Watching 'Andor' in 2025 Is Terrifying
Good job, America. You are officially the bad guys now.
I enjoyed Andor a lot more when fascism was a distant concept. It hits differently with news of, well, everything, going on in America today.
Part of what made Andor enjoyable was how it humanized villainy. There’s no nuance to Palpatine or even Darth Vader. They wear black. They kill people. There’s a lot of cackling. Star Wars is a simple morality tale. It’s meant for children, after all, and those of us who still identify there as.
In contrast, Andor offered a thrilling glimpse at the people behind the curtain. The Empire’s bureaucratic underbelly is no less evil than its geriatric headpiece, but the everyday familiarity of office work cast everything in a different light. Up close, fascism is millions of invisible cogs in a horrible machine, without which the atrocities literally cannot happen.
But even the good guys weren’t very good.
Cassian Andor—the hero for whom the show is named—straight up murders someone on his own team. Vel and Cinta want to kill Cassian because he knows too much about the fledgling Rebel Alliance. And Luthen, one head of the disjointed resistance, is strikingly similar to Palpatine, and not just in how they both hide their true nature behind practiced smiles and careful diplomacy. (The key difference: Luthen laments his lost humanity while Palpatine perhaps never had any.)
Fascism has been part of Star Wars’s DNA since 1977, but it was only with Andor that we got a true taste of what living under the Empire would be like. Newsflash: It’s fucking horrifying.
I wasn’t prepared for Star Wars to frighten me. But Andor strongly echoes what’s happening in America today.