We're Not Droids

Andor Season 2, Episodes 4-6 "Ever Been To Ghorman?" "I Have Friends Everywhere" "What a Festive Evening"

SPOILERS HAVE PLANTED LISTENING DEVICES THROUGHOUT THE TEXT BELOW

(I apologize this one’s a little late! An actor in my little play from last year was nominated for a Drama Desk Award here in NYC, which is a very cool thing for me and much deserved for her. But it held up focus on what matters, writing a Substack about Star Wars!)

It’s BBY 3 (Before the Battle of Yavin for the uninitiated) and everyone’s talking about one thing: Ghorman. This arc (Andor: Blaster Tailor Syril Spy?) follows our characters as open warfare gets closer, and the pressure of having to come out of the shadows, by choice or force, starts to build.

If George Lucas’s inspirations have included Akira Kurosawa and Flash Gordon, this week’s story feels like writer Beau Willimon’s lionization of John le Carré. It’s a thicket of spy craft, with everyone weighing everyone else’s tolerance for risk, possible disloyalty, and strategic acumen. As such, it’s the most, one might say, ‘confidently subdued' stretch of the series.

Andor has, in its way, paid its respect to Star Wars history (as an entertainment for the general public) with an explosion here and there: a speeder chase, a moment where Luthen Rael’s ship slices through Imperial pursuers, a riot. Even the Narkina 5 episodes, which are about intense conversation and quiet glaces, have a unique element of spectacle and thrill. Episodes 4-6 of the second season are Andor at it’s most character driven and detailed. It’s as if the writers are trying to say “We’re going to give you K2-SO, everyone, but first, this one’s for us.”

The centerpiece of the web of characters and consequences is Ghorman, a civilized planet known for it’s fabrics and fashions. It’s citizens even sound like sophisticates, as they speak a sort of French. It’s hardly an Outer Rim backwater: this is a hub of luxury goods. Last week, in a sinister scene, The Empire revealed that it would like to strip Ghorman of its natural resources in a way that could all but destroy it; but they feel as if they can’t act against this world without creating a pretext. In service of this, there’s been shadow propaganda campaign (state news, Fox News, pick your poison) to define the Ghormans as prideful and distasteful (Syril and his mother have a funny exchange about her state inspired opinions) to turn the public against them. And, on the other side, there has already been a tragic event on Ghorman: civilians killed, years before, by Tarkin. The Ghormans are distrustful of the Empire, the Empire would like very much to get rid of the Ghormans. It’s a virtuous cycle of contempt.

Luthen sends Cassian to assess the Ghorman rebels, and what’s striking is that he properly, accurately, assesses Ghorman’s chances of succesfully acting against Imperial oppression. Under the slick, and a little silly, guise of Varian Skye, Cassian finds them too eager, too trusting, and using information he believes cannot be verified. He’s right on all counts… but this doesn’t suit anyone.

In fact, there are three parties, supposedly at odds, all pushing in the same direction. There’s the Ghorman Liberation Front, who believe they have obtained information from a sympathizer (but it’s Syril Karn, attempting to infiltrate the cell) that could allow them to steal Imperial weapons; there’s Luthen’s guiding hand, hoping that Ghorman will either be a symbol of resistance or a rallying cry if things go south; and the ISB, led by Dedra Meero, who is coaxing the Ghorman Liberation Front into more and more open acts of defiance.

That means everyone wants a conflict on Ghorman. And, in a sense, they’re all gaming this out correctly: the ISB will draw the Ghormans into a conflict; but the Ghorman Massacre (referenced here in Star Wars Rebels) will be a rallying cry for those in the Republic who want to fight the Palpatine. Ghorman’s fate seems to be sealed, because no interested party wants to deescalate. This is the cold reality that Andor is so good at excavating. It’s a game of human chess with no winners and a series of logical inevitabilities. Ghorman is about to be collateral damage.

In the first season, Luthen’s amorality and merciless calculus seemed to be the show’s central ethos. Humanity, moral qualms, were luxuries that the burgeoning alliance could not afford. But, there’s a new wrinkle. Human nature.

