There's No Such Thing As Luck

Andor Season 2 Episodes 7-9 "The Messenger" "Who Are You?" "Welcome To The Rebellion"

WELCOME TO THE SPOILERS

With a trilogy of episodes that spend years of storytelling savings, Andor Season 2’s third arc simultaneously gave me exactly what I’ve been waiting for and shocked me out of my shoes. “The Messenger” “Who Are You” and “Welcome to the Rebellion” deliver the Ghorman Massacre, its consequential aftermath, and the human cost of the Empire’s inhumanity. Andor rockets through nearly three hours of painstakingly rendered payoffs. It’s a thing of terrible beauty.

Let’s get right to the heart of things: the execution of the infamous Ghorman Massacre. In some ways, I’m not remotely surprised that this episode delivered. The season’s structure situated the Ghorman Massacre right at the climax, and one could have a placed a safe bet on Gilroy & Co giving us something tense, ironic, violent, and tragic.

But (fans self), they delivered and then some. Over the course of the season, the writers have carefully doled out human faces, a specific and idiosyncratic culture, food and art, familiarized us with the square itself, and illustrated an evil plot to tear it all down. The experience that follows is not watching the destruction of a planet, but of a people. Yes, there are those viewers who know that this particular piece of lore has a long history in Star Wars, but this goes beyond lore and canon-service. The Ghorman Massacre, in this telling, is about what tyranny looks like in practice, not just as a symbol. And, readers, it’s brutal.

“Who Are You?” the second episode of the three, is where the seminal event takes place. (It’s going to be on a lot of fans list of favorite episodes for years to come.) What we see is almost paradoxical: a surgically enacted descent into chaos. Each element is shown to the audience with care - the Empire’s plans, the Ghorman Liberation Front’s internal debates, the effect (and use) of outside agitators, the pride of place, the weapons being brought to a peaceful protest, the KX security droids awaiting activation, the inexperienced Imperial soldiers who will be used as chaff by their superiors, the desperate pleading of the once-clear leader of the Ghorman Front, as he tries to steer the marching mob away from their slaughter.

And crucially, painfully, the song sung by the Ghor just before all hell breaks loose. Music is culture. We all know the songs that make up who we are as people; our national anthems; or heart-songs. To hear the Ghor sing, in their own Galactic French, in solidarity, as their doom approaches, elevates them to something richly recognizable. This is the power of great fiction: to create from the stuff of our world, the stuff of a whole new one.

And then snuff that world out. To show the desperate scramble for life, explosions, cries for help, fire and frantic fleeing. The good people of Ghorman, whose only sin is living atop what the Emperor wants, weeping and dying, immediately after reoccupying their own memorial square.

Creating a framing device in all this is Cassian Andor’s mission: to assassinate Dedra. Yes, Cassian is there, sent my Luthen. We see, as we do so much of the series, the clash through Cassian’s experienced eyes. He remains focused on his task as the world burns around him, until, at last, there’s no way forward but to escape.

Dedra, his target, and the author of this tragedy, isn’t left to survey her victory. Instead, she is trapped in her own skin, you can practically feel her trying to crawl out of herself. She knows she is doing something unforgivable. But she doesn’t Rebel. She’s not a Rebel. She’s a loyalist all the way to the loss of her soul to the loss of the closest thing she’s found to love.

Syril Karn’s finest hour is also his lowest point, which is exactly right. As the riot gets closer, Syril realizes, too late, that this is not just an effort to suppress the people, but to destroy them. When he finally reaches Dedra to demand answers, the scene is so wicked it could strip paint off a Van Gogh.

Upon discovering that Dedra has been orchestrating a genocide, Syril lashes out, grabbing and choking her, outraged almost as much by the betrayal as the plan. He acts with physical cruelty and threat, like an overgrown child, love evacuating from him faster that the Empire is evacuating the planet. That felt right to me. These people shouldn’t have a tearful goodbye. This is love among the Nazis. It’s love based on power and resentment, on need, not generosity and compassion. You can see these are people who want to love one another, but have been twisted by a lifetime of indoctrination and denial. When he walks out on Dedra, it’s hard to tell if we’re supposed to cheer him finding his limit, or scoff at this immoral mouse’s indignation and naivety.

Syril’s end, and where the episode gets its title, is a perfect shiv to the gut. Here stands a man of little consequence, used by the only person who’s ever cared about him. His final act looks like an effort to save Dedra, but that’s incidental. Syril finds Cassian Andor in the maelstrom and enacts a fight he’s likely been having in his imagination for years. It’s about as bone-crunching a physical conflict as we’ve seen in Star Wars, between two normal men who just want to survive. But Cassian? Has seen so many of Syrils that they run together. Andor does register, maybe, that there’s something different about Syril: his passion in the fight, the personal nature of his attack, something. But that’s all it is. We’re left to wonder if Syril is about to have a change of heart, or explain himself. But, as he stands there, unseen, unknown, invisible, he is shot and killed by Rylanz, Ghorman leader, who was only minutes before, a man of peace. (Wipes brow.)

