Imperial ouroboros
Andor's second season is a powerful look at the fragility of oppressive ideologies
In May, the latest live-action Star Wars series Andor came to a close, taking viewers up to the hours before the events of Rogue One kicked off, setting up the 2016 prequel film as a sort of energetic and explosive series finale that launched right into the events of the first Star Wars film. I'm sad to see it go, because I'm not sure that we'll ever see another series like this: a story that didn't shy away from the complicated and messy political parts of a revolution, and which ends up recontextualizing the stories it grew out of.
George Lucas viewed his story a political narrative, but while those ideas are at the core of his storytelling, they're often easy to miss when we're dazzled by the technical prowess on display in the films or the kinetic energy of the lightsaber fights and space battles.
Indeed, projects like the sequel trilogy (The Force Awakens, The Last Jedi, and The Rise of Skywalker) and spinoff shows like The Mandalorian and The Book of Boba Fett largely glosses over the galaxy's geopolitics, opting to instead to show off a more extreme version of the Empire taking over the galaxy with superweapons and legions of brainwashed soldiers. It makes for fun and exciting visuals, but there's rarely any consideration for how the galaxy fell apart in the first place, and I think that does those stories a greater disservice: the actions of the heroes really don't have a lot of stake or weight in the fight, other than that they're waging it.
At least, until recently. Andor spent its two seasons painstakingly showed not only the malevolence of Imperial rule, but also the difficulties in bringing together a resistance movement to confront it. It drew inspiration from real-world histories of revolution and rebellion, and in doing so, showcases a particular element of fascism that's worth highlighting: it's an inherently self-destructive system, even if it leads to short-term results for control.
Spoilers ahead for the entirety of Andor's second season.
There's an astonishing scene in the penultimate episode of Andor's second season, "Who Else Knows?" when Director Orson Krennic arrives in an interrogation room where Imperial Security Bureau Supervisor Dedra Meero is waiting.
Meero has been arrested after she attempted to capture Luthen Rael, a Coruscant antiquities dealer who's been living a double life as a spymaster who's been coordinating the growing resistance movement against the Empire, helping various rebel cells coordinate and (try) to work together. She designated him as "Axis" in the first season, and was fixated on tracking him down, even as her duties in the ISB took her elsewhere. In the last batch of episodes from this second season, she finally tracked him down, interfering with another supervisor's operations and ended up with Rael in the hospital and eventually assassinated.
She's confronted by Krennic, who isn't there to talk about her unauthorized obsession or the recent murder of a fellow supervisor Lonnie Jung (who was a double agent who had been feeding Rael information), but for another issue: the leak of information about a top-secret project, the Death Star, which has been quietly coming to completion. She had been forwarded information about the project accidentally, which Jung had viewed and forwarded on to Rael, kicking off a chain of events that would ultimately lead to the superweapon's destruction.
The scene is a masterclass in acting. Meero (wonderfully played by Denise Gough) begins the scene defiant and confident in the actions she's undertaken, only to have her legs chopped from under her when she realizes the gravity of the situation. "We'll do our best to carry on without you," he tells her as he stalks out, and that's when she fully understands how truly perilous of a position she's now in.
(What I love about this scene: Mendelson improvised the moment when he pokes Gough in the head. Everyone's brought their acting A game to this season, but he really chews up the scenery in every scene he's in.)
This moment is something of a culmination for something that Andor has done particularly well: the difficulty in maintaining authority once you've grabbed onto power, and I think it's a scene that ultimately plants the seeds for how and why the Empire eventually falls a handful of years later: it demonstrates the its inherent fragility.
Andrew Liptak
Midway through the first season, we were introduced to Karis Nemik, a revolutionary who was writing a manifesto about the fight against the Empire. It's a powerful moment, anchored by a fantastic line:
The Imperial need for control is so desperate because it is so unnatural. Tyranny requires constant effort. It breaks, it leaks. Authority is brittle.
I think about this line a lot: the effort that an authoritarian dictatorship has to go through to control the lives of their subjects, and it echoes a line uttered by Princess Leia in A New Hope: "The more you tighten your grip, Tarkin, the more star systems will slip through your fingers." The Empire has gained control of the galaxy through political manipulation and then maintains their rule through sheer force. We've seen this in spades in Andor: officers who're willing to commit horrific offences against their subjects, all the way up to leaders who're willing to imprison and slaughter those same people.
Maintaining authority and power over a population requires discipline: the ability to line one's soldiers and assets up in the same direction to achieve one's end goal. On the surface, with their stormtroopers and naval forces, it appears that the Empire's easily able to accomplish that.
Discipline requires trust: the trust in leaders from one's subordinates that they're working towards the same goals and that they'll be treated consistently, fairly, and respectfully as they work towards it. With that trust, they feel empowered and engaged with the mission and will work towards its objectives.
