A/V Just Announced 7 Years Ago: Andor!! It happened!!!

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Eh idk those SHOULD all be extremely different imo. Wanting a CIS-style confederation with a military is very different from wanting independence for your sector, which in turn is very different from wanting something like a Galactic revolt of the downtrodden. The scale of the Galaxy makes everything seem tiny, but think about the difference between, say, nationalists and international communists in the real world, and increase that scale and difference by like 10,000.

Even going purely by the question of "how do you divide up the Galaxy," in practice very different groups would rally behind different political arrangements and divisions. I would imagine more traditional local elites would be more likely to support independence for their sector (as in most nationalist movements), but more cosmopolitan elites and business interests would want to restore Galactic civilization, and traditionally repressed groups would want more of a thoroughgoing Galactic revolution. Again, imagine traditionalist religious Jacobites wanting to restore the King in Great Britain trying to ally with radical anti-clerical Jacobins wanting to bring about a strong secular unitary French nation-state trying to ally with 20th century communists aiming at global worker revolution trying to ally with business-elite moderate liberal American revolutionaries trying to ally with Alex-Jones-style conspiracy people.

I do kind of wish that we got more in the way of real ideologies in the GFFA, but I get that they want to shy away from making anything too real-world, and I think that's generally best. But they can at least suggest this sort of stuff, and that's clearly what they're trying to do.

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I'm surprised no one's mentioned George Lucas' THX-1138 in regards to the prison yet. It was one of the first things I thought of. It's obviously not quite the same, but yeah, it seems in part like a throwback to that or at least that era of sci-fi aesthetically.

 

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I totally forgot to mention, Mon Mothma and Perrin have been married since they were 15! They must be 25-30 years into their marriage.

Mon's daughter totally thinks she's having an affair.

 

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Luthen is a accelerationist.

He intuits that it's going to take a dramatic consolidation of Imperial power to unite the disparate nascent Rebellion. I don't doubt he doesn't live to see it.

It's likely not really until after the Battle of Yavin that the Rebellion truly becomes a united galaxy-wide movement. The events of Rogue One-ANH have a lot of the sort of murderous acts that would bring about widespread realization that, whatever their ideological differences, the Empire must be stopped. The devastation of Jedha, dissolution of the Senate, total destruction of Alderaan and the biggest victory of the Rebellion one after the other in a few days time. Saw's Partisans are all but totally wiped out, the remnants rendered irrelevant too.

I can't recall what specifically happened in Rebels that led Mon to officially declare the Rebel Alliance, but it wasn't half as big as that and some members of said Alliance were ready to give up when they found out about the existence of the Death Star. That Death Star is used 3 times and destroyed in quick succession. If that doesn't bring folks together, nothing would.

 

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Head canon: Palpatine used Andor's pit boss as a clone template basis for his Snokes because the boss was such a huge jerk

Anyway I got large TXH-1138 vibes from the prison which I felt was appropriate that they channeled Lucas' other sci-fi movie.

Is the crew assembling the bodies for K2 units? Is this how we get K2 and how Cassian escapes?

 

Stellan Steergard

Loving the world building.

 

They remind me of the Lortan fanatics, who were a group of humans belonging to a cult that tried to genocide several nearby alien groups and got stopped by the empire.

 

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I was expecting to see them get assembled into an AT-ST.

 

I don’t know what does it for me with this show but I absolutely love it

 

I think it's very thematically important and intentional that we don't know what they're manufacturing. They could easily have had them putting together something the audience would recognize, like weapons or AT-ST parts, which would more directly draw attention to the Empire's use of prison labor to enforce their rule of the galaxy.

But that's not entirely what's going on here, under the surface. Narkina 5 is a prison, yes, but it's also clearly a capitalist critique. The use of new-age corporate development-speak like "sprints" is the most obvious signal of that, but the layers of management that push the workers into competing against each other in order to serve their manager's interest also supports it. Kino himself has a very typical management technique that most people who've worked any labor-intensive job are undoubtedly familiar with, "time to lean, time to clean, etc." All of these are intended to parallel the prison to another system where workers compete with each other against their own interest. Another prison.

A key component of that is the alienation of labor. We don't know what they're building. Cassian doesn't know what they're building, presumably none of the prisoners do, all they know is how to build it. By being alienated from the product of their labor, they are unable to assign value to it. They could be creating the most valuable product in the Empire, but because they are not given that greater context they don't know their own value, and they cannot make an organized demand for treatment befitting their importance. They are also kept distant from each other, divided into sections without communication, because the only threat to management is a united labor force.

But despite their best efforts labor has found a way to communicate, signing to each other from the hallway. This leads to organization, and there are many more prisoners than there are guards, and the Empire might find that there's little more powerful than solidarity.

 

I think it's probably parts for just whatever mundane thing. Not necessarily for weapons. Just stuff involved in things people take for granted in day-to-day life. And it boils down to slave labor, and people pulled into the prison who did nothing. Just picked up in a sweep justified by something someone else did.

 

I was also thinking mundane object at first, but then I figured they probably wouldn't focus so much visual detail on the machinery if it wasn't going to be somewhat important later on.

 

While I'm partial to "we don't know and it doesn't matter," this video is submitted for due consideration.

 

^ My inner airplane mechanic came to the same idea.

 

New databank entries are up covering, episode 8. For the record, the machinery being built by the prisoners are repeatedly referred to as "mysterious widgets."

 

Another great episode! Tension is increasing from ep to ep.. I wonder when it all blows and gets really dark Rogue One style, how bad it will get. Many heads to roll I fear.

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Lieda needs her own spinoff show, teenage Coruscanti life screams for exploration! Especially if it turns rebellious!

Well Mon's family reveals are surprising but nice!

GlamVel needs a figure!

The Prison turns out to be a concentration camp... I love the escape room star wars feeling.

The Imperial Senate was interesting but ultimately is too inactive. I hoped for more action there, debate, more cameos. I mean, just showing it as barely used feels kinda too early. Senators in R1 had hope of without war presenting proof of the Emperors and Empires crimes. We need to see that such would be possible, even if futile by the time of R1.

Syril Karn seriously is a Meme Lord... at one point one has pity for him due to his mom, at another he stalks his new girlfriend from the ISB and their starting BDSM relationship seriously is fun to watch if one reads the subtext of it.

 

Deedra was brilliant this ep, very effective, very chilling.

 

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Not really liking that turn with Karn. getting all stalkery on ISB lady.

 

Dedra might be one of my favorite Star Wars villains now.

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And seriously, that scene where Bix was tortured? I honestly think Andor is making me more scared of the Empire than any other Star Wars media before.

 

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Also loved how scene by scene you could see the change in Andy Serkis character slowly realizing the truth and becoming ready to rebell himself!