In "Who are you?", the best episode of season two—and a top-tier moment in television generally—, we bear witness to the Ghorman Massacre.
Content Warning: Discussion of domestic violence, violence against protesters.
As Cassian is preparing for his assassination of Dedra Meero, the plaza is opened and the Ghorman Front immediately starts to rally people. In a surprising moment of clarity, the leader of the Ghorman Front, Carro Rylanz, points out the danger of gathering, but his rebels refuse to listen to him. Meanwhile, Dedra speaks to her supervisor, Major Partagaz about the plan. “The only story that matters is Ghorman aggression,” he says. “The threats, the inexplicable resistance to imperial norms.” He points the success of their propaganda and media, revealed in the board meeting during episode one: “Our struggles with Ghorman are well documented at this point.”
In a great piece of cinematic storytelling, a few minutes later as Syril walks through the memorial plaza, a news reporter repeats Partagaz’s lines about resistance to imperial norms. The propaganda plans have fully taken over the media, demonstrating there is no help for the Ghor from the story being recorded by traditional media sources. They are fully part of the Imperial machine.
As Syril makes his way to ask Dedra what’s going on, he’s confronted by Carro Rylanz as people file by, chanting: “We are the Ghor! The galaxy is watching.” Rylanz tells Syril about the mining equipment that’s been witnessed on different parts of the plant, which Syril still tries to deny, but at this point, Rylanz knows Syril must have been helping the Empire and says: “What kind of being are you?” Syril has no response, and Rylanz demands to know: “What’s in our ground? What is it you’ve been sent to steal from us?” Like Rylanz, though, Syril has no knowledge of the mining as Dedra has kept it from him.
He tries to see Dedra, but he’s blocked by other Imperial officers as things become more volatile during the protest. When he is finally brought in to see her, she reveals the plan he has already guessed. In this moment, Syril finally finds his agency, even though it’s through an exertion of power via domestic violence. In true fascist fashion, he can’t express himself except through domination (as opposed to being dominated by the other women in his life who dictated his agency, such as his mother or Dedra). He chokes her while asking about the mining. His shock seems to have two layers—the destruction of the planet and people he’s come to admire to some degree and the fact his girlfriend kept the information from him. He rushes out to join the crowd.
While Syril’s capability of violence has been demonstrated in season one when he tried to find Cassian, this intimate partner violence demonstrates a shift in his character. Throughout season two, Syril has received much of what he’s wanted. His partner is an officer in ISB, his mother is finally respecting him, and he’s on a special mission for the Empire. Importantly, much of these “successes” haven’t happened due to his choices. In a brilliantly acted scene early in the season, Dedra tells his mother, Eedy (Kathryn Hunter), that she will control how much Syril sees his mother and that contact will be dictated by if Eedy can behave. Syril trades one domineering relationship for another. While it does seem like Dedra cares for him in her own way—both of their abilities to care dictated by their lack of empathy—Syril is also controllable, which is why he’s the perfect person to infiltrate the Ghor, because Dedra knows she can control him.
As Syril realizes he’s been used by his partner, he watches the breakdown of the protest in the plaza as the new recruits from the previous episode are sent out to clear a path to the memorial. While their commanding officer says that’s a bad idea, the officer in charge of the operation sends them out anyway.
In an intensely powerful moment, Lezine starts singing the Ghorman national anthem. The crowd picks it up, and soon the whole plaza is singing, united in this moment of oppositional nationalism. As they sing, the green recruits go out to clear a path to the memorial, and the crowd grows angry, harassing them while stormtroopers blocking off the plaza observe the situation. Above the plaza, a sniper watches while TIE fighters fly over.
Partagaz orders Dedra to continue the plan: a sniper takes out one of the young recruits, which prompts the imperial forces to open fire, including the stormtroopers. What had been a crowd singing the Ghorman national anthem becomes stormtroopers and imperial officers shooting into a plaza. A few of the Ghorman Front have blasters, but most of them are unarmed civilians. The sniper continues to take out people from the rooftop.
In the panic, Syril watches the stormtroopers kill people he had been working with, murder the citizens he’d walked past every day, and destroy the plaza his office had overlooked. In a series of slow moments, the camera focuses on Syril standing still in all this violence.
Several commentators have suggested that Syril might have had some sort of awakening in these moments, and Disney’s official episode guide seems to support that reading as the episode summary states: “[Syril] comes to the realization that he’s been a pawn for the Empire’s machinations.” It’s easy to want to look for redemption for Syril. While he’s not a sympathetic character, we do come to know him intimately over the course of two seasons, from seeing the inside of his bedroom and how his mother treats him to the manipulation from his partner, Dedra. But, he’s always been an active part of the Empire. He wasn’t swept up into it out of necessity or drafted into the stormtroopers or even just passively involved. One of the first introductions to Syril is while he attempts to create an even more stringent sense of law and order on Ferrix. It’s his dream to be recruited by Dedra to be a spy, even if the reason for his spying is at first a lie. To me, what makes Syril such a compelling and well-written character is not this moment where he perhaps regrets his actions but because he is as dedicated to the cause as Cassian or Luthen. Cassian also has moments where he questions their tactics, but he still has resolve. So does Syril as his opposite.
