Andor and the Reimagining of Star Wars

Star Wars, as a franchise, is almost 50 years old. It remains extraordinarily popular—as much or more than any other cinematic universe. At the same time, nearly all Star Wars properties are divisive in some way.

As I noted in the introduction to our special series Star Wars Subjectivities:

...search around the internet and you'll find many a lengthy opinion piece on which Star Wars properties are good and which ones are bad. Some will be Original Trilogy fanatics like me, others will tell you how secretly great the Prequels are. Others still will opine on how The Last Jedi is really a Top 3 Star Wars film sandwiched between two cinematic commercials for Disney theme park rides.

This is not only true for the films, but also for the various television shows, animated series, video games, books and comics that bear the Star Wars logo. Except Andor. I have yet to meet someone who loves Star Wars but dislikes Andor. Sure, I've met people who found the first season a bit dry and joyless (as I did, at the time), but not one fan who thinks it's bad. Nearly everyone—fans and critics alike—agree that it's good. Many think it's the best Star Wars property ever made.

I'm too heavily invested in the Original Trilogy to go that far—after all, it did change the way we think about movies. But after the masterpiece that is season 2, I think there's a serious case to be made for Andor. I want to delve deeper into why this show is so compelling to so many people—and, in the spirit of Star Wars Subjectivities, why it is so compelling to me.

(Before getting started, I'd like to note that Phoebe has written extensively on the show, including a great review of Andor Season 1, as well as an essay for Star Wars Subjectivities on Andor as community action—and is currently running a weekly review series breaking down each episode (ep 1, ep 2, ep 3, ep 4, ep 5). All are must reads, if you ask me. This will be a complementary take.)

Andor is a grown-up story for grown-ups

Star Wars has always tried to thread the needle between its two core audiences: adults and children. I discovered the Original Trilogy as a boy—and it captivated me the way media only can when you are that age. But the genius of the Original Trilogy is that it continues to captivate as you grow older. However, when George Lucas launched the prequel trilogy in 1999, it was obvious to all of us who were now teenagers or adults that these films were not aimed at us, but at a new generation of children. At Cannes in 2024, Lucas said that people like me were just grumpy because we weren't looking at the films through 10-year old eyes.

It's true that I never saw the prequels through 10-year old eyes, but I have consumed a metric ton of children's media over the years—as an adult—and can say with confidence that The Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones are not good, not even by the relaxed standards of children's media. As I wrote about The Phantom Menace:

The writing is bad. The acting is bad. The direction is bad. The production is bad. The pacing is bad. The design is bad. The effects are bad. The characters are bad. The plot is bad. The concept is... well... okay, maybe this could have actually been a good movie, in theory, but unfortunately... the execution is, in a word, bad. Like, bad on a very basic, fundamental level.

Or as Vance more succinctly put it in his piece on Attack of the Clones:

Of all the millions of stories that could exist in that galaxy far, far away, Lucas picked the wrong ones to tell in these prequels.

Nearly everyone, including yours truly, agrees that Revenge of the Sith is a much better film. The story is actually interesting—and highly political, weaving the tragedy of Anakin's turn to the dark side alongside the broader tragedy of the Republic's dissolution and the death of democracy. It has its cringe kid content moments ("Nooooooooo!"), but ultimately Revenge of the Sith aspires to be a serious film for whoever is watching, regardless of age. Like the Original Trilogy, Revenge of the Sith successfully threads the needle between its core audiences.

Most Star Wars content since has attempted the same feat. In the Disney era, this has worked sometimes (e.g. Mandalorian, Ahsoka) but more often not (e.g. Solo, The Book of Boba Fett, Obi-Wan). You could argue that success just boils down to quality, but the fact is that designing content for the broadest possible audience usually leads to bland, mediocre fare that is passable to everyone but not great to anyone.

Perhaps for this reason, Disney has recently grown more and started to develop properties specifically for each audience. I'm focusing on Andor here, but Skeleton Crew is also worth mentioning—it's a true kids' show designed for parents to watch with their little ones. And it's good!

Meanwhile, Andor is a mature show written for adults, a complex political drama set against a dark background, featuring hard-boiled characters who shoot first and don't fight according to Queensbury rules. There are no adorable creatures, no comic relief characters and no Jedi. Instead, there are real people struggling against very real oppression, making tough choices that don't always work out—and which almost always come at a high cost. Yet it is also a moving, sensitive and stirring portrayal of those people and the terrible world they were born into. I'm still astonished that this is a Star Wars story—and that it is almost the exact Star Wars story I've long wanted to see told.

