Andor 'is not written from the headlines,' even if it feels that way
Creator Tony Gilroy says the Star Wars series depicts the kind of authoritarian regime we've seen many times in history
The second and final season of Andor, which just concluded on Disney+, has inspired a ream of analysis drawing connections to real world politics.
After a hiatus of more than two years, the sci-fi series returned last month, at a moment when many people are trying to understand the threats facing democracy around the world. Some critics see parallels between the banal fascism of the Galactic Empire and the cruelty of the current administration, or see the show as an exploration of how to build an effective resistance. To others, a storyline this season involving Ghorman, a resource-rich planet under brutal occupation by the empire, is clearly about the war in Gaza. Still others find echoes of the Troubles and the economic strife in Thatcher’s Britain.
Yet Andor, the second season of which was in the can before Trump’s return to power, “is not written from the headlines,” series creator Tony Gilroy said in a conversation with Stephen Colbert and series star Diego Luna on Tuesday at the Paley Center for Media in Manhattan.
The series, which premiered in 2022, follows Cassian Andor (Luna), a thief turned rebel intelligence officer on a journey to political radicalization. It is a gritty spy thriller about the brutality of life in a fascist regime and the precious cost of resisting authoritarianism. With nary a lightsaber or Baby Yoda in sight, the drama is a decidedly grown-up take on Star Wars that depicts attempted sexual violence and the use of political propaganda to justify a bloody massacre of peaceful protestors. On Disney+, it makes strange bedfellows with gentle (if also excellent) programming like Bluey.
Andor is often described as “Star Wars for people who aren’t into Star Wars.” But perhaps more accurately, it is a Star Wars show for fans who want the Disneyfied franchise to return to its political roots.
Since the first film premiered in 1977, just two years after the end of the Vietnam war, the Star Wars franchise has always been political. The central conflicts between good and evil, between scrappy rebels and an oppressive empire, are broad enough to allow countless interpretations. For half a century, Star Wars has invited comparisons to the Cold War, the Third Reich, the invasion of Iraq, and numerous real-world conflicts. Since Disney acquired Lucasfilm in 2012, much of the conversation has focused on representation, with a small but loud contingent of fans upset to see people of color in a universe populated by ewoks, wookiees, sentient robots, and whatever Jar Jar Binks is.
American politicians have a history of co-opting Star Wars imagery and positioning themselves as the good guys—the Light Side of the Force. (Nobody thinks of themself as Palpatine.) On May 4, which Star Wars geeks celebrate as a secular holiday, the White House X account posted an AI image of a ludicrously muscular Trump brandishing a red lightsaber, with a message comparing “radical left lunatics” to the Empire. (The red lightsaber, associated with the Dark Side in Star Wars canon, was proof that Trump “is full of SITH,” wrote Mark Hamill on Bluesky.)
Gilroy has reinvigorated the franchise by giving it a purpose other than (just) marketing merchandise.
The Oscar-nominated writer and director of Michael Clayton has a knack for conveying political messages in taut, suspenseful, entertaining packages. (See also: the Bourne franchise.) When he was approached about working on Andor, he made it clear he wasn’t going to water anything down for Disney.
“I kind of laid down my own thing,” he told Colbert on Tuesday. “When they said they wanted to make this show, I said, ‘Okay, in the first scene, he goes to a brothel, looks for his sister, and then kills two cops who shake him down. Is that okay?’ That’s what I mean by ‘my thing.’”
Much has been made of an eerily timely speech from Episode 9, “Welcome to the Rebellion,” in which dissident senator Mon Mothma (Genevieve O’Reilly) denounces the genocidal actions of the empire and laments the “death of truth.”
“I believe we are in crisis,” she says. “The distance between what is said and what is known to be true has become an abyss. Of all the things at risk, the loss of an objective reality is perhaps the most dangerous. The death of truth is the ultimate victory of evil. When truth leaves us, when we let it slip away, when it is ripped from our hands, we become vulnerable to the appetite of whatever monster screams the loudest.”
As he has been throughout the Andor press tour, Gilroy was reluctant to acknowledge any contemporary inspiration for the season, which was in development well before the war in Gaza or Trump’s re-election.
Instead, he said he looked to history.
The season premiere—in which Orson Krennic (Ben Mendelsohn) assembles a secret meeting of imperial officers to discuss plans to ethnically cleanse and strip mine Ghorman—was Gilroy’s nod to the Wannsee Conference in 1942, “when the Nazis got together over a power lunch and had trout and decided to kill 6 million people and keep notes, as they do,” he said.
Andor merely dramatizes patterns that have repeated countless times over the millennia, Gilroy said:
“You can go back 4000 years and identify a whole bunch of different situations as fascism, and I think you can identify a whole bunch of different situations as rebellion and revolution. The technology obviously changes, and some of the methodology changes, but what’s on the menu is essentially the same. People who are oppressed and backed into a corner will only take so much until they go so far, and then something happens. And inevitably, the people who enable the fascism or the authoritarianism are the last people to get the joke that they’re about to get fucked—sort of like Wile E. Coyote standing over nothing.”
By way of example, Gilroy pointed to imperial operatives, Syril Karn (Kyle Soller) and Dedra Meero (Denise Gough), who ultimately pay for their devotion to the empire. “That’s one of the things that's so painful about this, is that the victims are on all sides of this. Authoritarianism and fascism just destroy everything except at the burning hot center. And finally, that ends up immolating, doesn’t it?”
Meredith Blake is the Culture columnist for The Contrarian
I'm not a Star Wars fan (I only saw the first 3) but decided to watch Andor because my grown son loved it so much. It began slow, and was violent, which I usually don't like. But then I became addicted to it and watched one after another of the two seasons. I found myself caring deeply about the characters. And I was gobsmacked by the parallels to our horrible situation here in the U.S. Actually, this was filmed during the pandemic while we were still enduring Trump 1, the first regime attempting to accomplish what's being done now in Trump 2. For instance, one character comments about the Empire's deliberate use of so many evil actions, until people feel overwhelmed and paralyzed. Your article also notes Mon's recognition that truth has been subverted, which undermines those who care about facts and history. Step by step here in the U.S., though, just like in Andor, our grassroots are rebelling, millions holding rallies, demanding that our leaders step up----which many of them are now doing. Andor, through its great writing and wonderful actors, shows growing resistance from so many different angles----the Empire can't find one leader to target, just as our rallies are not due to one person-- and how even apathetic people gradually become the Rebellion, infighting and all. I highly urge everyone to watch this superbly complex and engrossing series on Disney+!
Great series - each of us sees shows like this through our own prism.
That said, many see a more contemporary comparison (as opposed to 20th century Nazis) in the end of truth, pitiless oppression, and penultimate greed exemplified by sociopathic power mongers.