Andor’s Depiction of the Rise of Fascism: Not Predictive But Reflective

If watching the new season of Andor makes you think of America’s current lurch toward fascism, that’s likely not a coincidence. In fact, it’s arguably the point of Star Wars in the first place. Throughout the franchise’s 47-year history, the Empire has served as a stand-in for everything from the United States during the Vietnam War to ancient Rome in the age of Julius Caesar. But while the Empire may be infinitely adaptable as a metaphor for fascism, Andor notably seems to represent the first time since Disney purchased Lucasfilm for $4 billion that this metaphor is being pointed back at the U.S. . . . Andor’s first season may have laid the groundwork with careful character development and world-building, but Season 2 makes good on that promise to deliver something painfully relevant at a time when many Americans are reckoning with the fact that the democracy we once thought was inextinguishable is seemingly crumbling right in front of us.

– Jake Kleinman
Excerpted from “Star Wars’ Andor Season 2
Depicts the Banality of American Fascism”
Wired
April 23, 2025

Every Wednesday night for the last three weeks I’ve been getting together with my friend and downstairs neighbor Joseph to watch the latest batch of three episodes of Andor season 2. Streaming on the Disney+ platform, Andor is a prequel to the 2016 film Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, which in turn serves as a prequel to Star Wars: A New Hope (1977).

Since Andor’s first season in 2022 I can think of no any other TV series that so powerfully captures the political zeitgeist we’re living through, one dominated by the rise of fascism in the U.S. And to be clear, Andor is not predicting this tragic turn of events; rather, as Melanie McFarland accurately observes, it is powerfully reflecting it.

The following scene in particular (artfully woven-together by YouTuber SWFT with previous scenes, including those of the Ghorman Massacre) compellingly demonstrates this.

In this scene, Senator Mon Mothma (played by Genevieve O’Reilly) addresses the Galactic Senate and, risking everything, including her life, declares that Emperor Palpatine is the “monster” responsible for the Ghorman Massacre and the imperial propaganda (and thus the “death of truth”) surrounding it.






Following is a sampling of what’s being said online about this scene and other events and characters in episodes 7-9 of Andor season 2.

It’s impossible to overstate what Andor accomplished with its [third story arc of season 2]. The Ghorman Massacre is among the very best stories ever filmed, period. And yet, somehow, the show made the political fallout about what happened on Ghorman just as moving and powerful as the tragedy itself. Mon Mothma’s explosive Senate speech in episode 9 (“Welcome to the Rebellion”) is a tense, emotional, pulsating hour of TV full of danger, fear, and heroism. And at the center of that incredible Andor episode was Genevieve O’Reilly’s absolutely stunning performance.

While O’Reilly has played the role in other Star Wars projects, her performance as Mon Mothma on Andor is among the best I have ever seen from any actor in any medium. That’s what made her Senate speech even more breathtaking. It was the culmination of everything the character has put into her efforts to save the galaxy, and it was the culmination of everything O’Reilly has put into playing her on Andor and across the Star Wars universe.

– Michael Walsh
Excerpted from “Andor’s Genevieve O’Reilly
on Mon Mothma’s Big Senate Speech and
Being Part of Something Special”
Nerdist
May 8, 2025

How do you do something that should be impossible and turn your own war crimes into a political victory? How do you sell a massacre? What’s the key to getting the public to celebrate an atrocity? You do what the Empire did in Andor‘s second seasonOpens in a new tab and get the media to do it for you. A big reason the show’s stunning third arc felt so painfully real is the Empire knew an uncritical media is the greatest weapon against truth itself.

The annihilation of Ghorman and its people on Andor is among the best, most horrifying sequences ever filmed. But it wasn’t just stellar writing, performances, and production that made that possible. The brutality and evil of the Empire’s genocide worked on such a visceral level because of how they pulled it off. That years long plan was only possible because the media made it possible.

