CRAWLING WITH SPOILER DROIDS!
In the fourth episode of Andor, “Aldhani,” it’s revealed that Cassian Andor fought on Mimban at age 16. For those keeping score (and if you’re reading this, it feels like you probably are) that is the ‘mud planet’ where Han Solo first met Chewbacca in Solo.
It’s also where Han is told the objective of Imperial occupation: “Eliminate the hostiles.”
Han’s insubordinate response?
“It’s their planet, we’re the hostiles.”
After watching this episode, I can’t help but imagine the cast of Andor as a rock band about to open for Sy Snoodles. Cassian on lead guitar, Bix on lead vocals, Maarva on bass, Syril Karn on keyboards, Luthen Rael on drums. Bix shouts into the microphone: “Hello everybody! Thank you for coming out tonight! We are The Hostiles!’
Andor is hopping with hostiles. Cassian’s mother? Distressed, upset. Cassian’s friends? Fed up with him, whispering warnings. Cassian’s allies? Don’t trust him. Don’t trust each other. Luthen, a potential mentor, foretells Cassian’s death fighting the Empire. (That’s his sales pitch.) Syril Karn makes his way through empty Brutalist scenery to his mother (played by Kathryn Hunter!), who promptly slaps him on sight. Mon Mothma’s first appearance in the series, where she basically doubles her existing screen time in the Saga, doesn’t even seem to like her husband very much (his Chandrilan man-bun didn’t endear me to him either). Her driver? Her staff? Anyone could be listening. Every scene is terse and tense.
All this hostility and paranoia could make Andor feel claustrophobic. Instead, this episode widens the aperture of the series, taking us to both new and long-lost locales.
We see Coruscant, making its first on-screen appearance since 2005. It’s quite changed, less in look than feel. Coruscant was originally the sunlit inverse of the techno-noir Blade Runner. Now, post-Order 66, post-Empire, it’s an oppressive megalopolis.
The titular Aldhani is sweeping and cinematic, green and natural. But hostility remains. TIE fighters flyover in low patrols, invoking modern-day drone warfare.
Andor has fewer space battles and gunfights and chase scenes per minute than any other Star Wars story, but feel located in a far more dangerous galaxy than we’ve come to know. That makes for a series rife with drama, characters who seem on the edge of survival, a narrative crafted with detail and patience, even if that same approach is causing me, as a Star Wars lunatic, to constantly wrestle with it as a style.
There are a few especially interesting moments this episode, including Cassian receiving a crystal from Luthen, in the same way Jyn received one from her mother. Stellan Skarsgard’s transformation from Outer Rim revolutionary to Core Systems art dealer is a thing to behold, based more on his hands than his wig. Each character is as layered as they are distressed.
I think, though, that part of what creates this hostility isn’t just the circumstances or characters. Star Wars characters are almost always in mortal danger, faced with tough choices. There are a few creative choices that the typical Star Wars story makes to keep things on the light side of the Force that Gilroy and his team dispense with.
One is Star Wars typically turns the page quickly. “We have no time for our sorrows,” says Princess Leia in A New Hope, even after her home planet is destroyed. Moments after Luke says “I can’t believe he’s gone,” about Ben Kenobi, he’s leaping into a turret, cheering as he plays Atari to save his own life. After Qui-Gon Jinn’s death, we have a funeral…and then a celebration. Star Wars moves on.
The other sleight of hand in Star Wars storytelling is that characters tend to become life-long friends immediately. Finn rescues Poe in Episode VII and within a few moments, they’re friends for life. Rey and Finn share a joyful exchange immediately after they survive their escape to Jakku. Leia gives Luke a kiss for luck less than 20 minutes after meeting him. Characters in Star Wars are in heightened circumstances and it causes them to look past the hard stuff, hug and embrace It’s, you know, hopeful. The characters could be guarded. They generally aren’t.
Tony Gilroy’s Star Wars doesn’t traffic in that kind of emotional shorthand. I imagine we will see bonding and trust grow across the characters over the course of the series. Luthen and Cassian will have, eventually, a mutual admiration or respect. But it did not come from their experience escaping Ferrix. It’s going to take more than that. They still feel like they barely know each other.
I realize that just about everything I’ve written so far about Rogue One and Andor could be summed up as “this is really different!” In my defense, that appears to be at least part of the point of these Tony Gilroy joints. As someone who has loved the mode of storytelling that’s defined Star Wars for over 40 years, a mode of storytelling that is pointedly different is going to invite some wrestling.
I’m sure I’ll eventually just write about the show’s story itself and not how the show tells its story… but the how is determining the what in this series. How Andor is told is a big part of what Andor is: Star Wars where everyone isn’t instantly friends. Star Wars where pain lingers. Star Wars where survival isn’t guaranteed. Star Wars with a doomed leading character, in a hostile universe, trying to find his reason to fight.