Immediately after the Massacre, we see the Empire’s attempt to use it, to reframe it, to shape the narrative with lies. They operate state television that describes the Imperials who died as heroes and the Ghorman innocents as Rebels and terrorists. But, the irony of the Empire’s action on Ghorman is the same irony all oppressors eventually face: they create the reason for resistance. In gutting the planet for resources, in lying about its citizens, in silencing dissident, in butchering hundreds, the Empire proves that it must be defeated. It’s the moment the makes spycraft give way to warfare. It’s why Mon Mothma can wait no longer to speak. It’s what brings the Rebellion out of hiding and into open conflict.

And so, we see Mon Mothma valiantly speak the truth, an act that has become so dangerous that she needs an exit strategy. And even then, the people she trusts and are meant to help her, Bail Organa's aides, have spies in their ranks. You can feel Mon’s pain at realizing that she cannot trust anyone at all, that once-necessary lies have become the cause of justified paranoia. And finally, after she calls out the Emperor himself, she is saved by none other than Cassian Andor, who has just left the Ghorman Massacre. (I think her plead to protect the truth is all-too-timely, for obvious reasons. The US is led by the most prolific liar in history, but we’re far from the only country whose access to reality has been challenged by tyrants.)

It’s a hell of a twenty-four hours for Cassian, and the show rightly mentions he must be exhausted. But it’s also a fascinating moment for Mon Mothma. I was curious to see if they would address her leaving her family behind. They show has spent quite a lot of time establishing her familial ties. Instead, that’s left off-camera as she runs for her life. I think it says quite a lot that she leaves them behind without worrying if they’ll be all right. I’m curious if they’ll tie that plot point off in BBY1, or if we’re meant to understand that by the time she leaves Corurscant, her estrangement from her family is absolute.

There’s a lot going on, more than is useful for me to recap. Mon Mothma’s escape (there’s even a nod to her appearance in the “Secret Cargo” episode of Star Wars: Rebels); Cassian’s discovery of K2-SO, which is a welcome reprieve from the relentless pain of this arc; a series of interlocking love stories; and the building of Yavin, which now resembles Yavin in Rogue One, down to the casting (hello Draven!).

But this arc does something else I wasn’t expecting: it implies, ever so gently, the hand of fate. Or, rather, the Force.

It’s introduced with the lightest touch, literally. Andor’s shoulder is injured, and Bix, who is living with him in an idyllic jungle hut, right near the Yavin Base, takes him to see a Force-healer. That Force-healer senses something about Andor, calls him, to Bix, a “messenger.”

It’s very telling that the series only Force-wielder is someone that the writers leave space for us to doubt. In “The Messenger” this Force-healer claims to see something, but does she? Her advice is the kind you might get from a palm reader. A skeptic could rightly ignore it. And her healing powers are shown so gingerly that they seem like reiki, certainly not the ability to lift rocks or suspend a laser blast in mid-air.

Andor is a show that has, thus far, avoided the idea of faith, or Force, or destiny. The show is too gritty and ground-level for that. I’m sure there will even be some fans of Andor who will decry the introduction of the Force into the series, because they’re loving a Star Wars that feels more ‘real.’

But faith is real, and so is spirituality. Even the lives of the gritty and unadorned. Even, and especially, the lives of soldiers. I’m certain most armies have more soldiers of faith than of fortune.

Andor’s version of the Force works very much like it does in my own life. As most of you know, my wife is a practicing Pagan and witch. She casts spells and magic circles and is constantly noticing the synchronicities in the world that she interprets as Spirit announcing itself to us. Her spirituality doesn’t make her levitate or read minds, but it’s a connection to a world beneath or above this one, that can be perceived, that can interact with us, that can open doors for us, that can tell us if we’re on the right path.

That’s how most people, real people, not just Jedi, experience the unseen: in ways that have other explanations, but sometimes, no other explanation. In ways that feel meaningful, and help us assign meaning to ourselves and to each other.

Even Luthen nods to the occult, to, perhaps, the guiding hand of the Force. In “Welcome to the Rebellion,” Luthen says he believes he and Andor are fated to die. Andor tells him to speak for himself, and Luthen asks him if he sees no truth in his statement. Then, in this dialogue that lays out the series events as a whole, the writers acknowledge the spiritual architecture that even Andor exists within. This is Star Wars, after all.

Andor: I make my own decisions.

Luthen: Is that what you’ve been doing? Sometimes I wonder. You appeared when I needed you. Aldhani. Narkina. Ferrix. Sinar. Mina-Rau. Ghorman. And here we are.

As the arc closes, Bix comes to believe so firmly in Cassian’s purpose - his connection to something larger than himself - that she gives him up rather than be his reason for abandoning the Rebel Alliance. She tells him that she will find him after this is all done, but we know that isn’t so. It’s a graceful exit, if it is one, for the character.

It’s worthy of debate if Cassian’s destiny is written by choice or fate. Or choices that imagine there is such a thing as fate. Does the Force have something to do with Bix’s decision? Does it guide Cassian’s appearance in so many consequential moments in the build up to the Galactic Civil War. Or is he simply one man who has been useful, in the right place at the right time?

Cassian has a view all his own. He says “This only thing special about me is luck.”

Somewhere down the timeline, an exiled Jedi, who will never meet Cassian Andor, has an answer.

“In my experience, there’s no such thing as luck.”