The Beautiful Depression of Andor Season 2

full spoilers ahead

If one were to tell me, in say 2019, that this motherfucker here is going to have a more compelling and complete arc than any of the characters in the Star Wars sequel trilogy, I would have said “Have you seen I, Claudius?”

The bad news is that I, Claudius is still superior to Andor. In 13 episodes (still confused by the episode 2.5 situation. I thought I was having an aneurism and wasn’t confident if I was starting the same episode over three times in a row or skipping an episode) I, Claudius, with its low budget, cheap sets, abrasively silly opening theme music, and the best of the best of British talent created the best drama and most hilarious comedy I’ve ever seen. No show will ever top it. Andor, however, is pretty goddamn remarkable. I don’t hesitate to call it a masterpiece even. (My Season One Review)

Andor is an unabashedly political show and will absolutely be torn apart by online grifters who don't want politics in their Star Wor and didn't understand that even as far back as 1977, the Empire was always meant to depict a fascist, authoritarian regime. If you're upset by the ideals of the Empire lining up with your own real-world ideals, maybe instead of getting mad at Lucasfilm, you should do a serious reevaluation of your life choices.

I don’t envy the new Star Wars projects coming out in the wake of Andor. Like most things Star Wars under Disney, it's more likely than not they will learn the exact wrong lessons from what made Andor a success.

For anyone still unsure whether they will check out this show or not, I will do my best to convince you. My season one review is mostly spoiler-free. As mentioned in that review, it's among the best pieces of anti-fascist media I've ever seen. Among its key themes are the cost of war and how political apathy allows authoritarianism to take over. Nemik, a minor character, sums it up better than I ever could:

“It's easier to hide behind 40 atrocities than a single incident."

“There will be times when the struggle seems impossible. I know this already. Alone, unsure, dwarfed by the scale of the enemy.

Remember this, Freedom is a pure idea. It occurs spontaneously and without instruction. Random acts of insurrection are occurring constantly throughout the galaxy. There are whole armies, battalions that have no idea that they’ve already enlisted in the cause.

Remember that the frontier of the Rebellion is everywhere. And even the smallest act of insurrection pushes our lines forward.

And remember this: the Imperial need for control is so desperate because it is so unnatural. Tyranny requires constant effort. It breaks, it leaks. Authority is brittle. Oppression is the mask of fear.

Remember that. And know this, the day will come when all these skirmishes and battles, these moments of defiance will have flooded the banks of the Empires’s authority and then there will be one too many. One single thing will break the siege.

Remember this: Try. “

I believe one of the key themes of season two is sacrifice. In the case of this show, it isn’t always a sacrifice of oneself, but sacrificing others as well to achieve a goal. Beyond that, there is the idea of morality that goes into building a rebellion and (also explored in season one) using the tactics of your enemies and getting dirty to achieve victory. I’ve seen babies who don’t understand things beyond black and white complain that because this show depicts the rebels doing bad things they no longer know who to root for. Good grief.

It’s quite difficult to describe the positive aspects of the show and what makes it unique without going into spoiler mode. Once you see the picture of Diego Luna, it will be full spoilers from that point on.

Before diving into the show's second season, let's talk about the showrunner, Tony Gilroy.

With each interview I see of him and each behind-the-scenes snippet, I'm growing convinced I'm in love with this man. He's everything Dave Filoni isn't. He's a gigachad and based whereas Dave Filoni is a cringe ass nerd whose solution to making Star Wars more engaging is “What if instead of five lightsabers on screen there were seven?” Can we stop giving nerds free rein to just do what they want? We're all here because we like Star Wars to some degree. Being a sycophant, however, shouldn’t be the prerequisite for being put in charge.

Here’s a little secret for you: before making A New Hope, George Lucas had never seen a single Star Wars movie. Not one. His influences were Kurosawa samurai films, WWII aerial combat footage, ripping off all the complex stuff from Dune and translating it to be digestible for simpletons, and those Flash Gordon serials.

J.J. Abrams was inspired by Lucas’ original trilogy. It showed all over his Star Trek movies. To anyone whose seen even a single episode of the original Trek it was abundantly clear Abrams didn't give a fuck about that franchise and certainly didn't understand it. In any case, he got to helm the first film of the sequel trilogy, and clearly, he wanted it to resemble the original Lucas film as much as possible. Yes, on the surface, your brain might be tricked into thinking you're watching Star Wars. It mostly looks and feels right, but there is a hollowness to it. By paying so much lip service to the original film and using that original film as its template, all it ever could be was a pale imitation.