Andrew Liptak
In his essay Ur-Fascism, Italian writer and philosopher Umberto Eco outlines the elements that characterize a fascist ideology, and in one of his points he writes:
"For Ur-Fascism, however, individuals as individuals have no rights, and the People is conceived as a quality, a monolithic entity expressing the Common Will...Having lost their power of delegation, citizens do not act; they are only called on to play the role of the People. Thus the People is only a theatrical fiction."
There is no space for the individual within the Imperial system, save for the Emperor: every stormtrooper, every pilot, officer, technician, supervisor, director, and governor is expendable in service of the Emperor's vision. The moment they no longer serve a useful purpose, they are at risk of being expended.
Meero's interrogation shows that the control that the Empire appears to wield is just an illusion: we know (and I strongly suspect Krennic knows it as well) that she's a dyed-in-the-wool loyalist to the Empire, but ultimately her motivations don't matter. Her dedication to the Empire, her valuable work to track down Axis and to undermine Ghorman society as an excuse to strip mine its planet does not matter. She's cast aside and dumped in an Imperial prison. Krennic will later have his pet project taken from him and is ultimately killed with it when Governor Tarkin orders an attack on the citadel at Scarif.
This stands in contrast to the other half of this season: the formation of the Rebel Alliance. We saw the percussors in the first season: Rael's efforts to connect various revolutionary cells across the galaxy, stealing equipment and money, recruiting potential allies, and coordinating attacks across the galaxy.
When we pick up the story in this season's first arc, we're shown a clear picture of how formidable a task that is: not just going up against the Empire, but bringing together a coalition of groups that might share an overarching goal, but who can barely exist in the same room with one another without squabbling or arguing. Two rebel cells on Yavin fall apart as soon as Cassian throws them some complications, while Saw Gerrera's outfit shares his paranoia and reluctance to cooperate with others.
Ironically, pieces of Imperial ideology is part of that mix: Rael spells it out in a hard-hitting monologue in the first season:
"I'm condemned to use the tools of my enemy to defeat them. I burn my decency for someone else's future. I burn my life to make a sunrise that I know I'll never see.
We see as he's willing to sacrifice his own people in the pursuit of his greater mission to topple the Empire: he doesn't call off a raid, fearing that if he did so, it would alert the ISB to a leak, while he also works to track down and kill Cassian Andor after his role in the Aldhni raid and pushes Mon Mothma to marry off her daughter to help fund the growing revolution.
But while initially undisciplined and chaotic, we watch over the course of the season as these various groups and individuals become allies and partners. They're not fighting in service of one singular vision for control, but of a multitude of possibilities for their future. They're willing to fight and to sacrifice their lives and ideology to come together for a common goal where they have a stake in the fight. Unlike many of the other entries in the series, Andor shows us why everyone is motivated to fight in ways beyond the idea of it's just simply the right thing to do. The reasons for why people take part in something as frightening as a war or revolution is an incredibly complicated proposition, and this series really delivers those stakes.
The Imperials don't share that vision or those motivations, and for that reason, they will lose. Maybe not in the short, strategic term, but the longer the fight stretches out, the more exhausted and disillusioned their servants become. They will fail because they have no stake in the fight, because they know that their lives and sacrifices do not matter to anyone but the Emperor. The world they're fighting for isn't for them, but for a system that will use them until it's done with them.
Creator Tony Gilroy has given a number of interviews where he's talked about some of the inspirations and influences behind Andor: there's no shortage of revolutionary and movements to which you can draw lines between the real world and this series.
George Lucas's world has always been a political thing: anyone who complains about getting uncomfortable politics in their space laser sword adventures is an idiot and should be reminded that the director himself compared the Rebels to the Viet Cong.
Andrew Liptak
The series has come to an end at a dramatic moment in the world right now: a story of resistance against a government bent on solidifying control for itself with a grim vision for what they want the future of the nation to look like. It's a future with fewer freedoms and choices for its citizens, where the idea of a diverse, representative democracy is reimagined with a selective memory and story and where we have little say or stake in the society we live in.
Art is a symptom, not a curative. Andor has taken the world and shoved it into a sandbox, where we can see the implications and consequences in a safe environment. It will not change the direction of the world. But it can be a catalyst, showing off an idea that can take root and blossom and transform itself into the actions that are needed to hold onto a free and fair society. I hope that its assertion that fascism and control are fragile tactics and tools, and that they'll break under their own weight when the right people apply the right pressure. I hope that it'll move enough people to look at the world around them and look at it in a slightly different way.
This is why Andor remains astonishing to me: it's exceedingly rare to see a story operating on this level in a mass media franchise in place of something that might otherwise be a product. I'm thankful that it exists, and that it reminded me that stories are powerful tools in dark times.