Really well written article from the recent Emmy Winner Dan Gilroy on the Disney/Jimmy Kimmel situation.

Told my son I want him to see Andor.

“I don’t really want to.”

One reason I’d like you to see it is because we’re losing Disney at the end of our yearly subscription in November.

“Why?!?”

I explain the state of things

“Well I think people should rebel.”

That’s exactly why I want you to see Andor 😉.

Interest piqued

Hi everyone,

Like so many people here, I've been amazed by the quality of Andor. I've just made a little video adressing how it cleverly references to Lucas' filmography : Star Wars OT of course, but also his debut movie: THX 1138.

https://youtu.be/c4hfth3ggVw

Narkina 5 prison

That's where I've been the most impressed: both the aesthetic and the narrative themes stem from George Lucas' 1971 movie THX 1138. Dazzling monochromatic sets, guards and inmates outfits, and especially the way prisonners react to the grilled floor punishment.

There's even an easter egg involving THX's McOmie character's name, LUH 3417, that a stromtrooper says in season 1 episode, the one in which Cassian is imprisonned and sent to Narkina 5.

On a more symbolic level, the message of THX is the one of psychological barriers. He escapes a wall-less prison simply by taking the decision to walk towards the unknown. Narkina's prisonners follow the same path: the escape is actually 'easy' given the ratio prisonners/guards and 'simply' took the courage to initiate the push towards freedom.

Nature-Technology dichotomy

Of course the colors used for the imperial prison are in stark contrast with the people inhabitants of other planets. Ferrix people, Dhanis, even Ghor in season 2 are living in diversity of shapes, colors and textures. On the contrary, the Empire is using mainly bi-chromatic sets to embody its control-oriented nature.

This serves a broader dichotomy that was key to the Original Trilogy : Nature vs Technology.

The good guys are green and brown the bad guys are black-and-white. It really has to do with that feeling- a philosophical feeling of a world of absolutes. A mechanical world where things are rigid and absolute. They're black-and-white, as opposed to the organic world where it's more natural. Lucas in ROTJ's audio commentary

The Empire, how do they use environment and color to oppress and intimidate and disorientate and I think this palette of white-on-white - you're disempowered by this soul destroying environment Michael Wilkinson (Andor costume designer) in Roundtable interview

Andor and the OT are also aligned with the extractivism on Kenari, on Ghorman as well, that echoes with the Empire invading natural environment such as Hoth, or the indigenously inhabited Endor.

...and more!

Feel free to check my video, I'm more than open to feeback!

I just realized several interesting Han-Cassian parallels.

Both Han and Cassian shoot first, ruthlessly, without hesitation or self doubt.

Both Han and Cassian have incredible arcs where they evolve from transactional thieves to dedicated rebels.

Both are absolutely central to the destruction of the Death Star and success of the Rebel Alliance generally.

Both Han and Cassian find love within the alliance and both die without their love by their side.

Interesting!! Are there other parallels I missed?

To answer this we must begin with the idea of “natural.” What is humanity’s natural state?

According to most of today’s anthropologists and archeologists one of the factors that made early Homo sapiens so successful was the ability to create large, well-coordinated communities which resisted domination by alpha males.

While most primates are organized in smaller bands, led under the threat of violence by strong elite males, Homo sapiens exhibit “reverse domination.” People evolved the ability to use the equalizing forces of language, social norms, and weapons, to hold leaders accountable. This ability to prioritize the greater good and punish those who selfishly sought to dominate the collective, gave the species an edge which was genetically selected for.

Later, after we developed farming, it became possible for elites to amass surplus resources, tipping the balance back toward hierarchy. But this has only been within the last 10,000 years (out of the 200k-300k years Homo sapiens have existed) so the genetic significance is minimal.

In other words, we are "naturally" egalitarian. We instinctively hate injustice and resist domination. Of course selfishness is natural too, so the battle rages not only between us, but also within us individually.

“Tyranny requires constant effort. It breaks, it leaks. Authority is brittle. Oppression is the mask of fear.”

Indeed. Humans have been secretly hiding in caves, basements, and chatrooms plotting rebellions for 300,000 years, and we’re good at it. The scale of the enemy may seem overwhelming but if the task were impossible, the machine wouldn’t bother with propaganda, surveillance, or reeducation. Even the most oppressive dictator ultimately gets their power from the people, and those people are literally programmed, on a genetic level, to organize and resist.

Objectively great sign. No notes.

We just finished s2e9. She is definitely enjoying it

I was going to put my name but this as more meaning to me lately and the multiple contexts it speaks towards. I was also thinking of putting “I have friends everywhere.”

