Conversations about Star Wars, part one:
“Should I be watching Andor?” a friend asked. “It was so slooow in the first episode.”
As enthusiastically as possible over an instant message, I answered yes. My enthusiasm went so far as to comment it may be the best Star Wars series yet. As I thought about it, though, I had to admit that the first episode had given me the same feeling as my friend. Yet I kept with it after the first three episodes (all dropped at once on Disney+), mainly to see if in the second week it would pick up.
It did, sort of. More likely, it drew me in. Something about it just felt different than other series set in a galaxy far, far away. For instance, The Mandalorian, where the protagonist doesn’t say much, but what he does say matters. In contrast, characters on Andor talk a lot — and seemingly about a lot of nothing. They’re mostly concerned with getting through the day, not the galaxy.
Characterizations are different, more lived in, more real. Our heroes, such as they are, aren’t flat or easily defined — “roguish pilot,” “naive farmboy,” “nervous droid,” etc. Diego Luna’s Cassian Andor might one day be more roguish — it’s a valid interpretation of his character in Rogue One — but for now, he’s many things. Mostly, he’s just trying to get by in an increasingly oppressive system. If anyone in Andor is aware of Order 66 and the fall of the Jedi, we have no idea. Shockingly, after several hours of television spent with a wide range of characters good, evil, and somewhere in between, we’ve never even heard someone talk about the Force. This is Star Wars?
Conversations about Star Wars, part two:
“…Star Wars and similar films of the seventies made it possible for the electorate to sort of put their minds on hold and go with their feelings, more than they ever had before. It was a real turning point in American culture.”
– Howard Chaykin, Fanboy Planet interview, May 26, 2004
I had grown up in awe of Howard Chaykin, the artist for the first 7 issues of Marvel’s original Star Wars comic book, the first 6 of which adapted the movie. It was his later work that had gotten to me: the prescient social satire American Flagg!, the confusing (to me) but gripping Time², along with wild takes on The Shadow and Blackhawk for DC. When I sat in the audience at a WonderCon panel in 2004, and Chaykin said he didn’t care about Star Wars, I knew I had to have a conversation about it.
Though Chaykin’s work helped cement the beginnings of the Skywalker Saga into popular culture, it was an assignment, not a passion. He thought he was too old to be swept away by it, and it was a simplistic story of good vs. evil. Go ahead, go back and watch what is now A New Hope. It’s exciting, but simplistic. Though George Lucas played a bit with the perception of black and white, that was in color schemes, not in actual morality. Though it may be a story with “…aliens from a thousand worlds,” the characters we follow are recognizably human and mostly American. Deep down, the good guys are red, white, and blue, except for their milk. That’s just blue.
Chaykin had a point. Lucas later muddled things a bit with the prequel trilogy, and Disney at least nodded to diversity with the sequel trilogy, but those main 9 movies are still simple. (Credit to The Last Jedi for trying to push a bit, and to Rogue One for showing there’s a real price to be paid in a rebellion.)
The Disney+ TV series have been attempting more complexity. Both The Mandalorian and The Book of Boba Fett gave more respect to the indigenous peoples of Tatooine, both Jawas and Tuskens — known in the movies only by the epithet “Sand People.” For years, comics and novels had done what they could, but none of those works had the cultural reach of movies and TV.
We’ve spent almost fifty years visiting a galaxy far, far away, and Andor feels like the first time we’ve been given time to explore worlds and cultures, to learn rituals that are explained over time, and to understand what it means to be under the thumb of a remote but rising fascist government. How long do you just go along until you realize that you no longer have a choice?
Conversations about Star Wars, part three:
One night, I came home from running errands to find my wife on the couch watching the season finale of Andor, which I’d seen earlier. She was fighting back tears. “Andor is so good,” she said. I nodded, and stood by the couch, not wanting to break the spell of an actor delivering a rousing speech about why the people of their world need to stand up to the Empire. (It was the second of two rousing monologues given to stellar actors whose presence simmered for several episodes before these magnificent gut punches.)
Once it was over, my reaction was “none of these characters should be action figures.” But of course they are, because it’s still Star Wars. Cassian Andor himself has been cast in plastic by Hasbro a few times, but the foppish Luthen Rael (Stellan Skarsgård) isn’t a character we want to imagine kids want to pretend to be. Though I’ll stop pretending; in another sense, Chaykin didn’t go far enough in realizing that Star Wars opened the door for us to keep our toys longer than previous generations. They just got more intricate, fragile, and expensive.
But the people — and they are people — in Andor aren’t playing. We experience them in their mundanity. It’s not that they don’t want to get involved; most of them don’t understand there’s anything in which to be involved until it might be too late. If they keep their heads down and their noses clean, eventually these times will pass. But series creator Tony Gilroy reminds us that times don’t pass as a natural order of things. Someone always has to get involved; someone always has to make sacrifices.
We see it in a younger Mon Mothma (Genevieve O’Reilly), navigating her culture and her role in an increasingly powerless Senate to secretly fight for freedom, or at least fund it. We see it in Luthen Rael, a chameleon spymaster who buries his guilt as easily as his alter ego. We see it in Bix Caleen (Adria Arjona), a friend of Cassian tortured just because she’s a friend of Cassian — even though the Empire already has imprisoned Cassian and doesn’t know it. The fledgling Empire is omnipresent, evil, and stupid. But they’re winning.
Obi-Wan Kenobi told Luke to trust his feelings, which was fine for a tribute to kiddie matinees. (Sorry, but that’s what Star Wars originally was, and we weren’t wrong to love it.) But Andor doesn’t allow us to put our minds on hold. It builds. It shows us (fictional) real lives and the consequences of them.
I talked with another friend about it just before Election Day. (Coincidental but germane, perhaps.) I told them that Andor really demonstrated how easily fascism can take hold, with people not even realizing they’re cooperating. My friend answered back, “I came here from Nicaragua. I already watched it happen to my country. I don’t need to watch Andor to be told how it happens.”
Maybe you don’t, either. If you’re a Star Wars fan, you already know how it all ends — with fireworks in the sky on a thousand worlds, and Ewoks singing and dancing. Andor reminds us there isn’t a happily ever after, really. There’s only people, doing the best they can. Sure, it’s fiction. But the best fiction makes us think.
With Andor, you can’t put your mind on hold.
Fanboy Planet is an Amazon affiliate. Purchases made through links on this and other pages may generate revenue for this site.