Meanwhile, as Syril is having these confrontations, Cassian is quick to recognize the gathering in the plaza is a bad idea and will end in violence. As he hurries to check out of the hotel, the bellhop, Thela, tells Cassian, “Don’t worry, you were never here. Didn’t log you in.” This moment demonstrates some of the brilliance of the storytelling in Andor—and I want to point out a similar moment in the next episode. Gilroy and his team take careful pains to show how one resists. The tools are documented, and this moment is one of them. Thela breaks a small rule in order to make sure Cassian remains undetected. When Cassian responds that he hopes everything works out, Thela says: “Rebellions are built on hope.” By giving this key line to Thela, it emphasizes even more that it’s not the great leaders like Cassian, Bix, Vel, and Luthen who make the rebellion work, it’s the small acts of resistance that create great opportunities. As Nemik from season one says in his manifesto: “Remember that the frontier of the Rebellion is everywhere. And even the smallest act of insurrection pushes our lines forward.”
Cassian joins the Ghorman protest outside, trying to find Wilmon, as they both realize the stormtroopers are prepared to “kettle” the Ghorman, cutting off their escape in a great visualization of tactics currently being used against protestors in L.A. these past few weeks. Much like Thela’s small act of resistance, Gilroy and his team also show the tactics of empire to disrupt protest. The stormtroopers contain the protestors, fly intimidating TIE fighters over the crowds, and, most importantly, they start the violence by killing one of their own people to then pin on the protestors. K2 units are released on the crowd, and their efficient violence and nearly impenetrable armor makes them horrific enemies as they are able to crush people to death.
In the violent chaos, Cassian still tries to complete his mission of assassinating Dedra, and as he is about to take the shot, Syril finally sees him in the crowd. Syril reacts with an intensity of violence that we nearly saw when he threatened to kill his partner. Now, he turns all that anger onto Cassian, the man he’d hunted and had caused him to lose his job. It’s a brutal fight as they both go for the soft parts—the eyes, mouths—and use whatever weapons are at hand as the Imperial forces continue to massacre the Ghorman.
Syril is relentless, dragging himself upright after an explosion that Cassian thinks has taken him out. He finds a gun and has Cassian in his sights. With desperation in his voice, Cassian asks: “Who are you?” Cassian’s lack of awareness of Syril’s existence makes Syril hesitate. It’s easy to imagine what might be going through his mind, that the only reason Syril is standing in that plaza, a contributor to a massacre, is because of Cassian, the man he became obsessed with. In that moment of hesitation, Syril is shot through the head by Rylanz.
In interviews, Gilroy and Diego Luna have talked about how they had to fight to keep the line “Who are you?” in the episode, which seems wild. The moment provides so much clarity for Syril’s character—all that hatred for a person who doesn’t even know him. As a piece of anti-fascist media, this moment feels important to the broader message. A necessary tool of fascism is an “other” that can be blamed for the ills of the world. On an interpersonal level, Cassian represents that “other” for Syril (and from a casting perspective, Diego Luna and Kyle Soller replicate the current fascist othering happening in the U.S. right now). This question from Cassian dramatizes how all that hate from Syril is a one-way street and not representative of reality. Rather, Syril was trying to turn something he'd imagined into reality.
After Syril’s death, Cassian and Wilmon escape the plaza. Wilmon chooses to stay on Ghorman to help his girlfriend, a member of the Ghorman Front. In the final shots, Wilmon’s girlfriend Dreena (Ella Pellegrini), attempts to broadcast what happened during the massacre. Wilmon also charges Cassian to spread the story.
A long shot shows Cassian’s face as he escapes and Dreena's message plays as narration: “We are under siege. We are being slaughtered…” This message contrasts with the news media, which shares the Imperial narrative that the Ghor started the violence and that the dead imperial officers are martyrs (including Syril).
What makes this episode, and the following episode “Welcome to the Rebellion,” so important is the familiarity of it all. Videos on TikTok juxtapose shots from these episodes with protests actively happening across the country as I write. Someone graffitied an ad for Andor, adding a speech bubble to Luthen’s mouth condemning ICE. Like the best revolutionary media, Andor has captured our current moment. While Gilroy has stated in interviews that this season wasn’t meant to be predictive, the prescience is still uncanny and speaks to Gilroy and his team’s understanding of fascism.
In a recent video post, resistance scholar Dr. Tad Stoermer points out that Andor is “practically an instruction manual” and sums up what he sees as the takeaway: “Resistance, to have any hope of success, requires regular people…to risk, to sacrifice, to lose with no force on their side other than their own will. […] What are you …willing to risk…for a better world you might never live to see?”
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POSTED BY: Phoebe Wagner (she/they) is an author, editor, and academic writing and living at the intersection of speculative fiction and environmentalism.
