‘Andor’ Season 2 Finally Gives the Empire an Identity

Thanks to “Andor,” the Galactic Empire is no longer just an aesthetic or a force of expendable, faceless bad guys to stand behind a cackling evil sorcerer. It is not just a symbol of fascism anymore. It is a hulking, lumbering machine fueled by a puritanical belief in colonialism and military might, a tank that seeks to flatten and homogenize an entire galaxy and all of its people. In “Andor” Season 1, “Star Wars” fans got a sense through the show’s protagonist, fledgling rebel Cassian Andor (Diego Luna), of what it would actually feel like to live within the grip of a fascistic empire from which there is no escape.

In “Andor” Season 2, which premiered its first three episodes Tuesday on Disney+, the show’s good work continues. The once formless, broadly drawn Empire comes into full focus and shape. The “Andor” Season 2 premiere, penned by series creator Tony Gilroy, reintroduces Death Star architect and overseer Orson Krennic (Ben Mendelsohn) as he briefs a room of trusted Imperial officials, including Dedra Meero (Denise Gough), on the Empire’s interest in Ghorman, a planet that houses an inordinate amount of a mineral the Empire needs to coat its planet-killing weapon’s reactor lenses.

Krennic notes that mining as much of the mineral from Ghorman as the Empire needs would leave the planet unstable and inhospitable to its native population. “The suppression of Ghorman is not a decision to be taken lightly,” he claims, despite having called Dedra, her ISB supervisor Major Partagaz (Anton Lesser) and others together to prepare an Imperial campaign to not only strip Ghorman and displace its people but also ensure that the rest of the galaxy does not care. These strategies include a propaganda campaign to turn everyone against Ghorman’s artisan natives, and a plan pitched by Dedra to use an orchestrated act of rebel insurrection as an excuse for the Empire to seize full military control of the planet. This meeting happens in, of all places, a boardroom.

Across the first 12 episodes of “Andor,” viewers watched the Empire overtake Ferrix and restrict its people’s freedom to adhere to their own traditions, having already done something similar on the planet of Aldhani. Now, in “Andor” Season 2, it plans to disrupt a region and permanently displace its people solely so that it can mine the planet for its resources. To do that, it intends to use a smear campaign mischaracterizing Ghorman’s natives as arrogant people who look down on the rest of the galaxy and believe they do not have to play by the same rules. “Hasn’t there always been something slightly arrogant about the Ghor?” one of two messengers from the Empire’s Ministry of Enlightenment asks in the “Andor” Season 2 premiere. “With the right ideas planted in the right market in the right sequence, we can now weaponize this galactic opinion.”

“We love the spiders. It’s an image we can build on — aggressive, unpleasant, keeping to themselves,” the other Ministry employee remarks of Ghorman’s one-of-a-kind spiders, whose webs are used in the Ghor’s signature, high-end clothes and fabrics. “Is it just a coincidence that the Ghorman personality seems so in tune with these creatures?” The real-world historical parallels remain unspoken but loud. The Empire’s intent to use the Ghor’s reputation as skilled tailors and seamstresses against them and draw lines between them and inhuman creatures calls to mind Nazi Germany’s villainization of the Jewish people — a connection that is reinforced by the Empire’s already Nazi-like uniforms. 

The Nazis were neither the first nor the last totalitarian government to specifically villainize one demographic in its messaging, though. That has been a favorite trick of fascists for centuries — one we continue to witness employed to this day — and there is something startling and haunting about how coldly Dedra and her fellow Imperials concoct their own version of it. This microscopic, minutiae-driven approach to storytelling is one Tony Gilroy has employed throughout his career. (Who could forget the most unnerving scene in his 2007 masterpiece “Michael Clayton,” in which Gilroy takes viewers step-by-step through a corporate-mandated assassination that is carried out with terrifying levels of both indifference and professionalism.) To see him apply the same treatment to “Star Wars” is nonetheless astonishing and chilling.

“Andor” provides a close-up look at the Empire — a comprehensive view of the gears, tactics and tricks that keep the Imperial machine running and in power. It has, consequently, provided viewers with a better understanding of what it felt like to live in “Star Wars'” galaxy far, far away in the 19 years between “Revenge of the Sith” and “A New Hope.” Even more importantly (and impressively), the series continues to offer a portrait of fascism that feels both timeless and strikingly relevant, particularly right now.

“Andor” has given the once amorphous, generically bad Empire a clear identity and face. It is Gough’s Dedra, so desperate to stamp out all rebellion that her quest to hoard as much power and control as possible has seemingly sapped all the color from her skin. It is the lecherous, lowly Imperial census taker who offers Bix (Adria Arjona) safety only in exchange for sex. The Empire has become, in other words, something we can recognize. It is no longer just an inconceivably all-powerful force of destruction.

The Empire is a fascist regime that now feels rooted in our own history and world, and not just aesthetically but ideologically. “Andor” has made it more human and, therefore, scarier than it ever was before.

New episodes of “Andor” Season 2 premiere Tuesdays on Disney+.

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