Everywhere we look in 3 BBY, human beings are insisting that their humanity matters. Mon Mothma looks at Luthen with some horror when she reminds him that she cares about her cousin Vel and wants to know she’s safe. Vel and Cinta rediscover each other, (right before they’re violently and permanently separated) and pledge to stay in each other’s orbit, if they’re more utile to the cause separately. A wild-eyed Saw Gerrera declares to young Wilmon that “Revolution is not for the sane!” as he inhales toxic chemicals and encourages young Wilmon to do the same. Humanity is ready to knock over the chess board.

At the center of this? Cassian and Bix.

Bix Caleen remains the series’ designated sufferer. It almost reminds me, although this isn’t a clean analogy, of the Ursula K. LeGuin short story, The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas, which describes a utopian society that can only exist because everyone accepts the suffering of one child. Everyone in Andor is having a difficult time, but it feels like Bix is there to take on the sins of the Rebellion and the Empire alike.

Living in a safehouse with Bix, watching her fall apart, has brought out something empathetic and loving in Cassian, in his own furious way. When Cassian returns from his mission on Ghorman, where his instincts don’t serve Luthen’s ruthless ends, he finds that Bix was visited by Luthen while he was away. Finally fed up with Luthen’s machinations, unsure of what he’s playing at, but unwilling to let it slide, Cassian walks right up to Luthen in his gallery, breaking every protocol the show has told us are unbreakable.

Here we get the crux of this arc. The two of them pointedly argue. Luthen tells Cassian that he is soft on Ghorman but will do anything for Bix, an inconsistency that Rael can’t reconcile. Cassian tells Luthen that he won’t allow him to ‘mess with Bix’ and reminds Luthen that they are not droids. They’re human beings in a relationship, and that relationship matters to them. Cassian tells Luthen that if he wants his ‘blood’ he’ll help him work things out with Bix. It’s the first time in the series someone has told Luthen he has to manage people in this way. So far, they are easy trustworthy and useful, or about to be eliminated. Cassian puts a third option on the table: do something to help Bix get herself together.

Which is what Luthen does. He sends Cassia and Bix after Doctor Ghorst himself, right there on Corscant. Sure, there’s a strategic reason for Cassian and Bix to go after Doctor Ghorst, he’s about to get more resources for his deadly technique, but we know the real reason for this mission is personal. It’s the cure for what ails Bix, to acknowledge that she needs to get rid of this man. Not only to act as a pawn in a grand strategy, but as a person who is in pain, and whose pain needs to be addressed. Forcefully.

There’s so much more that happens in this arc, from a recast Bail Organa to a tense sequence where our heroes must remove evidence of their spycraft right under the nose of Orson Krennic, it’s just filled with tense scenes and great lines. But something about all this made me think about the conversation that progressives in the US seemed to be having with the Democratic Party before the reelection of Donald Trump.

Lots of people on the left were concerned that the carefulness of the Democratic Party, it’s focus on doing no harm instead of declaring its values, of triangulating, of making sure it was trying not to upend the talking points, of discipline instead of passion. Of course, hindsight is 20/20 and you can hardly expect a black woman in the US to speak her mind the way an old white male can. The public views an old white racist more charitably than a woman of color who chooses her words carefully; that’s just the ugly truth. Still, there’s a time when discipline becomes its own kind of oppression. When the strategy starts to divorce us from our instincts as people.

Luthen’s approach to the war has worked to this point, but it’s reaching its limits. Eventually, this is a war that will be won by people who care, not just people with the proper level of discretion, or people who can do what they’re told. Rebels are pretty bad, in the end, at blindly following orders.

As a side note: Let me just add how much I loved the Andor series arriving at D’Qar? This is my kind of Easter Egg! And it makes perfect sense. The Resistance uses an abandoned Rebel base as it’s hideout in The Last Jedi. The idea that D’Qar is another hidden, formerly-in-operation Rebel stronghold and adds strengthening connective tissue to the “one big story” of Star Wars. I don’t think many of us expected Andor to find a way to hook itself onto The Force Awakens, and I was so happy to be surprised.

It’s crazy that after two weeks, we’re already at the halfway point. There are a lot of characters left in the series that we never see again, or don’t appear in Rogue One. Not to be too married to old Star Wars cliches? But I have a bad feeling about this!