Yet Another Tribute to Andor
This is my tribute to Andor. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
As I write this, over a week has passed since the final three episodes of Andor aired. The praise for the show has been nearly universal—and well-deserved. A handful of monologues alone—from Karis Nemik, Luthen Rael, Saw Gerrera, and Mon Mothma—could be some of the best-written and best-delivered lines ever aired. But to figure out why this show worked so well across numerous dimensions—sci-fi, espionage, and politics—it took this brief video to find my answer.
About a minute into this interview with Anton Lesser (who plays Lio Partagaz), he relates a piece of advice that Tony Gilroy gave him: “Don’t think Star Wars, think John Le Carre.” For me, that single phrase doesn’t just explain the brilliance of Andor, but Rogue One and the Bourne movies as well.
John Le Carré was only the best novelist working in the espionage genre of all time. As a child raised on public television (including Masterpiece Theater), their adaptation of A Perfect Spy was my first exposure to serious espionage fiction. Most of the best spy stories ever put on screen—Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, The Constant Gardner, The Night Manager, A Most Wanted Man—are adaptations of his work.
Even as someone who was confident that the Bourne movies would be good (having read some of Robert Ludlum’s novels many years before they were adapted for the screen), it wasn’t until seeing this little interview that Gilroy’s aspirations became clear. With his work on Andor, he aspired to create a Le Carré-level espionage story within the Star Wars universe. In retrospect, Gilroy writing all of the Bourne movies explains how much more grounded they seem when compared to most other spy movies and shows.
When it comes to my fandoms, espionage is the second-oldest behind science fiction. Before Andor, there was a similarly-brilliant show which ran for just two seasons called Counterpart. Created by Justin Marks (who would go on to create the brilliant adaptation of Shogun), it’s a story set in parallel Earths created by a Cold War experiment in East Germany during the Cold War. Counterpart sadly did not get the third season I felt it desired, and in retrospect Andor definitely scratched the particular itch of Cold War Berlin-based espionage story.
Growing up in the Maryland suburbs of DC, politics was and is a long-term preoccupation of mine. NPR was always on the radio whenever my dad took my sister and I anywhere in the car. My first real job was as a tech intern for The Washington Post during the 1992 presidential campaign. Political dramas—both domestic and foreign (especially British ones) have always been interesting TV to me. The original House of Cards was the first for me, followed by The West Wing, and the American remake of House of Cards, whose writing alum Beau Willimon would go on to play a prominent role in some of the best writing in Andor. One of my social media mutuals succinctly described the greatness of the political aspects of Andor this way:
Dr. Foust reminded me of a few key elements of Andor with this comment. First, Hannah Arendt, the historian and philosopher who coined the phrase “the banality of evil” in writing about Adolf Eichmann’s trial for his role in planning and executing the Holocaust. The Imperial Security Bureau (ISB) is fictional, but they seem deliberately reminiscent of the Stasi and the Gestapo which preceded it. The characters who work for the ISB under Partagaz (Blevin, Meero) are ordinary people playing their parts as gears in the machinery of fascism. Second, Syril Karn, who graduates from failed corporate cop in season 1 to ISB spy and Dedra Meero’s love interest in season 2, is the first of numerous ISB agents to be used up and discarded by the machine they’ve been serving. Karn’s end is tragic, but it doesn’t make what he did to enable the Ghorman Massacre any less evil.
An underrated part of what makes Andor more than just entertaining is just how generous Tony Gilroy and the actors & creators of the show have been in talking about what underlies the writing and their performances in interviews. What Gilroy says specifically about fascism in Andor is very enlightening. He’s also explicit about the 1942 Wannsee conference (where Third Reich high command plotted the so-called Final Solution) as a reference for Krennic’s meeting with select ISB officers plotting the pretext to crush Ghorman to take a mineral necessary to power the Death Star. Particularly now when our own government is using its power to crush dissent in higher education, and to violate the rights of both immigrants and
elected officials with impunity, Andor uses the galaxy far, far away to speak very loudly to the present moment. Beyond the actual makers of the show, YouTubers like MaceAhWindu and Generation Tech have produced very thoughtful commentary on Syril Karn, Tay Kolma, Saw Gerrrera, and Lonni Jung.
Disney has submitted the 2nd season of Andor for Emmy consideration in numerous categories. Regardless of whether they win or not, they have made a truly astonishing creation: a prestige drama in the Star Wars universe. Andor is without doubt the finest show that Disney+ has ever made, and the very best Star Wars that isn’t The Empire Strikes Back or the original Star Wars. It turns Rogue One from an interesting, stand-alone anthology entry into a fitting conclusion of Cassian Andor’s story.