The best Star Wars stories enhance the Original Trilogy; the worst cheapen it

This is something I've been chewing on since we ran Star Wars Subjectivities back in 2023. The Original Trilogy is the keystone for the Star Wars universe. All subsequent works—whether in film, television or other media—are essentially contextualizing those films. More precisely, they try to either (a) help you understand why things happen the way they do in the Original Trilogy; or (b) explore the aftereffects and consequences of what happens in the Original Trilogy. The good stuff adds richness, depth and gratifying exposition to a story with a lot of whitespace, or render something silly, well, less silly—in all cases enhancing the Original Trilogy.

Consider this example: In A New Hope, we learn that rebel spies managed to obtain plans for the Empire's Death Star. When Darth Vader boards the Tantive IV, he is specifically looking for those plans—which Princess Leia gives to the droid R2D2, with instructions to hand them over to the Jedi Master Obi-Wan Kenobi. The plans demonstrate a fundamental weakness in the Death Star's design, which the Rebel Alliance hopes to exploit, thus winning a first major victory in their rebellion against the Empire.

Rogue One tells the story of how those rebel spies obtain the plans and transfer them to the Tantive IV. Andor then gives us the backstory for one of its main characters, Cassian Andor. But it doesn't only do that. We get a deep dive into Mon Mothma, the political leader of the Rebel Alliance—who has a small but compelling role in Return of the Jedi. And we get to see the Rebellion—and the Empire—from a range of perspectives, from Senators to regular people (none of whom, I'll note, are lightsaber-wielding Force sensitives of destiny).

In every way possible, Andor fleshes out the story and world presented in the Original Trilogy, enhancing our understanding of what happens, why it happens and who is important to the story it tells.

Contrast this with the Disney-era Sequel Trilogy. In The Force Awakens, director JJ Abrams eschews the opportunity to explore the New Republic's struggles to govern under the power vacuum left by the Empire's dissolution (which all of us who participated in this roundtable were keen on), in favor of... just remaking A New Hope with new, less interesting characters and cheaper-looking sets. As Haley put it, Abrams remade A New Hope for Gen Z. And that's probably the nicest way to put it.

The Last Jedi is more daring, but its aspirations are weighed down by inconsistent writing and direction, plot holes and—again—the misguided urge to just remake a film that everyone already loves (in this case, The Empire Strikes Back). As I wrote in a (fairly grumpy) review back in 2017:

This brings us to the on-going Disney trilogy, which so far has presented a vision of... the exact same one as the Original Trilogy. Actually, there is a mild subversion of the original trilogy’s meta-narrative, but one so mild that it's barely a critique. Once again, we have a ragtag group of plucky individuals who confront immense power and (are sure to) triumph against all odds. And the films hit you over the head with the referential frying pan. Starkiller Base from The Force Awakens is the Death Star, but bigger! Kylo Ren is Darth Vader, but emo! Luke’s island is Dagobah, salt planet is Hoth, casino planet is Cloud City and so forth and so on. It's the same old same old, only with crappier design and little romance—the kind of thing dreamed up by corporate executives with checklists in hand and theme park rides in mind.*

So how does the Sequel Trilogy function as Star Wars canon? Not well—and especially not well when the big reveal occurs in Rise of Skywalker (which all of us in the Disney Star Wars roundtable agreed is the worst of the three). All it achieves is to make the Original Trilogy less consequential in terms of canon, while rendering the few redeeming bits of The Last Jedi null and void in favor of insipid fan service that didn't even appeal to the fans who complained about The Last Jedi. I can say one good thing about it, though: it features such an unsatisfying ending that this instantly rendered all those contrarian critiques of Return of the Jedi null and void. After all, why would anyone complain about that ending when there's another one that's so drab, colorless and utterly devoid of life?

We finally see the Empire for what it really is

Back to Andor, this is the first major piece of Star Wars media where we truly see the Empire for what it is. And I don't mean that we get a quantitatively higher level of grimdark badness (the Empire destroys a planet in A New Hope, after all, and it's hard to get much worse than that). What I mean is this: in Andor, we get to see how Imperial rule is experienced by noncombatants; we get to see what animates the Imperial project; and we come to understand why the Empire behaves the way it does.

These are not zealots of the 20th-century grimoire, animated by nationalistic hatreds, a radically remade society or a murderous desire for purity. Rather, the Empire is more or less a traditional empire. It is a fundamentally extractive enterprise, the way Dutch colonialism was fundamentally extractive in present-day Indonesia—that is to say, the Empire is motivated by the straightforward desire to take and hoard.

For example, in Season 2, we learn that Director Krennic needs a mineral called kalkite for his top secret Death Star project; a rich source of the mineral exists beneath the crust of the planet Ghorman, a sparsely populated colony world whose leadership had backed the Separatists during the Clone Wars, but mining the kalkite from Ghorman would render the planet unstable—and unsuitable for habitation. Krennic gathers a council of officials from the various military branches, directorates of the Imperial bureaucracy and, of course, the Imperial Security Bureau (ISB) to discuss their options. The meeting is straightforwardly designed to evoke the 1942 Wannsee Conference, where a group of 15 Nazi officials decided to exterminate Europe's Jewish population (as Tony Gilroy himself has stated).

