Broom Kid said:
I think cutting him period is probably going too far. Krennic bullying Dedra pays off in the way he ends up becoming just like her when he butts up against that same fascist ceiling in Rogue One. She overreaches and winds up getting put in her place by both Partagaz and then Krennic. Krennic overreaches and gets chumped by both Tarkin, and then Vader. I get the general instinct, but I also feel like Gilroy is looking at Rogue One (and was looking at it when he got called in to fix it in the first place) as he’s making Andor and knows what it is he’s both leading into and also mirroring in subtle ways as he builds out his arcs.

Cutting Vader for the sake of cutting him to make Rogue One feel more like Andor feels, to me, like a short-circuiting of what Andor was doing in the first place by trying to build TO Rogue One.

I disagree and I think my reasoning is in your reasoning - Dedra is never actually put in her place by Partagaz directly, so there is no real parallelism in having there be a “both Tarkin, and then Vader” for Krennic to rub up against. It’s not even really intuitive for there to be two representations of a fascist ceiling per character. Tarkin is more than enough.

I feel like it breaks down more like this: Partagaz is explicitly in Dedra’s corner for pretty much all of the show, and he only throws her under the bus off-screen as a means of self preservation. Krennic is then in his corner, but states he can’t protect him, which comes to bear for Partagaz after Heert’s failure.

[Dedra -> Partagaz -> Krennic -> Tarkin] works well enough, cleaner I think than having Vader in there for no real reason. Vader isn’t contending with bureaucracy / careerism / survival in the way those characters are, it’s not actually a compelling thematic bit to add him into the mix; he’s just annoyed.