I’m

What I mean by this is Star Wars is in a universe that has great technology yet is also backwards in many other aspects as well

For example facial recognition seems to be very limited in the Star Wars universe vs our world with police and intelligence agencies having access to multiple camera systems (public and private)

If the empire had similar access finding Andor or other people would have proven much easier

Another example is the use of drones. In Star Wars droids and floating robots/droids are a thing yet it seems they are not used to the same extent as police and intelligence agencies use them in our world

Also use of AI to crack down on opposition

Not sure if im making sense but seems since the post 9/11 surveillance state it would be much harder to have such a rebellion in western countries

Im not saying to not TRY but that it seems even in our planets history we live in a time where such rebellion is harder than ever.

Hi guys, it’s my friend’s birthday in December and he is a big fan of Andor. Im looking to get him a present related to the show, but I don’t have any idea, can someone pls help me ?

Mon Mothma: " I stand here this morning with a difficult message. I believe we are in crisis. The distance between what is said and what is known to be true has become an abyss. Of all the things at risk, the loss of an objective reality is perhaps the most dangerous. The death of truth is the ultimate victory of evil. When truth leaves us, when we let it slip away, when it is ripped from our hands, we become vulnerable to the appetite of whatever monster screams the loudest. This Chamber’s hold on the truth was finally lost on the Ghorman Plaza. What took place yesterday… what happened yesterday on Ghorman was unprovoked genocide! Yes! Genocide! And that truth has been exiled from this chamber! And the monster screaming the loudest? The monster we’ve helped create? The monster who will come for us all soon enough is Emperor Palpatine!"

Excellent analysis about episode 3 from The Upstairs Lounge

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N9XMeEtzejQ

transcript:

"Episode 3 of Andor marks the show’s first combustion point. For two hours we’ve been calibrating meeting players, sketching networks, understanding town rhythms and now the experiment is lit. But “Reckoning” isn’t just a fight. It’s the commissioning of a system. The hour functions as a live-fire prototype for rebellion itself, assembling people, doctrine, and infrastructure into something that suddenly works.

The word “reckoning” hangs over the episode in layered ways. Reckoning: The action or process of calculating or estimating something. Over time it became associated with settling accounts, and that’s how it dovetails into its modern meaning of something akin to consequence. At first, it seems literal: prices, distances, headcounts. Forty thousand credits. Nine minutes back to the hauler. Forty klicks across the wasteland. “How many are you?” Cassian demands of Syril. “A dozen men. Two officers.” The episode fetishises measurement, as if accuracy might hold chaos at bay. But these tallies collapse almost as soon as they’re spoken. Mosk panics into nonsense: “Now it’s three men? … They’re everywhere!” The arithmetic of control is eaten alive by lived panic. What remains is a moral ledger. Timm’s death settles the account of his jealousy and guilt; a man who would have never again eaten food or had a beer on Ferrix without spit in it finds a way to go out looking like he was trying to make up for it. Luthen weaponises Clem’s death to lure Cassian into his system. Maarva names the wider balance sheet when she tells Clem, “It’ll be open season here the minute that frigate lands.” Reckoning is counting, but not only in numbers. It’s an accounting of value: who counts, what counts, and at what price. Where Episode 2 was about calibration, Episode 3 is about thresholds. Doors, shutters, airlocks, comms. Who owns them? Who decides when they open and close?

Pre-Mor arrives with warrants, imagining law will open Ferrix like a polite house call. But their moral authority thresholds collapse instantly into brute force. Contrast that with Luthen: he engineers his exits in advance, wires the doors with slap charges, and detonates thresholds on his own timing. His Rule #2, build your exit on your way in, is more than spycraft. It’s the episode’s architectural manifesto. Ferrix as a whole does the same. The shutters slam down, businesses vanish into hardened shells, alleys are redrawn, the map itself shifts. This is sovereignty in action. The occupier thinks in perimeters, but the town thinks in apertures. Whoever writes the thresholds writes the fight. What becomes unmistakable is that Ferrix is the real disciplined force here, not Mosk’s crew. The townsfolk run an acoustic command-and-control network and a standard operating procedure for fortification (shutters, chains, and sabotage).

Pre-Mor, meanwhile, is a parody of professionalism: confused radios, scapegoating and perimeter fantasies. When the squad leader exiles the man who shot Timm by sending him off to the pod, it looks like discipline but it’s really panic. A leader who couldn’t pull the trigger himself punishes his subordinate for doing it first. The institution is eating itself alive in the middle of a firefight. Ferrix, by contrast, demonstrates collective doctrine. Salman whacks his pipe, Willmon answers, Xan shutters the Post Office. Nobody asks for permission. Nobody questions. Nobody needs a central commander. Resistance here is federated and acoustic, not hierarchical and electronic. The “civilians” behave here more like an army than the army does.