But while there's no doubt that the Empire will commit genocide, if it decides that doing so will further its goals, the Empire isn't motivated by any specific hatred for the people of Ghorman. Rather, the people of Ghorman are an inconvenience, as is the need for their removal—so the conspirators decide to look for alternatives, but ready a plan to reduce any blowback they might face if they ultimately decide to commit genocide and the mass ethnic cleansing of the planet.

Despite the aesthetic similarities between the Empire and Nazi Germany, this is not at all like the Holocaust, which was the culmination of several decades of consistent, ideological antisemitism from a political party founded on the premise that Jews were to blame for just about everything. It is, I'd argue, much more like the atrocities committed by both land-based and seafaring empires: there was something the empire wanted, there were people in the way—and if there was no more expedient way to take it, they would deploy extreme levels of violence to get it. This is bad, by the way—very bad; just not bad in the specific way the Nazis were bad, or as consistently bad as the Nazis were.

For me this as a refreshing take. Popular media routinely ignores 95% of human history while obsessing over a few historical cases, relating anything and everything to said cases. But there is a lot more material to draw on, and the fact that Andor steps out from the shadow of the ever-present Nazi analogy to portray the Empire in ways that evoke other things is, to me, one of the things that give the show depth.

Andor is about people making difficult choices

One of the show's main subplots focuses on the radicalization of Mon Mothma, who by Return of the Jedi has become the leader of the Rebel Alliance. But when we are introduced to Mon Mothma, she is if anything a beneficiary of the Empire. That is not to say she supports the Empire (we know she does not), but that her class privilege—being a wealthy, connected human from the core worlds—gives her the option to pretend the evil isn't happening and keep living her life of luxury. She does not, but we see, by the end, most members of her social circle will choose to follow the path of least resistance.

This contrasts with life outside the core worlds, where societies are mixed (human and non-human), few people are rich, life is harsh and the decision to rebel is more often imposed than chosen. As it is for Cassian Andor. Resistance, though, comes in many forms—and requires many kinds of sacrifices.

Andor portrays a range of resistance fighters—from the patrician senators Mon Mothma and Bail Organa to art dealer turned spymaster Luthen Rael and his indefatigable protégé Kleya Marki (played by a scene-stealing Elizabeth Dulau); from the hard-boiled Cassian Andor and Lezine to Supervisor Jung, Luthen's mole within the ISB. None are "chosen," none are Force sensitives; all are simply people trying to do the right thing as best they can under terrible circumstances. These are heroes every resistance movement can claim, from the mighty to the ordinary. All play their part, at great cost, because they cannot simply stand by.

Andor isn't just great Star Wars; it's great science fiction

If it isn't clear already, I see Andor as a triumph. It is—easily, in my view—the best Star Wars story since the Original Trilogy. It achieves this feat by taking bigger, bolder risks than any other film or series since Return of the Jedi hit theaters in 1983.

But it isn't only one of the best Star Wars stories ever told—it is also one of the best science fiction stories ever developed for television. Indeed, if you were to swap out all the Star Wars content and replace it with standard space opera content, it would be just as effective a story. This is rarely true, even for the Star Wars stories I love. It is very difficult for me to see, to cite one example, how The Mandalorian would work outside a Star Wars context—and I love The Mandalorian.

Hats off, then, to Tony and Dan Gilroy, to Diego Luna, Stellan Skarsgård, Genevieve O'Reilly, Elizabeth Dulau, and to everyone else involved in the making of this absolute masterpiece.

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(My view is not an institutional one. There are other ways of looking at all these films and shows, which are well represented across our flock. Haley loves the prequels—all the prequels. Paul enjoyed The Force Awakens—even I did the first time around, as did Joe. Arturo has argued that The Last Jedi is significant, in that it redefines what it means to be a Jedi—and then poses a novel theory, that the film is about the meaning of fandom. It's definitely an interesting theory, one worth engaging with.) 

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POSTED BY: The G—purveyor of nerdliness, genre fanatic and Nerds of a Feather  founder/administrator, since 2012.

Rebellions Are Built on Hope: Andor S2E5

 Disaster is around every corner for Cassian and his comrades

In episode four, “I Have Friends Everywhere,” Cassian goes off to Ghorman undercover as a fashion designer while Syril plays double agent with the Ghorman Front. Meanwhile, Wilmon is working with Saw Gerrera (Forest Whitaker) as an engineer to help him steal fuel, his position becoming more precarious as Saw considers killing him. Luthen and Kleya are also in trouble as they realize one of their listening devices is in danger of being found, and they must extract it at a party that will include high-ranking Imperial officers.