That’s where Andor succeeds where most of Disney’s Star Wars output has failed. Tony Gilroy doesn’t really give a shit about Star Wars, at least, not in the way a mega nerd like Filoni does. He cares about crafting a compelling story, and in doing that, his series ends up having a higher degree of reverence for the franchise than anything else in Disney's repertoire. It enhances the movies that came before rather than diminishing them.

Some Gilroy quotes from an interview I enjoyed:

The format of Andor’s second season is noticeably different from the show’s first. In a 12-episode season, every three episodes serve as their own (mostly) self-contained arc, with each set a year after the previous and the final arc set only a few days before the events of Rogue One.

The first arc is also its weakest, but weak by this show's standards still puts it far and above most series of a similar ilk. Cassian Andor is now firmly a part of the fight, and we can assume that between season one and two, he's been going on all sorts of missions. The first episode opens with him undercover as an imperial test pilot.

There is a new type of Tie Fighter, but once behind the cockpit, Cassian realizes he has no idea what the hell he is doing. The ship he'd been trained on is not the one he is stealing. Small details like this are what make the show compelling. It isn't even anything all that groundbreaking; it's merely that throughout this franchise, we've seen characters time after time go from ship to ship and immediately know what to do, whether they've been inside it or not. Here we have a guy who is an experienced pilot, but he's out of his depth. Little moments like this add to the credibility and the palpable sense of tension pervasive throughout the show.

He tries to figure out the controls while troops begin to swarm around him. It's a fun little scene that gives fans some exciting action set pieces in a show that is not all that concerned with action (I mean that as a compliment).

Elsewhere, Mon Mothma (one of the best characters of the last season) is preparing for her daughter's wedding back on her home planet. Something I'd never really considered beforehand, but that this show depicts well, is that humans are, seemingly, the most populous race among thousands of races in whatever galaxy Star Wars takes place in. But what separates a human from Naboo and a human from Alderaan? Or Chandrila? Is there a blanket human culture, or is the culture distinct from planet to planet?

The first three episodes help answer that question. Emphasis is placed on the Chandrillan culture. They are pompous, aristocratic, wealthy, and slaves to tradition and formalities.

In the last season, Mon begrudgingly had to accept marrying her teenage daughter off to a family with a morally reprehensible father in accordance with a tradition she finds outdated for the sake of having a safe way to funnel her own money into funding the Rebellion.

The time of the wedding has finally come, and we see the various steps and stages of the wedding. On the surface, Mon has to play the proud mother, the face of aristocracy, but the whole thing is killing her inside. She wants to give her daughter the chance she never had, but her daughter is all about that Chandrillan life. In one brilliant exchange, Mon tries to give her daughter an out, let her choose for herself in a way she never could, and her daughter's response is to tell her mother she wishes she were a simple drunk, because the ramblings of a drunkard could be forgiven.

It was during these episodes I was reminded that the average Star Wars fan was an imbecile and that media literacy was all but dead. Anyone who has ever been to a wedding, regardless of culture or continent, understands that, usually, there is dancing involved. I'm not saying this is a universal truth, but it's pretty close to it. After the third episode of season 2 aired, social media and YouTube were flooded with criticism and disbelief over Mon Mothma dancing.

Mon Mothma dancing

Initially, I took this for people being surprised at seeing the stoic rebel leader dancing and letting loose, but that wasn’t it. People were in an uproar. They couldn’t believe their eyes. They found it cringe and out of place in Star Wars. Oh my God, I can’t believe Mon Mothma is getting shitfaced and white girl dancing to rave music. Talk about missing the forest for the trees.

I know, I know, subtext is for cowards, but let's talk about subtext and be generous to the audience watching and assume they're adults capable of understanding subtext and themes. If all they see is a prominent character white girl dancing, the fault lies in their criminal thinking skills and not in the execution of the shows production.