Commander Orson Krennic (Ben Mendelsohn) and his top-secret team of monsters knew the Empire couldn’t just destroy a planet as prestigious, powerful, and politically connected as Ghorman without anyone noticing or responding. From the first day those Imperial officers begun planning the planet’s extermination they knew the value of propaganda. They wouldn’t be able to make the public accept an unimaginable horror. They had to make the public believe the opposite was true, that fiction was fact, that oppression was liberation. And no entity is better at turning even the most heinous and obvious lies into accepted wisdom than a credulous journalist unwilling to question authority. . . . Most chilling was that the media went out to the streets of Ghorman and spoke the exact same words as the Empire. Those journalists delivered verbatim, to everyone, Major Partagaz’s line about the “inexplicable resistance to imperial norms” supposedly responsible for Ghorman’s problems.

Those reporters had no interest in the truth, only in the story. And the easiest, most sensational story was the one the Empire sold them. It manipulated the media into selling a lie, but that was only possible because the media allowed it to happen. They allowed themselves to become tools of oppression.

– Michael Walsh
Excerpted from “Andor Captures How Evil Empires
Use the Media to Sell Oppression”
Nerdist
May 6, 2025

In the Ghorman arc, Diego Luna’s Cassian Andor primarily serves as a witness. He’s at the scene of the massacre that occurs not as part of the cause, but to satisfy a vendetta that the violence’s outbreak delays. Not long after Cassian escapes, he’s rushed to Coruscant to chaperone Mon Mothma (Genevieve O’Reilly) to her destiny as the Rebel Alliance’s leader on Yavin. The Galactic Senate has obeyed in advance, and its politicians make a show of supporting Palpatine’s lies about Ghorman. So Mon knows that she must summon the nerve to speak out against the Ghorman genocide, and doing so will mark the end of the life she knows.

. . . “Of all the things at risk, the loss of an objective reality is perhaps the most dangerous,” Mon says as her fellow legislators boo her. “The death of truth is the ultimate victory of evil. When truth leaves us, when we let it slip away, when it is ripped from our hands, we become vulnerable to the appetite of whatever monster screams the loudest.” Then she calls the monster, Emperor Palpatine, by name as the Empire cuts off the Senate’s version of a C-SPAN feed, and Cassian swoops in to help her run for her life.

– Melanie McFarland
Excerpted from “The Path to the Death Star
Is Paved With Lies: On Andor, as on Earth,
Disinformation Defeats Truth”
Salon
May 7, 2025

In the same way that 2016’s Rogue One: A Star Wars Story arrived in theaters just as the nation officially embraced the Dark Side, the first season of Andor debuted just in time to confirm that America was well on its way to becoming an autocracy. Even back then, its writers didn’t have to consult dead tree pulp to recognize the ways the right-wing media has warped so many people’s views to a degree that the morally indefensible is acceptable.

. . . Season 2’s disinformation storyline isn’t predictive but reflective. . . . Oddly, some people still stop short of characterizing Andor as commentary on fascism, although parallels between the Empire and Adolf Hitler’s Third Reich abound. They always have. (Those white armored guys who can’t shoot straight aren’t called stormtroopers coincidentally.) Maybe this was a matter of discomfort with how similar America’s corporatized society looks to that of the Galactic Republic.

– Melanie McFarland
Excerpted from “The Path to the Death Star
Is Paved With Lies: On Andor, as on Earth,
Disinformation Defeats Truth”
Salon
May 7, 2025

In the new and final season of Andor, an occupied civilian population is massacred; their cries for help ignored by the Empire-run media, which instead paint the victims as terrorist threats to public safety. Meanwhile, the politicians who have enough backbone to speak out, and use the word “genocide” to describe these aggressions, are met with violent suppression.

Andor goes there. And when it does, Star Wars fans will be forced to reckon with how this story isn’t about what happens “a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away.” It’s about what’s unfolding right now in Gaza.

Sure, we’re talking about a prequel to a prequel to the most popular escapist fantasy of the past half-century. So not exactly the kind of show you turn on expecting an urgent and furious indictment of the most contentious conflict of our time, where Israel has reportedly killed more than 60,000 Palestinians while those in the U.S. protesting the continued violence, such as Mahmoud Khalil and Mohsen Mahdawi, face deportation.