In the middle episode of this arc primarily focused on Ghorman, we get to see what makes Cassian one of Luthen’s prized agents as he goes undercover as an excited, young fashion designer on a rite-of-passage trip to the famous Ghorman, but in reality, he’s assessing the Ghorman Front for Luthen. Diego Luna’s acting brilliance is on full display as Cassian turns on and off his cover character and uses the disarming personality of Varian Skye to encourage information from the bellhop, for instance, who was present at the Tarkan Massacre as a youth and recounts the experience of people filling the square outside the hotel’s windows: “We thought there was safety in numbers.” Even as the square filled with people, including children, Tarkan still landed his ship, massacring the protestors.

This moment is a theme of the episode in some ways—a naiveté about the Empire and what lengths they will go to. This idea is repeated when the leader of the Ghorman Front, Carro Rylanz, still can’t accept that what is happening to Ghorman is being done purposefully, and even suggests to Syril: “Many of us believe the Emperor has no idea what’s being done on his behalf.” Again, showrunner Tony Gilroy and his team hit on a real feeling under occupation, especially for someone like Carro Rylanz, a wealthy business owner and politician. He cannot accept that the pain being caused is by design.

In the last episode, viewers were primed to see the Ghorman Front as inexperienced as they welcomed Syril into their group a little too quickly, which is confirmed by Cassian. In a wonderfully acted scene, he sits in a café in character as Varian Skye, and Carro’s daughter Enza (Alaïs Lawson) walks up to him, welcoming him to the Ghorman, and invites herself to sit. Once some other people nearby leave, Cassian breaks character and says she just risked everyone she loves on the assumption that he is who he says he is, pointing out her inexperience and hurry. He says, “People die rushing.” To which she responds, “It’s hard to be patient when your world is falling apart.”

I’ve already seen people posting about the power of this line, but almost nobody has pointed to Cassian’s line, which is the more important concept. In moments of struggle, there’s a great surge of energy, which we are seeing right now in the U.S. and in different parts of the world, and often, this new burst of energy is from the inexperienced. With this new energy also comes urgency over the issue that inspired people to get involved, but without listening to those who have been doing the work, that urgency can be dangerous, whether it’s breaking security protocols or trying to do too much and causing burnout. In Cassian’s case, there are operational security concerns if the Ghorman Front is captured, that could lead back to Luthen and the Axis network. Cassian ultimately discourages them from their plan to attack transports carrying weapons to the armory they believe is being built in town, because it would endanger the group, which prompts the leader Carro to say, “You’re not much of a revolutionary, are you?” Cassian agrees, and in some ways, it’s true. He’s not their version of what they want out of revolution, which is Ghorman safe. Cassian has a longer and larger battle in mind. Ghorman may be part of that, but currently, their goals do not align.

This discussion of revolution contrasts with one of the great monologues of the show. Much like in season one, Gilroy and his team still manage to seamlessly work in monologues or speeches that are beautifully written and manage to stick in my head, whether it’s Nemik’s speech (“Freedom is a pure idea…”) or, in this episode, Saw Guerra’s story about becoming addicted to huffing fuel fumes.

During this arc, we have an extended look at Saw Guerra and his loyal band. While in contrast with the carefully quaffed Luthen, Saw’s band is intensely loyal to the point they don’t blink when he kills an Imperial spy in their midst and provides proof of his treachery. At first, Wilmon seems offput by their intensity, but he still helps them steal fuel, even if he is being threatened to some degree.

The device used to steal the fuel takes intense concentration to run, and while Wilmon is sweating over the variations, Saw waits, monologuing in the background about his childhood, when he was forced to work a labor camp. Wilmon, wearing protective equipment, successfully opens up the pipeline, and when the fuel fumes smoke out, Saw breathes them in, to Wilmon’s horror, which prompts Saw to say one of the most memorable lines of the show: “Revolution is not for the sane.”

Saw goes on to say that he essentially knows and believes that he will die trying to overthrow the Empire, and that sense of being alive in this moment, ready to burn for the revolution, is vital. In his own way, Luthen expressed a similar sentiment earlier in the episode when trying to encourage Bix, saying he would win or die trying. For Luthen and Saw, and their followers, they know the revolution extends beyond their lifetimes. This sense of scale and purpose is what the Ghorman Front lacks. For them, this is a blip, a disturbance they are fighting against so they can go back to their normal lives. They cannot see that, as long as the Empire stands, there will never be a normal for Ghorman.

POSTED BY: Phoebe Wagner (she/they) is an author, editor, and academic writing and living at the intersection of speculative fiction and environmentalism.