A decent rubric for knowing when a TV show has become part of the zeitgeist is when people feel the need to publicly comment on the fact they don’t like it. No one, that I recall, has ever told me they don’t watch Emmerdale. This month, though, I have encountered several people announcing they didn’t enjoy Andor, the Star Wars spin off whose second and final season just finished dropping on Disney+.
Despite being a career nerd, I’ve never quite clicked with Star Wars, and have always suspected that you need to have seen it in a cinema aged eight to truly love it. Andor, though, has grabbed me like little else. I obsessively text friends memes about it. I seek out podcasts about it. Then every few hours I remember something clever or notice something new, and text the same friends all over again: it occupies my brain like the Galactic Empire occupies Ghorman. Against those of us who’d say it’s not merely the best Star Wars, but one of the best TV shows of all time, though, there are those who say it is a pale comparison to the thrill provided by Star Wars to an eight-year-old.
I can’t, in all honesty, tell them that they’re wrong: if the things you want out of Star Wars are droids and space wizards, then here you’re largely out of luck. Andor instead shows us the people who make up the backdrop to the rest of the franchise: farmers and miners and hotel receptionists; the imperial security forces plotting oppression, and the political comms consultants spinning their crimes.
The result is a story that seems to be about a galaxy far, far away, but is actually about what it’s like to live under authoritarianism – to survive, to rebel, to collaborate. There is an evil empire, working on a weapon that (spoilers if you’re going to the cinema in 1977) can destroy a planet. But the people working within it mostly aren’t inhuman monsters with magical powers: they’re nervous soldiers hiding behind their uniforms because they’re scared of that angry crowd, smugly paternalistic colonial governors, bureaucrats just trying to survive their next meeting.
If Andor’s empire is not all cardboard villains, neither are the rebels all straightforward heroes. Some are motivated by greed or opportunism; others are so useless we see them do nothing but fight other rebels. The most terrifying character in the show, a man willing to use and sacrifice others with abandon, is ostensibly fighting against the dark side. Just as the show’s portrayal of oppressive regimes draws from the histories of European imperialism, its portrayal of the rebels draws on existing insurgencies. One scene was inspired by the Wannsee Conference; the funeral parade that ended the first season was based on those arranged by the IRA.
Star Wars invokes the standard storytelling kit, where the action unfolds through the life of a so-called chosen one, a kid whose destiny it is to change the galaxy no matter that he seems like a nobody otherwise. There’s comfort in imagining yourself taking on that role. But even the would-be lead ends up making contributions to universe that are vital and quickly forgotten. Andor is not a hero’s journey. It has perhaps half a dozen protagonists, most of whom don’t get their names in the title. None of this matters: the thing that brings down empires is not the actions of great men, but the tides of structural forces, so Andor argues. Or, more prosaically: real history doesn’t work like the movies.
[See more: Meet Britain’s Joe Rogan]
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