this post was submitted on 20 Aug 2026
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The Empire isn’t or wasn’t “really” anything at all. It’s fucking fictitious.
I know lots of people say Andor is some sort of great political thriller and very deep and super thoughtful, but I just can’t get past the fact that it’s a Star Wars spin-off. The leader of this banality-of-evil fascist state is a cackling cartoon wizard.
Is that really the most unrealistic part of the empire?
The fact that the empire isnt really anything is Andors strength. It can, for instance, demonstrate that colonialism and fascism are two facets of the same thing by having them occur simultaneously in different places. It can have characters speak about fascism writ large without getting bogged down on the specific cultural circumstances in which one instance of it arose because the empire is a vague stand-in for all fascism. It functions like all fantasy-as-allegory, by stripping things away.
Yes, we all enjoy a good science fiction allegory story. Requiring that it must be a part of a recognisable brand family in a corporate portfolio is the shitty part. Andor had no business being a Star Wars story, but if it weren’t then Disney would have never funded its production. That fucking sucks.
I have no disagreement with that position and see where you're coming from, but i would argue that it wasn't at any point made worse by being a Star Wars spinoff, that it in fact avoided all potential ways being a Star Wars spinoff could have sloppified it and that it actively made the franchise less shit by countering the great man heroism of the orginal trilogy and showing that the rebellion wouldn't have achieved anything without collective action.
Sure, it would have worked just as well as a standalone story about space fascism. But it was nice to see a Star Wars spinoff without a single lightsaber in it. It demonstrates perfectly what franchised media normally does wrong by just not making these mistakes, and there's a certain merit in offering that kind of contrast.
I haven't watched andor yet but tbh Star Wars is my favourite slop. I love the old legends stuff especially. It's a definite guilty pleasure, but it's both nostalgic and extremely fun.
I agree but also I get to point out Andor is based on Stalin and libs hate that
As RLM says, "I don't even know what a Star Wars is anymore."
I liked it a lot more because I don't like Star Wars. Notice anything Force-related is conspicuously missing. It's for better that it doesn't try to tie into the Canon™ except for maybe the island prisons making parts for Death Star and obviously Kassian himself being in Rogue One.
There's a little bit near the very end when there's some "feeling of destiny" stuff around Andor. But ya, that's about it.
Oracle when she sees me take a piss without wetting the seat: Son you are force attuned
One thing I liked about Andor is it fleshed the Empire out. Yes in the original series they are just cartoon villains with a Nazi coat of paint. Andor got into the details of how the Empire is exploiting and oppressing people. Cassian is born on a planet that was strip mined by the Empire, he grew up on Ferrix, a planet of ship breakers who are under the authority of a private corporation who the Empire has licensed regional power to, his first mission is to a planet where the Empire is driving indigenous nomadic people into urban manufacturing centers, he helps the resistance on a middle-income planet who the Empire is manufacturing justification for an intervention in because they need to mine a resource that they know will fuck up their environment.
All of this is being under the guise of an "energy program" that's actually just a massive WMD development program (granted the WMD in question is the Death Star which is kind of a goofy concept scifi wise). Andor show the Empire is a extractive colonialist power harvesting resources to develop their military industrial complex.
I'm not saying this just to do the nerd correction. It highlights the continuity between the Republic and the Empire, and how fascism is colonialism turned inward.
They don't even shy away from pointing out that the rebellion was taking the form of the Republic at the end. The more radical revolutionaries all die and the liberal reformers take control
Despite how fucking bad the sequels are, it's amazing to know that the fascism returns because the liberals did nothing useful.
Somehow, fascism returned.
Avoiding the censors but for the IP slop era.