What is Mon's position at this moment? Her daughter is embarrassed by her; the whole marriage is something Mon was fundamentally against, and her best friend from childhood is making problems, problems that Luthen insinuated would lead to his death to avoid any further complications. To say Mon is in an unenviable state is doing her precarious situation a disservice. Any false move on her part doesn't just bring her life crashing down, but the whole Rebellion she and countless others have been building. She had to sacrifice her own daughter for this. She gets drunk (who wouldn’t?) and she dances, she dances because this may be the last moment she’ll ever get to dance and let loose ever again. After this moment, she isn’t allowed the luxury of fun and relaxation. That’s what the scene is really telling us.

The weakest element of the first three episodes, unfortunately, revolves around Cassian himself. After stealing the new prototype Tie Fighter, he lands on a jungle planet for a rendezvous with a man who never arrives. Instead, he is greeted by bickering rebel factions. A couple dozen poorly equipped rebels decide to take him prisoner. Whether Cassian is an imperial pilot or a rebel is irrelevant. Eventually, they seem to believe he's a rebel, but because he isn't with their specific factions, he's labeled untrustworthy and therefore a hostile.

These segments are interesting in theory, but not in execution. Before the birth of the Rebel Alliance, a strong contender against the might of the Empire, the rebels were fractured factions that spent just as much time bickering with one another as they did fighting against the Empire. All of this is compelling stuff, but the way we meet these characters is with poor judgment on the part of the creators.

We can't just have Cassian get captured. There is ill-placed humor with Marvel-esque dialogue while two characters argue with one another about not revealing their numbers. It doesn't help that both actors sound exactly the same as one another and have zero volume control. Every line of dialogue they shout. The only difference is one has long black hair while the other has long blonde hair.

Whether it was the heist arc on Aldhani or the prison arc on Narkina, the first season made us care about all of the side characters in the limited screen time they had. I will not remember any of these annoying rebel characters from the opening of season two. It’s a minor blemish, but a blemish nonetheless. I think the bigger issue is knowing from the beginning that this show would only be two seasons, and therefore, the end is fast approaching, it seems crucial not to waste time; every scene should matter, and they fumbled it here.

I only found out today that the actor playing the annoying blonde was Tony Gilroy's son. Tony, you need to start getting better sons. I'm younger, and while I've never acted before, I promise I'd do a better job than he did. Let me be your son.

One takeaway I did enjoy is that once they did start attacking each other, their dire situation became apparent. One side had the food, whereas the other side had better weapons. It was reminiscent of the dark forest theory in Cixin Liu's The Dark Forest, where one of the two surviving human ships would eventually be compelled to turn on the other surviving ship for the sake of resources. It could have been handled better.

The strongest part of the first three episodes goes to the Empire's plan for the planet Ghorman. We are reintroduced to Director Krennic (first seen in Rogue One). His lisp here is stronger than ever, and it's glorious. Gathered are high-ranking officers and propagandists in a conference reminiscent of the Wannsee Conference. The Wannsee Conference was a meeting of senior government officials of Nazi Germany and SS leaders on 20 January 1942. The purpose of the conference was to ensure the co-operation of administrative leaders of various government departments in the implementation of the Final Solution to the Jewish Question, whereby most of the Jews of German-occupied Europe would be deported to occupied Poland and murdered.

In Andor, the conference starts with a cheesy promotional video about planet Ghorman. The planet is a one-product economy, famous for its high-quality silk-like material produced by the planet's spiders. Unbeknownst to the people of Ghorman and the galaxy at large, deep below the planet's surface, there is a far more valuable material, something called khalkite. Krennic alludes to the khalkite needing to be mined for the Emperor's new energy project. In any case, to mine the amount of khalkite required, it would destroy the planet.

Now, just as the destruction of the Jews had already been decided, so had the destruction of planet Ghorman. The point of the conference is to find ways to justify the said destruction so the rest of the galaxy will be on board and not ask any questions.

Dedra suggests the Empire should create the Rebellion itself on Ghorman so as to make Ghorman look like a bunch of radical terrorists who threaten the stability within the Empire. She is given jurisdiction over Ghorman.

This moment is perfection and exemplifies one of the reasons this show is so effective. People looking for action will be highly disappointed. That is not the show's focus. The show's focus is on politicking, placing emphasis on the words that aren't said just as much as what is, backstabbing, one-upsmanship, and using dialogue to create tension rather than violence or spectacle. Action only happens in small spurts, but due to all the buildup that happens around it, the small action set pieces are all the more impactful for it.