. . . But Star Wars has always been political. [Filmmaker] George Lucas spoke about the original 1977 movie, in which rebels battle an authoritarian empire, as modelled off the Vietcong standing firm against American imperialism. Even Lucas’s much maligned prequels – their confounding plot about intense trade embargoes now seeming prophetic in light of Trump’s tariffs – dramatized how fascism can be borne out of democracy. Revenge of the Sith (2005) even took swipes at George W Bush’s “war on terror,” with the movie’s young Darth Vader, played by Hayden Christensen, paraphrasing the then U.S. president’s “you are either with us, or against us” remarks.

Andor, the best thing to happen to Star Wars since The Empire Strikes Back (1980), is far more rigorous, intense and steeped in today’s language around occupation and self-determination – even if it can’t directly name the wars raging in our galaxy.

– Radheyan Simonpillai
Excerpted from “In Andor, the Real World
Political Parallels Are Impossible to Ignore”
The Guardian
April 24, 2025

Okay, so this is the greatest TV show ever written.

Not only does it far exceed anything which has come previously in the Star Wars universe, it also elevates them with it. Bringing new meaning to old content. Ultimately making them far better than they originally were. I don’t know of any other show which has achieved this? It’s incredible.

Also, the timing of it! It mirrors the real world rise of fascism. The overwhelming terror of creeping authoritarianism is horrifying to watch. But each small victory makes you erupt with joy. Seeing small groups of rebels gradually aligning to later defeat such a huge enemy provides some real world faith in the goodness of humanity.

It’s the maximum level of enjoyment from TV. The acting is phenomenal and the monologues are legendary! Every scene has meaning.

It’s just perfection

– Chris James
via social media
May 8, 2025

Dedra Meero (Denise Gough) and Syril Karn (Kyle Soller) are not monsters. Their minds have been twisted by the Empire since childhood. They grew both victims and perpetrators. They may have begun to appreciate each other though they know nothing about love (I think they simply found a mirror in each other), and the direct orders of their superiors poisoned any possibility. Incredibly sad story, but also very touching. This is why most of us cannot help but feel compassion for them, even though their actions are unequivocally bad.

Dedra had the Empire as her only parent, and Syril’s father left him with a toxic mother. It really tells us parental love is the best barrier against fascism. If you don’t have this abandon anxiety you won't need to control everything even other people up to hurting them.

And always remember before judging people to judge the system they are closed in.

I can't wait to see what happens to her in the last episodes.

– Thibaut Marlard
via social media
May 9, 2025

So this week we are learning that yes, many of the characters finally get to meet the others who have been such a massive part of the series, but who, until now, hadn’t even been aware of the other.

In the midst of the Ghorman massacre, with death all around them, Cassian takes aim at Dedra, the mission he was sent to the planet to accomplish. Without knowing this, Syril [right], who has so far managed to escape harm, spots Cassian, the man he has hated for so long and who he blames squarely for his fall from grace, (but who also lead to him meeting Dedra, so silver lining there, eh?).

Taking on Cassian, Syril actually saves Dedra’s life, even if he doesn’t know it, for the second time. He was her guardian angel on Ferrix, and now on Ghorman. And when Syril fights, he goes in full. No holds barred, this is pure hatred for someone he hates to his very core, and that rage powers him through what you may have expected to be a very one sided fight. But we’ve already seen the ferocity in Syril this episode when he confronted Dedra, and attacked her, and now he feels used, abused and here was someone who he can vent his full fury on.

The scene was excellently staged and frankly both actors should be credited with something that clearly wasn’t easy. You knew the result was never in much doubt, after all, we know Cassian survives, but that Syril came so close to killing his nemesis was very poignant. The moment when Cassian asks him who he is [left], clearly stops Syril in his tracks. He has lived and breathed a life of hate for Cassian Andor, and yet the man clearly hasn’t a clue who he was.

