And we can talk about how the villains of the piece are, unambiguously, cops — not even stormtroopers or Imperial officers, but literal boys in blue. They trash homes, they bully civilians, they beat a female suspect, they shoot an unarmed man to death for failing to comply. Sure, they work for a corporation rather than “protecting and serving” on behalf of the people. What else is new?
The point I’m trying to make is this: When George Lucas envisioned the original Star Wars trilogy as a story of rebellion against an empire, he was thinking of Vietnam and the American war machine. But that hard-to-miss metaphor kind of slipped into subliminal range because the Imperials were hard to see as American analogues; their overall vibe owed too much to Nazi Germany (“stormtroopers,” for god’s sake) and, honestly, their awesome white armor was too cool-looking in a faceless sort of way.
Not so here. So far, Andor’s rebellion is one of normal people banding together to fight law enforcement. It’s shootouts with corporate security forces. It’s hidden nexuses of resistance to the everyday depredations of forces that seem too big to fight against, until someone does it. Success is not guaranteed, and will not entail a big award ceremony in a temple on Yavin IV. At best it might make some small part of the galaxy a bit more livable for the people in it, for a moment or too. Is that worth fighting for? Is it worth dying for? Is it worth killing for? The show, crafted so skillfully in so many ways by creator/writer/showrunner Tony Gilroy and director Toby Haynes, is on Disney+, so its radicalism only takes you so far, but still, it has its answer. What’s yours?
