‘Andor’ uses real colonial horrors to re-forge the Star Wars saga (Chapter 3: Ep. 7-9)

With this week’s trilogy—“Messenger,” “Who Are You?” and “Welcome to the Rebellion”—Andor reaches its tipping point, as the Star Wars saga we recognize begins to take shape. For much of its second season, the show has dealt in outstretched tension, built not on the unknown, but on the inevitable. As a prequel whose general outcomes have already been written, this approach makes sense. However, in three of its best episodes to date, Andor uses this modality to reflect the real mechanics of imperialism, and how they echo across time. The outcomes don’t so much feel pre-ordained as they do intimately familiar—as though we’ve witnessed these horrors before, at some point in our history. George Lucas’ galaxy far, far away has seldom felt closer.

At this stage in the series, even the most measured drama unfolds at an accelerated pace—the Rebellion moves quickly to meet the Empire’s swiftly rising tide. Another year passes as we open on Yavin, the Rebel base seen in the climax of Lucas’ 1977 original. We’re still a year out from those events, but the forest stronghold finally has military capabilities, forcing Cassian (Diego Luna) and Bix (Adria Arjona) to carefully consider their role in the Rebellion. Cassian signed up to be a spy, a soldier, and a shadow operative, but he doesn’t believe he should be a leader. His superior officers certainly do, though this might mean he can no longer come and go as he pleases, or luxuriate in his relationship with Bix after they’ve spent years apart. As with the closing images of chapter two, the question looms: at what point will Cassian choose romance over resistance?

That Bix isn’t part of the movie that introduced Cassian—2016’s Rogue One: A Star Wars Story—all but foreshadows that he may not have a choice, but the form this development takes by the end of chapter three proves deeply moving. When we rejoin Cassian a year later, the passage of time is marked by his weary disposition (not to mention, the blaster wound on his shoulder, which refuses to heal). Luna is charged with the herculean task of weighing Cassian’s outward fortitude against an internal imbalance, and the actor more than lives up to the challenge, not only providing hints of doubt, but thoroughly embodying them.

Once hesitant to follow orders from Luthen (Stellan Skarsgård), Cassian now readily jumps back into his ship when the underground ringleader comes a-calling—by way of Cassian’s countryman Wilmon (Muhannad Bhaier)—even if it means abandoning Yavin. It seems Cassian’s problem wasn’t necessarily Luthen himself, but his own proximity to the oncoming battle. Bix has long maintained that she doesn’t just want to fight—she wants to win. But perhaps the growing impossibility of that outcome changes the shape of what war even looks like to Cassian, and what it might cost him. By the end of this week’s first episode, the carnage he sees up close convinces him to abandon his post—but not before the series finally dips its toe into traditional Star Wars mysticism.

The Jedi may be long dead, but before Cassian jets off for Ghorman, Bix takes him to see a Force healer (Josie Walker), an unnamed woman whose tremendous one-scene impact cannot be overstated. Cassian’s skepticism hints at how the Force is viewed in this fraught galactic period (he dismisses her as a fraud), but what the healer discerns from their exchange paints a picture of the larger saga. On one hand, it provides a seldom-seen view of the Force as an intuition about someone’s character, and about their place in the grand scheme of things. On the other hand, it moves Star Wars away from the traditional notion of chosen saviors (in a way The Last Jedi promised to, before The Rise of Skywalker doubled back). Cassian is, according to the healer, a messenger—someone whose purpose is intermediate, and fleeting, though it leaves him no less burdened.

That burden grows heavier when Cassian is sent to Ghorman to kill Dedra Meero (Denice Gough), a major step that Wilmon has to coax him into. Major political assassinations aren’t quite his forté, but the struggle has gotten to a place where they may be necessary, putting the stakes in perspective. The conditions on Ghorman have reached a saturation point, with the Empire increasing its presence, setting a strict curfew for civilians, and secretly landing mining equipment in advance of its brutal resource extraction. The only thing standing in the way is the Ghorman people. Krennic (Ben Mendelsohn) and the Emperor’s plans are almost in play: the political situation on the ground has grown incendiary, and unstable, while the galactic powers that be have planted carefully constructed news narratives to brand the Ghormans as “terrorists,” while showing sympathy to imperial order.

