Excited and Terrified for Andor Season 2

Potential Trigger Warning: This post is political in nature. I may be talking about Star Wars a lot, but I’m doing so in light of the current political and social events that I find quite disturbing.

I’ve been a Star Wars fan for as long as I can remember, despite it’s ups and downs over the years. Since I was born in late 1977 I’m fairly certain that my mother was pregnant with me when she first saw Star Wars. Because of that I like to joke that my love for Star Wars is just in my blood.

When it comes to recent Star Wars productions, The Mandalorian is easily the show that did the best job at getting me excited about the franchise again.

I enjoyed Ahsoka and Skeleton Crew. I might be one of the few people that ultimately enjoyed The Acolyte and wish that we would be getting more of that story.

But right now I think my favorite of the Star Wars TV shows is Andor, and I am so excited for Season 2. In case you haven’t seen it already, we got a good-sized trailer for the second season about a month ago. You can watch it here or embedded below.

In anticipation of this new season of the show, I decided to rewatch Season 1 so I would be really fresh and current on the events of the show.

And let me tell you…this show hits a lot differently, and a lot harder, than it did two-and-a-half years ago when it first came out.

The world was, as one might expect, far from perfect in late 2022. According to Wikipedia we were still dealing with the COVID 19 pandemic, which had all kinds of ramifications economically and socially. Interest rates were on the rise after a period of historic lows. But at least it generally felt like the Rule of Law was still in effect.

Watching Andor at that time, from that world view, was primarily an exercise in escapism and fantasy. It was fun watching Cassian Andor gradually grow from a disaffected loner into someone willing to fight for a cause. I loved getting to know Luthen a little bit more as the person pulling all the strings that eventually, somehow, becomes the Rebel Alliance. I LOVED watching Mon Mothma navigate the politics of Coruscant while trying to preserve democracy, and slowly losing her family in the process. The whole show was just great.

Now however, so much of the show feels like more of a cautionary tale that we are somehow not paying attention to.

In the third story arc of the show Cassian, having made quite a bit of cash in the previous story arc, is living quite comfortably on what looks like a splashy resort world. He literally claims to just be a tourist. He goes out to pick up some food and do some shopping, and is seen walking calmly in an area where other people, ostensibly protestors, are fleeing.

So he gets arrested and sentenced to six years in a factory prison. Only to discover later on that he won’t be released, he’ll just be moved to a DIFFERENT factory prison…

Back in 2022 it was so easy to watch this sequence in the story and think of it as purely fantasy.

But now we live in a world where a man was deported to El Salvador by the government, despite a judge’s order stating that he could not be deported, due to “an administrative error” on the part of the White House. And it seems that the White House has no inclination to correcting that error.

The scene where Cassian is sentenced by the judge feels like it was an absolute icon of “efficiency”, to the point that any care or concern for truth and facts had been bled out of the proceedings as well. There was no evidence linking Cassian to any crime. (To be fair, he has committed several by this point in the story, but no one in the Empire knows that.) Indeed no evidence was even presented, and no opportunity to defend himself was given. The mere accusation was enough to cause him to lose all his rights and be convicted to a “six year” prison stay.

While Elon Musk’s D.O.G.E. claims to be attempting to root out waste and fraud, I can’t help but see what’s in the name of the organization. “Efficiency” is, for some reason, held up as the holy grail for governmental activity. As if that’s the only thing the government should care about, or measure success against.

Mon Mothma’s storyline starts with the realization that she is no longer able to access her family money as anonymously as she once was, due to oversight that the Empire is taking over all kinds of financial transactions.

That feels a lot more real, and possible now, in light of President Trump signing an executive order that targets individual private businesses. Like a law firm that represented Hillary Clinton, his political opponent the first time he ran for President.

So here I am. Anxiously looking forward to Andor Season 2 because I have un-answered questions.

I want to see how Cassian grows into the Rebel operative we saw in Rogue One. I’m excited to hopefully see how he first encounters K-2SO. I’m assuming that Luthen dies at some point, sacrificing his life in order to give birth to the Rebellion, and I want to see the circumstances around what happens. I want to see Mon Monthma finally shed the lies she wrapped around herself and commit to open rebellion against tyranny.

And at the same time I’ll admit I’m a little afraid.

I hope these fears and comparisons are more the work of my overactive imagination than anything else.

I hope we’re not as close to the brink of tyranny as it sometimes seems.

I hope that Season 2 of Andor will be a fun ride, exploring a corner of the Star Wars story that we haven’t seen a lot of details on before.

And I hope it’s not a ride I’ll end up on in real life.