I enjoyed Andor a lot more when fascism was a distant concept. It hits differently with news of, well, everything, going on in America today. 

Part of what made Andor enjoyable was how it humanized villainy. There’s no nuance to Palpatine or even Darth Vader. They wear black. They kill people. There’s a lot of cackling. Star Wars is a simple morality tale. It’s meant for children, after all, and those of us who still identify there as. 

In contrast, Andor offered a thrilling glimpse at the people behind the curtain. The Empire’s bureaucratic underbelly is no less evil than its geriatric headpiece, but the everyday familiarity of office work cast everything in a different light. Up close, fascism is millions of invisible cogs in a horrible machine, without which the atrocities literally cannot happen. 

But even the good guys weren’t very good. 

Cassian Andor—the hero for whom the show is named—straight up murders someone on his own team. Vel and Cinta want to kill Cassian because he knows too much about the fledgling Rebel Alliance. And Luthen, one head of the disjointed resistance, is strikingly similar to Palpatine, and not just in how they both hide their true nature behind practiced smiles and careful diplomacy. (The key difference: Luthen laments his lost humanity while Palpatine perhaps never had any.)

Fascism has been part of Star Wars’s DNA since 1977, but it was only with Andor that we got a true taste of what living under the Empire would be like. Newsflash: It’s fucking horrifying.

I wasn’t prepared for Star Wars to frighten me. But Andor strongly echoes what’s happening in America today.

Midway through season 1, Cassian takes his share of the Aldhani score to the Star Wars version of Florida. White sands, new money, old people; I imagine it smells like coconut oil and Bengay.

There’s a disturbance and some men are chased by Stormtroopers in special tan armor. (Knowing Star Wars, they’re probably called Beach Troopers.) Cassian watches with vague interest and guarded concern because he’s wanted by the Empire for two separate crimes and is sitting on a pile of stolen credits. He’s guilty, just not of whatever is going down on Planet Club Med.

It’s therefore ironic when a Beach Trooper starts accusing him of being up to something. The Stormtrooper grafts motivations onto Cassian and then arrests him. He’s only guilty of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. 

Cassian ends up in a courtroom with other people waiting to be sentenced for crimes against the Empire. It quickly becomes apparent that despite the trappings of justice, this is no trial. There’s no defense, no chance to state your case. A bureaucrat rambles off a list of charges that have no basis in reality. Cassian is incredulous but can’t get a word in. He’s sentenced to 6 years in prison. From the judge’s tone, we understand this is business as usual. Nobody cares that innocent people are being sentenced for things they didn’t do. Innocence and guilt are not the point. 

Is this starting to sound familiar yet? 

For its part, Andor at least has the pretense of due process. 

Cassian is shipped to a prison facility on a completely different planet. But it’s actually not really a prison. It’s a factory. The prisoners work 12-hour shifts, assembling parts for unknown reasons (I didn’t bother looking this up but I’m pretty sure it’s for the Death Star). The prisoners are forced labor. Awful, but it seems less horrible than for-profit prisons that exist solely to collect money from Uncle Sam. 

Good job, America—you are worse than the freaking Empire.

The prisoners are cheaper than droids, and more easily replaced. It makes sense from a purely economic standpoint; it’s the sort of calculus one practices when they don’t recognize the inherent value of another living person. 

Cassian and the other prisoners discover that anyone who completes their sentence is rotated to a different facility. Nobody is getting out alive. It’s a hopeless moment, soul-crushing, brutal. But it gives rise to the prisoners determining they’re going to fight back, culminating in an epic prison break. 

“I'd rather die trying to take them down than die giving them what they want.” ~ Cassian

We lived in a very different America when Andor was released in 2022. It was easy to innocently enjoy its cautionary tale because we hadn’t truly encountered government-sponsored fascism. It’s a much harder watch now that people are being grabbed off the street and sent to specially-built prisons in El Salvador, from which they may never end up leaving. 

I never understood the terror of living under an oppressive regime. The horror, and also the helplessness. The sense of betrayal. The anger, the disgust. And it’s just beginning! It will only get worse. 

It’s my nature to try to put a positive spin on things. Star Wars is about hope in the face of evil. I was weened on this shit. But they had magic powers and lightsabers. We have memes and TikTok. It’s not the same.

I’m not defeated. I’m just being honest. I also have the growing sense that this will eventually become an actual fight. Things aren’t going to just get better. If Congress had any motivation to do its job, we wouldn’t be in this boat. The Supreme Court neutered itself. Nobody is coming to rescue us. 

From the Empire’s point of view, the plucky Rebel Alliance were terrorists. It’s the same way America will brand anyone that fights back against its oppressive policies.

It’s an uncomfortable thought. 

One of Andor’s themes is that even waging the good fight comes with a cost. That doesn’t mean it’s not worth fighting. Just that there are no storybook happy endings. The best you can hope for is a better tomorrow for someone else. 

“I’m damned for what I do. My anger, my ego, my unwillingness to yield, my eagerness to fight, they’ve set me on a path from which there is no escape. I yearned to be a savior against injustice without contemplating the cost and by the time I looked down there was no longer any ground beneath my feet.

What is my sacrifice?

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. And the ego that started this fight will never have a mirror or an audience or the light of gratitude.” ~ Luthen

Going into my rewatch, I was prepared to feel strange about the weird sexual energy between Andor’s fascists. I was ready to marvel at Luthen’s whole deal. I wanted to spend time with Mon Mothma. 

I was looking for Star Wars. Instead a found a mirror.