Lost

Andor Parts 1, 2 and 3

WE’VE ALL DONE TERRIBLE THINGS TO AVOID SPOILERS

When Obi-Wan Kenobi premiered, I battled a Best Buy in order to get a television suitable for the return of one of my favorite characters.

Last night, ahead of the Andor premiere, I attended a dinner at a tavern in Amherst Massachusetts, dedicated to welcoming Pam before a symposium on magic and art. I tried to do my best to be a dutiful plus-one as scholars and professors and students charmingly explained their foci in Art History: East Asian, Italian Renaissance, Modern Surrealism. Before then, I spent the afternoon seeing my brother Jeff’s home in Easthampton, where he’s preparing for the birth of a new Freeman. Earlier, we drove up from Brooklyn, a four hour drive, and when we arrived, I did some work for my day job, which included meeting with a non-profit donor at his home.

In short, it was a marathon of a day. When we got back to the Bed & Breakfast, I passed clean out. I woke up at 7 am, bleary, reached for my laptop and argued with my airpods until they worked, so as not to wake Pam up, who had trouble sleeping the night before. I watched two episodes of Andor, had breakfast, and then watched a third.

Suffice it to say, this was the most subdued Star Wars premiere I have ever attended or constructed for myself. Having watched the first three episodes of Andor, this was inadvertently perfect.

Andor is, if not subdued, certainly live-action Star Wars on its lowest possible speed setting. It takes three episodes to get to the scene that was shown as a preview for the show, Andor’s first meeting with Luthen Rael (who is instantly awesome, by the way). Three episodes and still no Mon Mothma. In 114 minutes of screentime, Cassian Andor has just left the planet with Luthen. 114 minutes into A New Hope, Luke Skywalker was in an X-Wing hurtling down the Death Star trench.

Part of this is because Andor is structured like a mega-episode of Lost. Lost’s conceit (besides groovy mysteries and people who remained very attractive without working toilets or showers for miles) was flashbacks, flash-forwards, flash-sideways-es. A typical episode of Lost would show you the present on the Island, some adventure unfolding, with a lead character at its center. Then, with a signature whoosh, you would be whisked to a flashback, some history that explained or considered their actions in the present. That’s Andor, at least right now.

That’s a unique approach to Star Wars storytelling, but so is everything else in Andor. The soundtrack is contemporary, fluid, less interested in establishing motifs and themes than most Star Wars scores. The episode’s cliffhangers are writerly instead of bombastic. (The final moment of Part 1 is Andor’s his sister standing alone. The final moment of Part 2 is the line “If you can’t find it here, it’s not worth finding.” The final montage of Part 3 is Andor’s history of being whisked away from his home by elder white saviors with their own agendas.) The planets are all new to Star Wars, except a fleeting reference to Wobani, which appeared only in Rogue One. In fact, if you showed virgin eyes Andor (and swapped out a few junk-yard Y-Wings), you could forgive those eyes for not knowing the show was in the Star Wars family at all.

I wrote in my essay last month about Rogue One that in a galaxy that rhymes like poetry, Rogue One is written in prose. Andor follows suit, laying out relationships, motivations and situations in a very straightforward way: it’s an excellent and richly produced long-form sci-fi character drama. Where traditional Star Wars uses echoes of the past, known themes, familiar images, and iconic shorthand, Andor leaves no stone unturned, rejects nostalgia, chooses detail. It watches like a novel reads.

Maybe that’s why Andor brings to mind Ursula K. Le Quin’s Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction. In it, LeGuin talks about the novel as a “fundamentally unheroic kind of story.”

The novel is a fundamentally unheroic kind of story. Of course the Hero has frequently taken it over, that being his imperial nature and uncontrollable impulse, to take everything over and run it while making stern decrees and laws to control his uncontrollable impulse to kill it. So the Hero has decreed through his mouthpieces the Lawgivers, first, that the proper shape of the narrative is that of the arrow or spear, starting here and going straight there and THOK! hitting its mark (which drops dead); second, that the central concern of narrative, including the novel, is conflict; and third, that the story isn’t any good if he isn’t in it.

I differ with all of this. I would go so far as to say that the natural, proper, fitting shape of the novel might be that of a sack, a bag. A book holds words. Words hold things. They bear meanings. A novel is a medicine bundle, holding things in a particular, powerful relation to one another and to us.

This is all worth a read while watching a show that steps outside the hero’s journey. Star Wars has been synonymous with the hero’s journey since its inception. Andor is not, so far, a heroic journey so much a a collection of circumstances and incidents that will add up to a person’s life. Andor was separated from his sister. Andor is not wealthy or connected. Andor is willing and able to kill those who would try to control him. Andor has been separated from his homeworld, his home language, his tribe, perhaps himself. Maybe that’s a stretch and the hero’s journey will assert itself, but as of now, that’s what comes up for me. It’s a portrait.

This is not a show about a man called to save the galaxy by the will of the Force. This is a show about a man asked if he would like to fight “these bastards” by a man staring down the barrel of a blaster. This show starts with a bully being shot in the face outside a brothel, and then follows that scene up with a droid being pissed on my space-dogs in the street.

In some ways, this makes Andor feel far away from a galaxy far, far away. But it also has the reverse effect: it makes the galaxy far, far away feel bigger. Cameos and familiar themes ground us in Star Wars, but also can give the viewer the feeling that the galaxy includes a revolving collection of 12 or so characters that have all met at one time or another. Just how big is the Star Wars galaxy?

And how flexible? Can it contain a story as Force-free as this? What do we need in a Star Wars show to make it feel like Star Wars? How far can you push Star Wars before it loses what makes it Star Wars? Or is it sometimes useful to get a little lost? To walk off the marked path and explore without a map?

We’ll see! I know that I can’t wait to see the next part, to see where Syril Karn’s ambition and imposter syndrome take him; where Cassian Andor’s flashbacks will take us; to watch B2EMO plug himself in like an iPhone that needs a battery replacement; to watch Fiona Shaw just be goddamned Fiona Shaw.

Much much more to come! New Star Wars! Always the best time of year!

Because we left the premiere trio of episodes with a whole lot of tears running down faces, I leave you with the man in Andor who looks like he has the happiest life of any of the characters.

Now that’s what I call job satisfaction.