This article contains spoilers for the Andor series finale.
Andor has officially come to a close. The series which has been lauded over the years, garnering critical praise and award nominations. It deserves all of that as it intricately and carefully breaks down how fascism and authoritarianism invades communities, destroying people, and buries genocides. Not only did it show these consequences for the heroes but also in a stroke of genius showed how it decimated all of the villains too.
Every single bad guy is beaten thanks to fascism. Throughout Andor, it's not the heroes that take out the majority of the big bads. In the end, they destroy themselves.
Starting with Syril Karn, whom I have already analyzed in a past article about how those "Leopards ate his face," it's his own obsession with law and order that does him in. He so desperately believes in the message and supposed safety of the Empire that he could never conceive they would lie to him. Upon his realization, he could have left to be better. Instead, he sees Cassian, the man he's always blamed, and attacks him in a fight to the death, where Syril is taken out by the very Ghorman leader the Empire wanted him to infiltrate. The Empire put Syril in that place where he fell.
ISB people aren't safe either, despite the power they wielded for most of the series. However, throughout Season 2, it was clear that it was being lost as the once-filled meeting room thinned more and more.
Heert, once loyal to Dedra, decided to take his own power once he was promoted to being a supervisor. He quickly discovered the more he rose, the less power and control he actually had. Those at the top, like Partagaz and Krennic, did not care about him at all.
Once he betrayed the woman he once supported, Heert both threw Dedra under the bus, only to crawl back to her when he needed her. Unlike the Rebellion, which won because of trust and loyalty, the ISB fell apart because they were cutthroats who only cared for themselves. While Heert was the only main baddie who was taken out by a main hero character in K-2SO, he was only in there in the first place because his job was threatened by his own actions. He might have had a different fate if he hadn't been so eager to take Dedra's place.
Major Partagaz is one of the more interesting cases because he was always at the top during the entire show. While not in charge of the ISB, he had the most power out of all the villains we saw, except for Director Krennic and Colonel Yularen. He was a person whom all the lackeys both feared and sought praise from. However, that status and rank did not make him safe. The Empire and fascist governments do not care about a person's rank. The only people safe are those at the top, like the Emperor or dictator. Partagaz knew this too. The moment the Death Star plans were taken and it was on his watch, he knew his end was coming. So, he took his own life.
On that note too, we know from Rogue One: A Star Wars Story and A New Hope that Krennic and Yularen don't make it out either. Grand Moff Tarkin gives the order to fire the Death Star on Scarif, killing Krennic, and then both he and Yularen meet their end when the Death Star explodes.
It's Dedra's demise that I find the most satisfying of them all. She is so obsessed with finding Axis, not playing by the rules of regulations that Partagaz warned her to stay inside of, that she sets up her own failure. Looking for anything to stop Luthen Rael, she unknowingly discovers the Death Star plans which, in turn, leads rebel spy Lonni Jung to pass off the information to Luthen, setting the stage for Rogue One. She could have stayed in her lane, but she thought she knew better than everyone around her. She thought her success would please her superiors; instead, it brought all of their destruction. Her final shot inside a Narkina 5-like prison, put there by the very Empire she gave years of her life to, is incredibly satisfying.
That's the thing about fascist governments. You can give them everything. You can vote them into office. You can give donations. You can be the most loyal person who serves them. But in the end, they don't care. They will never care about you. The only people who matter are those at the top, something that Andor succeeds spectacularly with its villains.