Meanwhile, Dedra’s mole and boyfriend Syril Karn (Kyle Soller) has finally grown tired of being used as a pawn, especially since he can’t quite calculate the intended outcome. He’s someone who values order—it’s what drew him to imperial security in the first place—so the ensuing pandemonium on Ghorman leaves a sour taste, as does the fact that he’s being used. Having been responsible for planting disorder eats away at him, which causes him to lash out first at Dedra, and eventually at Cassian, when they finally come face to face, only for Syril to meet an unceremonious demise, courtesy of a blaster shot from off-screen.

The question of whether Syril was lowering his own blaster, when faced with Cassian’s retort of “Who are you?” is likely to become a matter of debate—if not the action itself, then certainly its intent. The question of redemption has long loomed over Syril’s head, as a pathetic worm of a character you can’t help but root for, even if he’s on the side of Space Nazis. But the imperial machine, and the discord it sows, doesn’t care about these neat, linear character arcs and trajectories. Like so many others on Ghorman, Syril’s life is cut abruptly short by the chaos.

Dedra may be nominally in charge of Ghorman, but her superiors send in the ruthless, scar-faced Captain Kaido (Jono O’Neill) to take the final step of plunging the planet into violent havoc, via carefully provoked riots, and a subsequent lethal response. Kaido’s calculated display of brutality mirrors the real-world actions of the British Raj in India: specifically, the Jallianwala Bagh Massacre in 1919, an event depicted in the movie Gandhi, during which Gen. Reginald Dyre trapped protesters within an enclosure before ordering his troops to open fire, killing hundreds. A similar incident unfolds on Andor this week. Demonstrators are slowly enclosed in the town square, en route to a controlled demolition of order—by way of armed stormtroopers with their fingers on the trigger—a plan to which the audience is made privy well before it happens. This structure steeps the Ghorman Front’s proud songs and national slogans in tragic irony, given our foreknowledge of what’s about to unfold.

This incident is made all the more heart-wrenching by Brandon Roberts’ wistful, pulse-pounding music, which feels inspired by the most gentle yet propulsive compositions in Hans Zimmers’ Inception score. Director Janus Metz ensures a lasting despondency, not only through the bloodshed he depicts—numerous familiar characters are killed without dignity—but through the steady, hair-raising build up. As Kaido manipulates both the crowd and his own soldiers, into a skirmish he can later use to justify the atrocity, stormtroopers descend—slowly, sinisterly—on the town square. The scene is reminiscent of Lucas’s genocidal climax in the recently re-released Star Wars Episode III, itself inspired by the visual language of silent Soviet classic Battleship Potemkin. The latter’s Odessa Steps sequence has long been hailed as a landmark for montage and impressionistic storytelling, given how it turns invading Cossack gunmen into a faceless horde.

Alongside its echoes of the Raj, these historical reflections feel like a devastating point of no return—both for the in-world geopolitics, and for Andor’s proximity to the events of the original films. Thus far, one of the show’s greatest strengths has been how un-Star Wars-like it feels in terms of tone, but it’s perhaps more spiritually aligned with Lucas’s work than any other of Disney’s Star Wars productions have been.

Lucas had long used real-world influences for his stories. The Nixonian manipulations surrounding the Vietnam War were a key influence on the original Star Wars, while the George W. Bush-era authoritarianism, which took the United States back to Iraq, informed his prequel films in the early 2000s (the villains all but quote Bush himself). However, a key flaw in the construction of Lucas’s metaphors was his fantasy premise, wherein all evil led back to a single source: the Emperor, whose eventual defeat all but swept fascism under the rug. The villainous sorcerer is mentioned several times in Andor, but he never appears. The series is much more about the rotten rungs running up and down the system, and the ordinary people at each level supporting authoritarian rule. The show expands on Lucas’s world in this vital manner, but also refashions it to suit the scarier, arguably more autocratic times in which we live.