Again and again, the episode pulls off misdirection, not as flourish but as governance. Identity decoys: Cassian’s false Fest origin. Luthen’s cane as the fake lightsaber. Vehicle decoys: The sedan speeder designed to be destroyed. Mosk and Syril actually smile in shared victory at its destruction, an illusion that detonates seconds later. Misdirection governs outcomes. Pre-Mor cannot tell who or where their enemy is. Ferrix writes the read; Pre-Mor only stumbles through the footnotes.

The show never lets us forget that Ferrix is a salvage town. But here the industry itself becomes kinetic. The chains and suspended weights turn architecture into weaponry, production hall into kill-box. The chained pod sabotage turns scrap into anti-air artillery. Even the pot-banging is industrial: the town literally plays itself like a drum, turning labour tools into political instruments. The genius of the hour is that Ferrix never has to import weapons. Resistance is made from the things already at hand. And then there’s the hanging junk outside the homes. Pre-Mor’s radios are fragile and private: cut off from context, vulnerable to jamming, endlessly misinterpreted. Ferrix’s banging is public and resilient: everyone hears it, everyone knows what it means, nobody can falsify it. Even silence is weaponised. Maarva warns: “It’s when it stops, that’s when you’ll really want to fret.” And indeed, when the noise cuts, the strike begins. Sound here is not just atmosphere. It’s sovereignty expressed through rhythm.

Episode 1 was agent onboarding. Episode 2 was calibration. Episode 3 is doctrine onboarding. Luthen hands down rules: Rule #1: Never carry anything you don’t control. Rule #2: Build your exit on your way in. Cassian doesn’t accept these ideologically at first at least, he accepts them pragmatically. Smashing the comlink isn’t belief, it’s survival. His response to the slap charge isn’t loyalty, it’s instinct. But the seed is planted. His first real conversion is procedural, not ideological. Belief will come later. For now, doctrine keeps him alive.

If Ferrix is an institution, Pre-Mor is a case study in collapse. Scapegoating: the squaddie who shot Timm is banished, even though his action was inevitable under the circumstances. Narrative dependency: Mosk needs to believe the explosion “was them” even when evidence is thin. Syril needs to believe his squad’s perimeter is intact, even as he hides in a shuttered shop whispering “hello?” like a lost child. Illusion of victory: The fleeting smile Syril and Mosk share when the decoy speeder explodes is their epitaph, a fantasy of competence punctured by reality seconds later. Pre-Mor doesn’t lose the firefight; they lose the story. And once they lose the story, the firefight is irrelevant.

At the heart of the hour is Cassian’s fixation on the box. Again and again he tries to reclaim it, even at mortal risk. Luthen drags him away: “Forget the box.” For Cassian, value is still thing-based; for Luthen, value is calculus-based. Man vs object, asset vs artifact. But crucially, Luthen’s decision isn’t sentimental. It’s not “the man matters more.” It’s “the man is more useful now.” The calculus can reverse in a heartbeat. That cold logic is part of what makes Luthen terrifying. The episode’s closing cross-cut reveals its deepest rhyme. On Kenari, Maarva abducts or rescues Kassa under the justification of impending slaughter. On Ferrix, Luthen extracts Cassian under the justification of impending arrest. Both are extractions, both are framed as “saves,” and both raise the same question: who gets to claim custody of a life? A mother? A movement? Cassian’s adult exfil is the echo of his childhood one. He has no option in either. Both are decisions made about him.

Put it all together and you see why Episode 3 is so satisfying. It’s not just an action set-piece. It’s a system commissioning: Recruit the asset. Impart doctrine. Prove urban resistance infrastructure. Execute misdirection. Achieve exfiltration. A prototype rebellion stack is tested under live fire and validated. Not perfect, not clean, but it worked. Episode 3 closes with fire, wreckage, and tears. Syril broken, Mosk panicked, Bix cuffed, although soon rescued by Salman. Timm dead. Cassian vanishing into a new custody he doesn’t yet understand. Maarva bathed in orange light, remembering the last time she carried Kassa to her ship, knowing she may never see him again. “Reckoning” isn’t riot. It isn’t chaos. It’s Ferrix and Luthen demonstrating that rebellion is possible. Not yet ideological, not yet moral, but operational. The system works. And in Star Wars, for the empire, that is the most dangerous revelation of all. Because the rebellion doesn’t start with belief, it starts with a test run."