Speaking of Dedra, it's revealed that since the last season, she and Syril have become a couple, and it's as horribly awkward as you'd imagine. Syril is a stiff hapless dork, whereas Dedra is a stiff maniacal psychopath.

One character I neglected to mention in my first review was Syril's mother, Eedy, played wonderfully by Kathryn Hunter, who chews the scenery in every scene she's in.

The bulk of her scenes consisted of her complaining about, humiliating, and criticizing her son. Being in a room with her for ten seconds is enough to find out how Syril ended up the way he did. Every interaction the two have is comedy gold.

In season 2, we are given the pleasure of watching her come to dinner with Dedra and Syril. It plays out exactly as you’d expect, with Eedy making no attempt to be cordial with Dedra or curb her bombardment of her son in front of his lover.

When her taunting goes too far, we witness one of the funniest things I've seen in a long time, the hard cut to Syril lying defeated on his bed, Shinji style, while Dedra and Eedy continue their discussion.

Once Syril is out of the room, we also see Dedra lay down the law to Eedy and establish who is the boss of this situation. Dedra is such a deliciously scary and unhinged character.

A good action movie or series can go one of two ways: you can go the route of The Raid, where the action is so superior, taken to a level of expert choreography and staging that it becomes high art, that the lack of character depth or background is inconsequential. Nobody is walking away from that movie wishing they'd known more about Rama's character or the inner workings of the Indonesian drug trafficking scene. It's about the visceral experience of it all. On the flipside of that, there's nothing worse than an action movie that tries to have deep characters, but the writing lets them down, so it just ends up feeling corny. The second way to do action is to write the characters in such a compelling way, that all the scenes when action isn't happening, you aren't bored, in fact, you'd almost rather the action not happen at all because you don't want the spectacle to interrupt the compelling character dynamics and strong dialogue. Andor falls into that latter camp.

Meanwhile, Bix, Brasso, Wilmon, and the cute little robot are on a wheat planet doing farmer and mechanic stuff. Remember that Zack Snyder movie that even Disney said was too terrible for them, so he took his Star Wars idea and turned it into Rebel Moon? Remember how boring it was? Remember all the slow-motion shots of farmers gathering wheat? God Zack Snyder sucks. Who actually are his fans? I know there are a lot of them, but why? What made them the way they are?

Anyway, imperials show up to check for undocumented workers, of which Bix and the crew are. As we saw in the previous season, the Empire doesn’t deal with due process when making arrests, and the prisons people are sent to are the worst kind of dystopian hell.

This section includes another controversial scene that denizens and rightwing grifter YouTubers had a field day with. In particular, a YouTuber by the name of Star Was Theory (fuck whatever his real name is). He is interchangeable with the likes of The Critical Drinker and Nerdrotic. They make a dozen daily videos with interchangeable titles and thumbnails about how the new Snow White movie is the most egregious thing ever. These are men in their forties who hate women and minorities and more than likely fit snuggly in a Venn diagram with the Manosphere types and other incels. They are horribly embarrassing.

These guys all came into prominence when The Last Jedi came out. Media literacy has been on a drawn-out death spiral since then.

The scene in question that got these guys up in arms is the attempted sexual assault of Bix by an imperial officer. It's rape, you're definitely meant to be upset by this. Different things upset people in different ways. Some people can't handle the onscreen harming or murder of animals in cinema, others are squeamish with blood and guts, and for some people, sexual assault is where they draw the line. Nobody is here to say you’re wrong to have your own personal limits. That isn’t the issue with Star Wars Theory’s criticism.

Star Wars Theory Being a Baby

Sure, he was upset by the scene, fair enough. But then he went on to say in his critique that the Empire would never allow or tolerate rapists. Fucking what? So basically, it isn’t even that this guy himself seems to think sexual assault is morally reprehensible, it’s because he has some misplaced belief that Darth Vader and Palpatine wouldn’t condone it, therefore it has no place in Star Wars. I understand most of us got into Star Wars as young children, but those of us who aren't imbeciles eventually matured and developed mental capacity and comprehension skills beyond those of a five-year-old.

This is the franchise that depicts the murder of young children and the complete annihilation of multiple planets. The Empire is fine with that, but they draw the line at rape?