You’d think on other series they might have given Syril a moment to tell Cassian who he was, another small speech before his ultimate end, just before he shoots him, but Andor isn’t that sort of series. Unseen, the elderly Ghorman who so trusted Syril finally has his revenge, saving the life of the man who a year ago told him his plans at taking on the Empire were folly.

And so the scene ends, Cassian no wiser at who his would be assassin was, and Dedra left alive, but once again alone, saved by Syril. Again, another part of an extraordinary episode. Faultless.

– Steven Kerfoot
via social media
May 8, 2025

In many ways we all become people we didn’t plan to.

Not sure if it’s been mentioned, but it’s quite interesting that the person to take out Syril was Carro Rylanz (Richard Sammel), leader of the Ghorman rebellion.

Among the Ghorman rebels, Carro was the only voice advocating for non-violent, peaceful protest. Yet, here we find the most outspoken pacifist saving Cassian using the very means he objects to.

These layers of development and the circumstances that drive those characters to do things or become people they simply did not plan for are executed with such an astonishing efficiency of story-telling it’s mind-boggling. Andor has spoiled us all.

– Marcel Chenier
via social media
May 9, 2025

Eedy Karn (Kathryn Hunter) just turned into the Empire’s biggest tool for its anti-Ghorman propaganda. She’s going to go on every news channel crying about how the Ghor killed her son Syril. About how he was a good kid, loyal to the Empire, had a promising future. And the Empire will play that on repeat all over the HoloNet.

It’s not like she doesn’t already hate the Ghor. Eedy is a reminder of how so many people in real life can be conditioned by the media to hate a demographic.

– Sinan Sbahi
via social media
May 9, 2025

The way that Bix’s goodbye completely re-contextualizes Cassian in Rogue One, while also making his sacrifice even more powerful, was incredibly well-done, and something that I did not expect at all (he’s even wearing the exact same shirt that he dies in during this scene). We now know that his readiness to follow orders, his drive, and willingness to do whatever it costs to win are all driven by his love for Bix (Adria Arjona) and the hope of reuniting with her. And while I’'m so glad that Bix survives (I assume), it also makes it so tragic, with her saying that she’ll find Cassian, just like he told her at the end of Season 1, a promise that we as an audience know will never become a reality. Rebellions are built on hope, yes, but Andor is masterfully showing us that love is a crucial part of that equation as well.

– Bo-Katan-Core
via social media
May 10, 2025

Andor promises to save its most brutal action for the final three episodes, as Emperor Palpatine orders the hunting-down and killing of all suspected sympathizers to the growing Rebellion. Episodes 10, 11, and 12 [released tomorrow] have also been edited to be released as a film next year [in unison with the 10th anniversary re-release of Rogue One].

– Dan Webster
via social media
May 11, 2025

See also the following Wild Reed posts:

ANDOR
• The Revolution Will Be Televised
• Andor: The Star Wars Franchise’s “First Piece of Universally Excellent Television”
• The Brilliance of Andor
• Inauguration Day Thoughts
• How Empires Are Built and Rebellions Are Born
• Andor Season One Recap
• The Reckoning Is Here

THE RISE OF FASCISM IN THE U.S.
• Neoliberalism vs Neofascism: Cornel West on the State of U.S. Politics
• Jeff Sharlet on the Fascist Ideology of Donald Trump and Marjorie Taylor Greene
• Chauncey Devega on the Ongoing Danger of the Trump Cult
• Historian Nancy MacLean: The Threat to American Democracy Is at “Red-Alert”
• Chris Hedges on the End of the American Empire
• Marisa Kabas: “We’re Witnessing a Coup By an Unelected Billionaire Propped Up By a Felonious President”
• Timothy Snyder on Resisting the Oligarchs’ “Logic of Destruction”
• “This Is Essentially Viktor Orbán’s Playbook”
• “An Extremely Clever Ruse” by and for the Rich: Owen Jones on Elon Musk’s Coup
• Ralph Nader: “We’re Heading Into the Most Serious Crisis in American History. There’s No Comparison”
• Why the Democratic Party Is Not Going to Save Us From Fascism
• “This Is How Democracy Unravels”
• James Greenberg on Trumpism: “The Tactics Are Unmistakable”

