Observe: This text incorporates spoilers for Andor, particularly Episode 10.
It’s the tail finish of the 12 months of Our Lord 2022, and Disney continues to be producing new Star Wars materials. If you happen to’re like my household—lifelong followers of Star Wars, however restricted in your TV-watching time—you will have began choosing by way of which reveals you truly wish to watch. We’ve began and stopped a number of, however devoted ourselves to these that are glorious in each writing and manufacturing worth.
This fall’s Andor, which tells the backstory of Rogue One’s character Cassian Andor, is value each minute. It’s the whole lot a Star Wars prequel needs to be, and even higher, it’s—like Rogue One—a wonderful story to interact with through the season of Introduction.
Andor tells the origin story of Cassian Andor (Diego Luna), the eventual Insurgent Alliance spy who will give his life alongside Jyn Erso (Felicity Jones) and others to ship essential details about the superweapon Dying Star to the Insurgent Alliance in Rogue One. You may watch this present with no prior information of Star Wars, the character Cassian Andor, or Rogue One and nonetheless discover it glorious, entertaining, and thought-provoking. Nonetheless, if you happen to do go into Andor with information of all of the supply materials, you might be in for an actual deal with.
An ideal prequel has to suit seamlessly into the world it belongs to whereas telling a narrative that’s model new. Andor achieves each this stuff. It tells a recent story whereas upholding the ethos and thematic parts of not simply Rogue One, but in addition of the unique Star Wars trilogy—and even the prequel trilogy. As I discussed again in 2017 for Christ and Pop Tradition after I wrote about Rogue One being an Advent Story, the first theme of the Insurgent Alliance in Star Wars is hope. Andor maintains this theme, even in the dead of night—particularly in the dead of night. Andor is in some ways a mirror story to the unique trilogy—or perhaps I ought to say that it joins Rogue One in being a mirror story. It reveals what occurs in the dead of night to carry in regards to the mild. It reveals the price of freedom and victory.
There’s no Luke Skywalker with out Cassian Andor—no joyous flip of victory for the Riot (towards all odds!) with out the work of a whole lot of shadow operatives who make the final word sacrifice.
My household watches Rogue One yearly throughout Introduction—it’s a film to observe in the dead of night, full of hope, longing, disappointment combined with pleasure. Full of anticipation of the defeat of evil, a joyous decision that nobody on the display screen goes to see—that nobody has any assurance goes to occur, apart from the religion that they’ve fulfilled their one good half in a a lot greater struggle towards evil.
Andor captures this identical sense by anticipating Cassian’s final sacrifice and establishing the Riot itself within the shadow of the Empire. Star Wars episodes 4-6 are about heroes like Luke and Leia and Han—grand house adventures with cute Ewoks and thrilling lightsaber battles and massive celebrations the place everybody lives fortunately ever after. And that’s the hope and celebration, that’s the decision an incredible story like Star Wars wants!
However there’s no Luke Skywalker with out Cassian Andor—no joyous flip of victory for the Riot (towards all odds!) with out the work of a whole lot of shadow operatives who make the final word sacrifice. Not for themselves, however for his or her youngsters. And their youngsters’s youngsters. Andor depicts how determined, harmful, and missing in glory the Insurgent life actually is.
Episode 10 of Andor, titled “One Means Out,” is the singular episode that sums up Cassian’s greater story, and the message of the present itself. In it, we discover Cassian unjustly imprisoned by the Empire, pressured to work every single day or die. He and his shift chief, Kino Loy (Andy Serkis), have simply discovered that nobody ever will get launched on the finish of their sentences—they solely get recycled again into one other degree of the jail. The revelation convinces Kino to hitch Cassian in main the opposite inmates in a determined jail break.
Kino should not solely be part of Cassian, although; because the chief and elder voice within the ward, Kino should actively lead the revolt. Kino does so, however by way of a mixture of hope and ache. He is aware of he can’t survive the run to freedom, however he leads in hope for others.
Cassian and his fellow inmates are imprisoned in a microcosm of the world they inhabit on the skin, trapped by the Empire in an unjust system of perpetual servitude the place the one manner out is to stand up, insurgent, and struggle again. The jail is only a image of the Empire—a degree established when the digital camera pans as much as reveal that the constructing is formed just like the insignia of the Empire. And Kino is a precursor of Andor himself—an individual who should reluctantly co-lead and encourage salvation for a lot of, however come up wanting saving himself. As such, the episode foreshadows the occasions of Rogue One.
Within the jail, there may be a method out—up and over the sting of the constructing into the water beneath, the place they may be capable to swim to security, in the event that they survive the revolt. Because the prisoners flock to the highest of the jail to flee, Kino leads them in a chant: “A method out!” However once they get to the second of salvation and Cassian urges him to leap, Kino hangs again. “I can’t swim,” he says. “I can’t swim.”
A method out. The episode says, bear in mind, the Empire has already demanded your life, so declare your freedom and provides it as a substitute to the Riot. However freedom doesn’t at all times imply that you just get to see the dawn your self.
The episode is tagged with a speech made by a personality named Luthen (Stellan Skarsgård), the Insurgent chief and spy liable for recruiting Cassian. On this remaining scene, Luthen should confront a younger Insurgent agent who needs to interrupt the vow he made, to get out of the Alliance as a result of it’s getting too exhausting for him. Luthen talks to the younger man from the shadows, the scene minimize and lit to make his define extra harking back to Darth Vader than any heroic determine—not as a result of he’s evil however to remind the viewer of the price of freedom, that there’s “a method out” for these operatives. Luthen tells the younger man that he’s sacrificed the whole lot for the Riot. He says, “I burn my life to make a dawn that I do know I’ll by no means see.” Which is true, in fact. Luthen presumably—like Cassian, like Jyn Erso and all of the characters from Rogue One—dies with out fanfare, none of them ever attending to see the success of their hope. “A method out” for them signifies that others may dwell free.
Who’s Cassian Andor? Or Luthen for that matter? They’re nobody; there’s no glory in being a spy. They don’t get to be Luke, Leia, or Han. However Andor-as-Introduction-story (like Rogue One) reminds us that within the presence of the lowly, the disenfranchised, and the unknown is the true breath of freedom. There “all oppression shall stop.” Christ wasn’t incarnated within the womb of a princess—he wasn’t born into the household of the Aristocracy or wealth. No one knew who Mary and Joseph had been; no person was in search of the chains of sin and dying to interrupt throughout a carpenter’s again. Introduction isn’t about gallantry and pageantry and wild celebrations; it’s about whispered hope and lighting candles in the dead of night, trying again on guarantees made and searching ahead with expectation that Christ will come once more.
There at the moment are a variety of Star Wars reveals to select from, and (by all means) you don’t have to observe all of them. However if you’ve cherished Star Wars since your youth, there’s one thing particular in discovering there are nonetheless new tales to be instructed throughout the universe which are greater than recycled nostalgia—which are poetic in artistry and honoring of the supply materials. I’d encourage you to create space to observe Andor, if you happen to haven’t already, after which to observe or rewatch Rogue One. If for no different motive than the great story instructed in Episode 10, for Luthen’s “dawn [he knows he’ll] by no means see.” For Kino Loy’s painful “I can’t swim.” For “A method out” and the story of a world aching with eager for a freedom, a salvation, that’s coming.