My guy, have you read up on any historical account of warfare from, well, go ahead and pick any time period ever. Endorsed or not, mass rape has been a part of what conquering armies have done since ancient times and that hasn’t changed.

Just look at the recent atrocities committed by the Russian army in the occupied parts of Ukraine. Look at the Rape of Nanking and the mass raping of women in Berlin when the Soviets conquered the city. That’s reality. Are you telling me a fascist authoritarian power hungry government like the Empire wouldn’t be attractive precisely to that type of person?

Beyond sex, rape is about power. It’s about the aggressor using their power on someone weaker than themselves. Are people out there really too stupid or thick to get this?

I think the explanation for this is probably much sadder. People like Star Wars Theory think the Empire is "cool". Yes, they are the antagonists, but they have all the cool ships and vehicles and red lightsabers and Darth Vader.

Even if they don't outwardly say it, it's one of those if the shoe fits situations. In the real world, they have no problem supporting authoritarian rightwing regimes. Why should their alignment with fiction be any different?

More and more, these guys are outwardly admitting they are racist, because that has become increasingly mainstream. But the more cowardly of the lot try to pretend they aren't; they just claim they like the rule of law and stability so long as it benefits them and enables them to stay on top of the pecking order and keep the minorities in their place. They watch a show like Andor that has a plotline about people being locked up without due process and praise the storyline while being completely fine with people being locked away or deported without due process in the real world.

It's all quite simple, Star Wars Theory is okay with child murder because, so long as it features lightsabers and Jedi or Sith, he can feel some degree of removal from it. The Empire is still cool in his eyes. Rape hits too close to home, and he and his friends don't like being compared to rapists. Who the fuck would? Get some better friends and more enlightened ideologies.

The second arc, set a year after the first arc and encompassing episodes 4-6, is a vast improvement. We finally get to see planet Ghorman, which has a very nice Northern Italian vibe. I noticed the central square, one of the prominent set pieces of the capital city, is featured quite a lot (probably because it's cheaper than building multiple sets and it's easier just to reuse the same location). I noticed something while Syril was walking to work. He walks by one specific spot that looks identical to one of the heavily featured locations of Ferrix from the first season. I'm certain they used the same set and just painted it a different color. This is not a nitpick or a complaint, far from it. It's cute and brilliant. It's the type of shit I, Claudius would do. It's far superior to the abusive use of blue screens for the prequels and the lazy use of the Volume on shows like The Mandalorian and Kenobi.

Now, unless you’re Tolkien, fake languages in fiction always feel fake to me. I’m just not convinced. In Game of Thrones, whenever characters spoke High Valyrian (Emilia Clarke in particular), it always felt like what it was: phony. I know hard work was put into creating a grammar and vocabulary for it, but alas.

In Star Wars, the fake languages were always just gibberish, but the voices were tweaked enough to make them sound alien, so it didn't matter. Or in the case of Nien Nunb (I used to have a friend who looked like this; he did not like the comparison), they got a guy from Kenya and just had him speak his own language of Kikuyu.

When we meet the Ghor of Ghorman, my brain needed time to reboot. The language sounded like a mixture of German and French without any discernible words from either language. I found myself hyperfocusing on the language to the point of distraction. It was a weird sensation, hearing a fabricated language and it not feeling incredibly cringe. Lo and behold, in the little featurette for these three episodes, Gilroy commented that he specifically wanted to hire French actors and that the language was based on French phonetic sounds. On the grand scheme of things, it might not seem like that big of a deal, but that minor detail made the whole of Ghorman and its culture all the more authentic. Rather than being distracted by a fake-sounding language, I'm engrossed by this new world and society, and can watch the performance of the actors. Similarly to how the first arc gave us the distinct human culture of Chandrila, this arc gives us Ghorman.

Ghorman anthem in the Ghorman language

Syril, now living on Ghorman, has a FaceTime call with his mother. She wants him gone from Ghorman and back on Coruscant, not understanding why he continuously takes posts in undesirable places. Imperial mainstream media has been depicting Ghorman as a hotbed for anti-imperial sentiment and spinning tales on the potential dangers of these arrogant, insular people. Syril counters that they’re good people and his mom should stop watching mainstream media.