Nowhere is this more apparent than in this week’s subplot on Coruscant, during which imperial senators are forced to respond to the Ghorman massacre. Not only are Ghorman politicians rounded up for their sympathies, but the likes of Mon Mothma (Genevieve O'Reilly) are quickly silenced for daring to question the Empire’s prevailing narrative, which brands the Ghormans as terrorists for daring to oppose their armed occupiers. The show deploys charged and specific political language; Mothma is swiftly persecuted for calling the events a “genocide,” a retaliation that feels especially relevant at a time with the U.S. government has begun deporting dissenters who dare make similar claims about Israel’s role in Palestine. One can, at this time, only speculate about any story or dialogue changes that may have been influenced by real-world events, but it’s worth noting that the show paused production when the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes began in the summer of 2023, and only resumed filming in January 2024, three months after the events of Oct. 7, 2023, at which point the number of Palestinians killed had surpassed 25,000. Either way, the near-total collapse of democracy the series depicts arrives with a chilling prescience in the cold, dark spring of 2025.

Like the buildup to the Ghorman massacre, the show’s presentation of Mothma’s dissent is built on anticipating the inevitable. Having seen her in Rogue One and Return of the Jedi, we know she makes it to Yavin in one piece, but what she chooses to say to the world—at a time when no one else is willing or able to speak out—becomes the site of riveting drama. An equally important piece of this puzzle is the re-cast Bail Organa, played by Benjamin Bratt rather than Jimmy Smits, who first played the character in Attack of the Clones back in 2002. Smits didn’t return due to scheduling issues, but Organa’s function as someone Mothma might not be able to trust is enhanced not only by Bratt’s intense performance, but the fact that he’s no longer a known face to the audience. It’s a welcome antithesis to Disney’s reliance on nostalgia, to the point of featuring a dead-eyed, “de-aged” Mark Hamil as Luke Skywalker in its other TV shows, rather than re-casting the role.

This Coruscant subplot serves a dual purpose, as a nexus between full-throated condemnation of a post-truth world and a momentous heist climax, during which Cassian has to usher Mothma to safety before she’s arrested for speaking out. What seems minuscule in scale—the safety of a single senator—becomes monumentally important. Not only is it the sheltered Mothma’s first taste of real danger, but it’s also a symbol of the galaxy’s descent into full-blown dictatorship without the pretense of democracy. Once again, Andor traces the enormous importance of small acts of resilience, and even the most minor interactions. Earlier, there’s a key moment on Ghorman during which Cassian interacts with a hotel bellboy (Stefan Crepon), who he doesn’t remember meeting a year prior. But this young bystander immediately discerns Cassian’s secret identity, and quietly helps him out on his mission. (“I hope things work out for you,” Cassian tells him, to which he responds: “Rebellions are built on hope.”)

A few moments this week feel more concerned with fan-service than the show’s usual, character-centric M.O. For instance, the outsized origin story of Cassian’s droid companion K2SO, and the brief but over-pronounced return of Rogue One and Andor season one minor player Melshi (Duncan Pow). However, few of these instances overshadow the emotional rigor of chapter three. The show has finally crossed the Rubicon and strayed into recognizable narrative territory, which all but forces its story to take Rogue One-esque shape, wherein Mothma lives in hiding, and Cassian becomes a solo traveler once more. Only this time, his isolation isn’t his own doing.

By the end of the chapter, the slaughter he sees on Ghorman convinces him there’s no light at the end of the tunnel, so he opts to leave the Rebellion altogether in order to settle down with Bix. And while we know he’ll eventually become the kind of person who’ll sacrifice anything for freedom, right now, it’s Bix’s sacrifice that matters most. She knows full well that Cassian won’t fully give himself over to the cause as long as they’re together. So, she makes the heartbreaking decision to leave him in the dead of night, forcing him to throw himself back into the Rebellion’s slow but steady progression as a paramilitary outfit facing down an impossible enemy. Via a video message she leaves behind, she promises him they’ll reunite once the war is won, but this is another instance of foreknowledge enhancing the drama. That we know Cassian’s ultimate fate in Rogue One further twists the knife. Throughout the Star Wars saga, the Jedi are blessed with foresight, but it becomes a curse when granted to the audience.

By touching on the spiritual, supernatural elements of the franchise, Andor’s latest episodes gesture towards abstraction without losing sight of the show’s tangible, material politics, and the emotions at their core. Chapter three not only probes the ideas of purpose and destiny, but questions whether these things can be found in the dark—and be forced to take shape—all while the Star Wars we know and recognize re-materializes before our very eyes, and is re-forged even stronger.