Potato is yum

When I first watched starwars I was 7. It was so cool. The most violence that was directly on the screen was a hand flying off with no blood. All other violence was kind of just inferred. Honestly I really just thought starwars was a really cool movie and never really sat down to think about the implications of much of the actions shown in the world. Until I watched Andor.

Every episode of Andor strikes directly at the heart of deep and philosophical debates we as people go through every day. It doesn’t offer any solutions and uses Starwars as a form of media to bring these questions to the front and make people think about our real world. Just a warning, there are spoilers for the second season of Andor beyond this point.

One of the most striking aspects of this view of the Starwars universe as a young adult is the connections between the empire with first world countries and the rebellion with terrorists. Much of what the rebellion does walks a fine line between terrorism and activism with much of what our main characters do literally being acts of terrorism. Once you think about how little power the average imperial officer actually has you start to question, “Why am I supposed to cheer for these guys? Are we the good guys?” And the show leans into this by adding friction between the characters and making clear differing intentions between each character.

One of the most striking scenes was the time during the dance nearing the end of the wedding where the character in focus seems to just be dancing to put up an act while thinking about how her childhood friend was about to get murdered for knowing too much. We don’t actually see him get killed but the end of the episode heavily implies the death of the banker with the mastermind of the rebellion simply saying, “It has to be done to protect you.” This scene reminded me about how so many of us go about our lives doing the actions, following the ceremony, completing the tasks that society tells us should be complete without ever being able to fight against the unending torrent of regret for past actions that might have caused much of these actions. Did she regret bringing her childhood friend into this rebellion? Probably.

Does this mean she killed her childhood friend? Yes. She literally led him to his death. This deep meaning and implied actions littered throughout the show makes me feel like I need to actually pay attention and keep my eyes open when watching the show. A blink might take me out of the moment and lose a potential message. The show somehow manages to give me a similar feeling of deep thinking as the films Oppenheimer and Barbie which both portray the internal vs external conflict.

I’ve actually noticed that many of the shows I used to love as a kid have much deeper messages hidden inside such as Cars which is a masterclass on maturing. When I look at a bunch of newer movies in comparison to all of these masterpieces I’ve just named it almost feels like I’m inhaling garbage. But I guess you can’t have beauty without something to compare it to.