SPOILERS ARE A CHANDRILAN CUSTOM
Episode 8 of Andor, “Narkina 5,” is about the prison system.
In Andor, we find a legal system set up to bring inmates into its fold on trumped up charges like ‘resisting arrest,’ that gives tremendous power to the arresting officer and almost no power to the individual accused. We see little-to-no due process or a chance to be heard in its overworked system. Those involved in the ajudication of claims are working an assembly line, just getting people through it, without any qualms about what they’re assembling, as long as they’re not the ones on the line themselves.
Prisoners are whisked away to serve as labor, tasked with not only participating in that labor but policing the labor in one another. They are the workforce of their prison and the prisoners themselves. They are also fined and charged for the privilege of being in prison, racking up debt while incarcerated, that they are ostensibly working off while in a situation that gives them no leverage as a workforce.
If the idea of a prison system that works this way is shocking, dystopian and evil, I’ve got some news for you. This is very true to how the criminal justice system in the United States actually works.
To read more about this:
Here is the ACLU report on Captive Labor (and a summary of the report in The Guardian)
Here is the Marshall Project on an Alabama Prisoners strike to protest their exploitation
And here’s a New York Times essay about how Alabama keeps its taxes low and bilks the incarcerated.
Cassian Andor’s stopover in Narkina 5 is white and stark, like a science-fiction prison meets THX-1138, and we meet additional characters (which Andor does not lack for!), and we see Andy Serkis on screen as himself, and not as a (checks notes) Eight Foot Corpse On A Throne Wearing A Golden Bathrobe. That’s about as delightful as Narkina 5 gets. Even Serkis’s performance offers nary a wink: it’s harsh and determined.
By the way, realism, on film, is sometimes misrepresented as grimness. “That’s so real,” is occasionally used as a substitute for “that’s so sad." Characters that never smile, that get sick, that are shut down, that don’t overemote? “That’s so real.” As if people don’t dance in real life. As if people don’t joke about being locked up. As if no one suddenly laughs on the worst day of their life.
Diego Luna, in real-life interviews, has a smile that could knock the moon out of orbit. He’s a fracking charisma-machine, he’s delightful. Cassian Andor, as a character, is in a state of hypervigilance. In Narkina 5, we see his worst fears realized as he is trapped in a cage, his freedom stripped from him, and he gets even more shut down than he has been in the series before.
This is why I’m so looking forward to the appearance of K2-SO. If he does appear in this season (and I could see him as the way out of this prison, maybe?) he will offer Cassian a moment of light in all this darkness. I’m hoping to see Cassian feel free, not only of his bonds, of his stone-faced self-protectiveness.
Otherwise, Episode 8 returns us to the incremental, detailed storytelling that Andor revels in. A little more with Mon Mothma, some information about her marriage (they were married at 15, he used to be a firebrand before he lost his spirit); a check in with Ferrix and the characters we left behind there; Val and Cinta talk about their relationship; Syril advocates for himself; Dedra continues her search for the Rebels and Luthen in particular. There’s great acting all around, sharp writing by Beau Willimon (of House of Cards! Welcome to Star Wars!) and the episode rests of the strength of the incidents and acting more than the usual Star Wars propulsiveness. By Star Wars standards, Andor is nearly happening in real time. (Tales of the Jedi, released on the same day as this episode, takes us through Count Dooku’s entire fall to the Dark Side in less than an hour of animation. )
The only thing that really throws a zig zag into the linear plot is the return Saw Gerrera. The scene between Saw and Luthen works like gangbusters: two men on the same side, holding back secrets, testing and challenging each other, using questionable methods towards noble goals, self-justifying, self-doubting.
Usually I would call a cameo like this a lot of fun, but that’s just not the tone here. Andor is excellent and it’s precise and it’s wide-ranging; but it’s not all that fun. Saw Gerrera, in Rogue One, is intense and terrifying but he’s also giving an over-the-top borderline camp performance. Here, Forest Whitaker is more earthbound, because there’s so much less contrast. In Rogue One, he’s the wild card, the problem, the zealot. Here, you see him speak with someone who is, for all intents and purposes, a zealot of a different flavor.
Andor is just plain fascinating, folks. It’s committed to its artistic choices to a degree that can feel almost misanthropic, a kind of rejection of the Star Wars storytelling that has come before. It can feel like “that’s all kids stuff, this is real.” That posture means we’re constantly seeing scenes that live-action Star Wars has previously made or had no time for. It’s means we are getting, for example, an exploration of how prison works that is almost too close to our own. Cassian is not a princess locked in the tower hoping for someone to come to his rescue - a trope saw with Leia in A New Hope, with Rey in The Force Awakens; he’s a man being used for slave labor by a corrupt system of law.
The Empire has never felt so real.
The Empire has never felt so much like us.