RESISTING FASCISM IN THE U.S.
• “To Be a Rib in This Body of Our Country”
• “It Is Our Responsibility to Make a Third Party Viable”
• “The Moment Is Ripe”: Butch Ware on Building a “True Oppositional Alternative” to the Duopoly
• Elise Labott on How Third Parties Can Revitalize Democracy
• An Opportunity for Organizing Against Duopoly


Related Off-site Links:
Andor: The Star Wars Show That Knows What Fascism Really Looks Like – Tyler Huckabee (Sojourners, May 6, 2025).
Andor Season 2 Declassified: Episodes 7-9 – Star Wars (May 6, 2025).
Andor Season 2 Declassified: Episodes 4-6 – Star Wars (April 29, 2025).
Andor Season 2 Declassified: Episodes 1-3 – Star Wars (April 22, 2025).
Andor Is Transcendent – Falcon Paladin (May 11, 2025).
The Ghorman Genocide’s Awful Truth: The Metal Doesn’t Matter – EckhartsLadder (May 12, 2025).
Why Andor Is the Star Wars Show for Grownups – Tracey Minkin (AARP, April 23, 2025).
Andor Season 2 Becomes the Most Critically Acclaimed Live-action Star Wars Project on Rotten Tomatoes Ever – Molly Edwards (Games Radar, April 23, 2025).
Review: Andor Season 2 Completes the Best Star Wars Story of the Disney Era – Alison Herman (Variety, April 21, 2025).
Andor Season 2 Review: A Star Wars Miracle, an Ode to Rebellion – Devindra Hardawar (Engadget, April 21, 2025).
Andor Season 2 Review: A Masterpiece, Some of the Best Star Wars Ever Made – Erik Kain (Forbes, April 21, 2025).
A Powerful Denouement: A Review of Andor Season 2 – Brynna Arens (Den of Geeks, April 21, 2025).
Andor Review: Season 2 Is a Thrilling, Urgent Tribute to the Rebellion’s Unsung Heroes – Ben Travers (IndieWire, April 21, 2025).
How Andor Adapts History Into Star Wars – Film Can’t Die (April 16, 2025).
Evil in Andor: The Banality of Evil – The Canvas (November 27, 2024).
Andor Season 2 Is About to Break Records – Nyft (November 23, 2024).
Andor’s Luthen Rael Is Basically the Rebellion’s Emperor Palpatine – Allen Xies (Generation Tech, November 22, 2024).
Andor Is a Message for the Future – Spaceman (November 21, 2024).
Diego Luna Says Andor Season 2 Turns Rogue One Into a “Different Film” – Dalton Ross (Entertainment Weekly, August 15, 2024).
The Poetry, Power, and Philosophy of Andor’s Monologues – Master Samwise (February 21, 2023).
Why Is Andor’s Dialogue So Much Better? – The Writer’s Block (January 14, 2023).
Andor Is Star Wars Perfection – Caprisanh (January 6, 2023).
How Andor Became My Favorite Star Wars Show – A Short Ginger (January 2, 2023).
Just Go Watch Andor – CameroN xM (December 28, 2022).
Andor: A Marxist Allegory Brought to You by Disney – Damien Walter (Science Fiction with Damien Walter, December 8, 2022).
Is Andor Actually THAT Good? (Yes, and Here’s Why) – Ben Arndt (A.M. Cinematics, November 28, 2022).
Why Andor Boldly Goes the Distance While Most High Profile Star Wars Adaptations Fell Short – Melanie McFarland (Salon, November 25, 2022).
Why Andor Is So Important for Star Wars – Kirk Mihelakos (Designed by Kirk, November 23, 2022).
Andor Is the Best Star Wars Has Been in 40 Years – Cleaver Rebooted (November 23, 2022).
Why Andor Feels So Real – Thomas Flight (November 23, 2022).