In Andor, Rebellions are Built on Hope

A worthy sci-fi successor to "The Expanse" comes to a satisfying, hopeful conclusion.

Photo by Agnieszka Stankiewicz on Unsplash

[WARNING: USE THE FORCE AND TRUST YOUR FEELINGS: THERE BE SPOILERS AHEAD.]

Two and a half years ago the hard-working staff here at Drezner’s World raved about the first season of Andor, describing it as “Star Wars for adults.” Earlier this month I raved about the first half of Andor’s second season, praising showrunner Tony Gilroy for “[having] taken the bare bones of the Galactic Empire stage of the Star Wars saga and made it come alive.”

Earlier this week the last batch of Andor episodes dropped on Disney+, and I felt a great disturbance in the Force, as if millions of viewers suddenly cried out to say, “we want more!” but were then suddenly silenced.

That is because the best Star Wars property in over forty years — yeah, I said it — has come to a graceful close. In a perfect world, Gilroy had five seasons of the show planned out. Given the massive scope and scale of the production, however, he acknowledged a few years ago that, “you just couldn’t possibly physically make five years of the show… I mean, Diego [Luna] would be, like, 65. I’d be in a nursing home.”

You can listen to Ana Marie Cox and I talk about those dimensions of Andor on Space The Nation. In those podcast episodes, as well as my previous posts about Andor, I noted Gilroy’s grounded take on the political economy of the Star Wars universe.¹ In this way, Andor was a natural successor to The Expanse, one of the best science fiction shows of this century.

What surprised me about Andor’s conclusion, however, was the way it echoed the ending of The Expanse. As I wrote about that series finale:

It is fitting that Naomi [Nagata] delivers the show’s elegy in the series finale, explaining: “The universe never tells us if we did right or wrong. It’s more important to try to help people than to know that you did. … Maybe one core thing you said haunts them forever. Maybe one moment of kindness gives them comfort or courage. Maybe you said the one thing they needed to hear. It doesn’t matter if you know. You just have to try.”

The show’s last episode ended not with a great victory over a Big Bad but with some sharp-elbowed bargaining about what to do in the messy aftermath of a conflict. Suspicion and distrust continue to fester, but the parties at the negotiating table manage to devise a tentative solution. It might work, but it might not — in the universe of “The Expanse,” the politics never go away.

“The Expanse” was never blind to despair or cruelty or malice. It simply posited that these are not valid reasons to give up hope or refuse to try.

Cassian Andor’s ending was baked in nearly a decade ago, because this show ends just before Rogue One begins. Despite that predetermined outcome, however, the show served up a hopeful ending. A montage of all the characters we care about shows the rebels surviving, adapting, and thriving. The head of the Imperial Security Bureau is brought low after listening to a samizdat manifesto that a character named Nemik drafted during the show’s first season. Here’s what Nemik says:

Like The Expanse, Andor was fully versed in all the ways that mankind can fall short of virtue — and nonetheless valorized the many different kinds of work that go into resisting autocracy. The show makes plain that resisting tyranny early is far more potent early than late. But resistance at every juncture is the point. As Bail Organa, reluctant rebel, acknowledges in the final episode, “if I die fighting the Empire I want to go down swinging.”

Andor earned its hopeful ending — and its lessons from a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away provided some useful guidance for the present day. That’s all one can ask for from great science fiction. And Andor belongs in that pantheon of sci-fi greats.

1. In my experience, very few Hollywood auteurs tell interviewers, “I’m just obsessed with economics.”