, that wouldn’t be a bad description of this episode, which—while hardly devoid of emotional moments—comes closer to treading water and marking time than any episode so far. It’s an unfamiliar feeling for me not to be enthralled by an episode of Andor, but if I’m going to give Gilroy’s work a standing ovation when the series soars, I’ve got to give it a golf clap when it fails to take flight. As Maarva (RIP) put it, “That’s what a reckoning sounds like.”

One of Andor’s delights is its freedom to get granular. The season’s extended length, compared to that of previous Disney streaming series, has given Gilroy and Co. the leeway to show us, say, Syril being berated over breakfast, Mon Mothma sniping at Perrin (and vice versa), Cinta chiding Vel about the latter’s privileged background, and many more moments that could have been cut for time but, by their inclusion, immeasurably enriched our conception of these characters and our immersion in their world. Andor’s detractors have complained about a lack of action, but Andor hasn’t needed lightsabers, blasters, or space battles to be intense and eventful; something significant has happened in almost every scene, even if it was subtle. Pressed by Rolling Stone, Gilroy defended the series’ pace and level of detail. “I’m not unhappy at all with the time we’ve spent with all of our characters,” he said. Neither am I. At no previous point this season have I felt as if Andor were excessively slow-playing its hand or squandering its time or mine.

This week, for the first time, Andor dragged. In the same interview, Gilroy defined drama as “watching people you care about in difficult circumstances make decisions that you’re interested in.” Episode 11 satisfied the first two criteria, but it was lacking in the last one. This week’s episode featured five planets—six, if you count ex-sergeant Mosk’s choppy FaceTime from Morlana One. Aldhani aside, everywhere we’ve visited this season was represented. Yet all that movement in space coincided with scant progress when it came to developing characters.

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