Did Syril, the committed diehard to Imperial order in the galaxy, have a change of heart? Not quite. He's aware that the Ghor have placed listening devices in his office and home, which is all according to Dedra's plan. She wants the Ghor to think they'll be able to turn him. He'll get in nice and cozy in their inner circles and relay what he learns back to Dedra. Her plan bears fruit.

The Empire is building something on Ghorman, claiming it to be one thing, but to anyone with eyes and ears, it could only be something sinister. Why else the increased security and anti-Ghorman propaganda throughout the galaxy?

The Empire isn't the only faction that needs a disaster to happen on Ghorman. Luthen (along with Mon, the best character to come out of the previous season) also needs a disaster on Ghorman, but for different reasons.

So far, the Rebellion is relegated to small attacks from disparate factions. Beyond Mon Mothma, support for them is minimal. Other senators, while maybe not particularly liking the authoritarian nature of the Empire, prefer to keep their heads down. So long as they toe the line, they will be fine (so they think). Luthen needs an outbreak of violence to happen on Ghorman to keep those with anti-Imperial sentiment out of their apathy.

He sends Andor to the planet to give an assessment of the Ghorman front and see if they’re ready for the big leagues.

Cassian's disguise for this mission is as a fashion designer. It's a lot of fun. We see a different side of him, chewing the scenery and schlocking it up in a very flamboyant manner. I turned to my friend and said, "This is a very nice touch; he's taken on the mannerisms of Luthen when he goes into his flamboyant public persona." I feel under lesser writers, this scene would have been spelled out. Luthen would have said, "Look, Andor, you can't be yourself. You know how I act like a different person in public? Do that." The show assumes its audience is smart enough to connect the dots. Lo and behold, the behind-the-scenes featurette shows Diego Luna talking about how he employed Stellan's mannerisms for that persona. It doesn't take a super genius to make these connections, but they are all fine little touches.

Cassian isn’t overly impressed with the Ghorman. He thinks they lack experience and would be walking into a trap. The Ghor aren’t impressed with him either, believing he is too wishy washy and unwilling to commit.

In place of Cassian, Luthen sends Vel (who, unfortunately, is one of the characters who gets the short shrift this season). Vel comes on board to help the Ghor hijack an Imperial cargo shipment. This is all based on information given to them by Syril, and Dedra is counting on this happening, using it as a pretense for the Imperial forces to become even more aggressive towards the planet.

Cassian would be proven correct in his assessment, as the only casualty of the mission is due to friendly fire over a squabble between two Ghor. A gun accidentally goes off, killing Cinta, Vel's lover.

While Vel isn’t in much of the season, her damning abashment she dishes to the young Ghor who killed Cinta is a powerful scene.

Similarly to the sexual assault scene, apparently, this character's death was controversial. Controversial in the sense that some hack journalist found maybe one tweet of an upset viewer and wrote a hack article about this. Let's listen to Daddy Gilroy address it himself:

One character whose screentime was enhanced from the previous season is Kleya, Luthen's shop assistant. Until this point, the audience knows very little about her other than she's often in charge of the various lines of communication with various rebel groups. Kleya discovers that the listening device she planted on one of Skuldun's antiques is bound to be discovered. She overhears Skuldun losing his shit when he finds out several of his pieces are forgeries, so he plans to do a deep reevaluating process, which will lead to the bug being found.

The plan is to remove the bug while at a grand party being held at his place.

The scene that follows is one of my favorites in the entire show. Recall the opening farm scene and the basement scene in Inglourious Basterds. They just oozed with tension in the best possible way, taking place in small, confined spaces and using only dialogue to build excitement. Andor season two is full of such scenes.

Kleya, hoping to find the listening device, finds the party is full of Imperial officers, including Jung (Luthen’s informant) and Director Krennic. Kleya uses the guise of flirting with Jung to remove the device in front of the entire party. Naturally, things aren’t so easy as just doing the thing, because this isn’t that kind of show.

One of my favorite moments from this arc is a very small one. In the Senate, we are introduced to an alien creature called The Oathkeeper (I don't know who this man is, but give him all the voice work), whose job is to lead the Senate in a disturbing pledge of allegiance to the Empire. There's almost certainly monitors looking to see which senators aren't saying the pledge with the rest.

The final two arcs will be reviewed in a later post.