(courtesy IMP Awards)
Star Wars: Andor is a superlatively impressive show on all kinds of levels but where it is really excelling in this humble reviewer’s opinion is the way in which it is deconstructing a host of romantic myths about what it means to be standing in defiant opposition to an overwhelmingly pervasive autocratic power.
In Hollywood’s hands, and by that I mean crowd-pleasing movies of a blockbuster style, being a rebel is portrayed as gloriously noble, a battle for the ages dressed in dazzlingly inspirational tones of high ideals, selfless deeds and stirring words, and while all those elements have a place to some extent, they are far from being the whole story.
The problem is that no matter how inspiring the cause is, there are great sacrifices to be made, errors of judgement that will occur and failures of best-laid plans that will play out, all of them set against the grind of a day-to-day struggle to make headway across a great evil.
Andor embraces all this in some fairly powerful ways in these three episodes, that occupy the 3 BBY – three years before the landmark Battle of Yavin – and which illustrate how people involved in the same struggle can have wildly opposing ideas of what it means and how it should be conducted.
In the Cassian Andor (Diego Luna)/Bix Caleen (Adria Arjona) thread, the prevailing impulse is a concern for others; Cassian is a man with a good heart who refuses to sacrifice anyone or any place needlessly on the altar of the cause, reasoning that the ends do not absolutely justify the means.
Hence, when he is sent to the planet of Ghorman – “Ever Been to Ghorman?” and “I Have Friends Everywhere” (episodes four and five) – he is unimpressed with the prepared of the rebels there whom he feels mean well but do not fully appreciate what they are letting themselves in for.
He is worried that they aren’t ready, and as it turns out, justifiably so, when a mission they undertake goes south – to be fair, it was always going to go that way with the Empire pulling the strings behind the scenes, orchestrated by a duplicitous Dedra Meero (Denise Gough) who is happy to throw her supposed love, Syril Karn (Kyle Soller) under the landspeeder if it gains her career traction – and he cautions Luthen Rael (Stellan Skarsgård), a key player in the Rebellion to save them from themselves.
Rael, who is far more ruthlessly pragmatic than Andor who demonstrates in episode six (“What a Festive Evening”) that people will always matter more than causes – it’s not that the cause doesn’t matter because clearly for him it does, but he won’t sacrifice people for the cause unthinkingly – ignores him and so in the final episode of what is essentially a three-episode movie, he commits himself to an action that has some tragic outcomes and which will have repercussions down the track.
This thread dominates the three episodes, and underscores what an emotionally weighty and thoughtufl program Andor is.
It won’t mindlessly propagate romantic myths that struggles for liberation are all soul-stirring rallying cries and effervescent thrills of excitement, and again and again it draws attention to how great a cost standing on the right side of history carries.
Two other characters carry the weight of the struggle on their shoulders too.
Senator Mon Mothma (Genevieve O’Reilly) continues to walk a fine line between member of the establishment and agitator for upholding good and decent values, and while she believes her arguments will carry the day, she finds herself losing ground to people too afraid to stand again new political machinations by the Emperor.
Time and again she finds herself failing to get the support she needs, even from the senator from Ghorman which is being screwed down by the Empire and which is about to experience its bloody dead hand in some pretty catastrophic ways.
Heavy is the weight upon her shoulders but also too the sense that for all her hard work and significant sacrifices that she is fighting a rushing tide to inevitable authoritarianism and manifestly losing; that doesn’t mean she is giving up but it becomes increasingly clear to her that the cost to stand against the Empire is going to become greater and greater as the powers arrayed against her, and their ability to turn previously amendable hearts and minds only increases.
The other character suffering greatly for the cause in this tranche of episodes is Kleya Marki (Elizabeth Dulau), Luthien’s key associate and the communication lynchpin for the Rebellion, who has to attend an Investiture party – all new senators must throw a gala to celebrate their ascension to the Senate on what is a very crowded few days – and remove a listening device, the discovery of which could send an Imperial house of weighty, nasty cards down upon them.
It may seem like a minor act but the ramifications for failure are huge and the scene where she is working to remove the device is tense and loaded with all kinds of terrible possibility, not least the fact that Orson Krennic (Ben Mendelsohn) is in attendance, a senior member of the Imperial military who could move swiftly to rain hell down upon the Rebels should he so chose.
All of these people have their stories told in plots which are powerfully nuanced, and in their own quietly impactful way, acknowledge with brutal honesty that while fighting for what is good and right is never the wrong thing to do, that it comes with great cost and the propensity to end the dream of freedom before it has ever really begin.
These three episodes of Andor are a gift, parking the inspirational and giddily appealing aspects of freedom fighting, the kind that makes for spirit-soaring populist storytelling, and instead choosing to be honest about these struggles involve, and while they are always worth it and absolutely necessary, that the cost of being part of them can involve the answering of some very hard questions and decisions that do not always leave those making them unscathed.
Star Wars: Andor streams on Disney+