Tag: andor

(This was originally published as Implausipod Episode 47 on May 12th, 2025.)

https://www.implausipod.com/1935232/episodes/17048085-e0047-star-wars-andor-season-2-week-3

Star Wars: Andor, part 4 of 5, looking at the three episodes released on May 6th, 2025, titled  “Messenger”, “Who Are You” and “Welcome to the Rebellion”.  Things are heating up as the new Media Reality of the Star Wars universe begins to unfold, with more dangerous actors and actions coming to the forefront as well. 

Feel free to follow along with our previous coverage of Season 1 (which we recapped in Episode 44), and episodes 1 through 6 of Season 2 in Episodes 45 and 46.

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How does resistance turn into rebellion? What are the inciting incidents that escalate things? And what are some real world examples that may have influenced the showrunners of Andor, and how they managed to still insert some cyberpunk themes? Join us for part four of our five part series looking at Star Wars Andor with the three episodes released on May 6th, 2025 titled “Messenger”, ” Who are you” and “welcome to the rebellion”. Things are heating up as the new media reality of the Star Wars universe begins to unfold with more dangerous actors and actions coming to the forefront as well.

Welcome to the ImplausiPod, a podcast about the intersection of art, technology, and popular culture. I’m your host, Dr. Implausible, and as we return to Andor for week three, and hopefully you have a chance to listen to this before week four, we’re witness to some amazing things. The pace has increased. The intensity has increased, and we are getting some really cinematic storytelling.

When it comes to a story like this with an ensemble cast, multiple locations, things taking place all over the place, often concurrently, I’ve often described the way this storytelling happens as a fractive, as a fractured narrative where things bounce around from person to person, from place to place, often with really quick cuts.

We, as the audience, are given fragments of the story, and asked to put it together all at once. Some of this is the quick cuts in editing that we’ve become so accustomed to since the dawn of the MTV era. But some of this is just traditional storytelling as well, and it takes place not just in audio visual storytelling like television and film and video games, but also in novels and comic books, and pretty much anywhere we tell stories to each other.

So in light of this fractive, this fractured narrative storytelling that is taking place during these three episodes of Andor. We’ll try and consolidate the storylines and rearrange them a little bit. and tease out the key elements that we’re seeing through each of these threads. So without further ado, let’s see what’s been happening in Andor we start off week three with episode seven titled Messenger, or perhaps that should be cha cha cha changes as things are noticeably different, the vibe has shifted and we see evidence of that vibe shift right from the opening crawl.

We’re once again told it’s one year later with the BBY or. Big Bad Yam, I’m counting down to two and right from there we pan down to some ziggurats in a jungle and oh ho it’s the Yavin base one that’s shown up again in season four of Andor I’m sure, but we have a spacecraft approaching it, stepping out as our young Bruno Mars-ish mechanic (who’s name is Will), strolling through the landing area. And here the vibe is suitably cinematic. There’s a lot of people moving around. We see droids and rebels and aliens and the like. And the feeling is that there’s some action going on. Will meets up with Bix and Cassian deep in the Jungle and there’s some tension.

Cassian is a wound from a fight we didn’t see. And will passes along a message from Luthen wanting to know if he’s ready to work. And Cass has a simple question, “do you wanna fight or do you wanna win?” The vibe is also different as we shift to Ghorman. There’s an audio overlay of talks of increased terrorism and terrorist of attacks actually taking place, and the plaza first seen in episode four is changed.

Lots of imperial officers and reporter types as we saw in the previous block of episodes, and this is around at the eight minute mark or so. There’s fewer locals, just a few people in suits, and Syril Karn is walking through it and. There’s something about this that sits oddly with me, and it’s the reporters.

I’ll try and explain. There’s a philosopher by the name of Mark Fisher who wrote on capitalist realism that we can’t conceive of a future without capitalism, but maybe here we’re seeing what we could call Media Realism. We can’t think of a different way to show the manufacturing of consent than having obvious reporter types doing on scene standups, ala Anderson Cooper, or so many other disaster reporters.

It’s one of the threads I was talking about in our episode on Soylent Culture where writers of shows have grown up in a landscape and can’t imagine a different way of presenting it now. There’s a big caveat here, of course, given that the writer’s using Star Wars as a vehicle to talk about current situation is something that often happens in sci-fi.

I mean, Lucas originally was using Star Wars as a commentary on the Vietnam War, and we can see parallels with what is being done here too. It’s just something to keep in mind that the reporters are very and the way they’re presented here are very much analogous to our situation and don’t really necessarily fit within the Star Wars universe.

There’s something anachronistic there where we can see elements of other things within the Star Wars universe, but that have been part of it for a long time, that kind of fit within it, and we’ve become accustomed to them. It makes sense, but let’s put aside this anachronistic media realism, and let’s get back to what’s going on.

But first, quickly, one other thing I’m noticing is that there’s a lot of cuts going on. We’re jumping around from place to place. It’s like the pace of the storytelling has increased. We’re moving around rapidly through the different locations and characters that are already established. Touching on each one briefly, and this increased pace brings an energy and an urgency to the show that we’re watching.

As I mentioned, we briefly see Syril Karn moving through the square and with the increased imperial presence, he’s not afforded some of the same privileges that he was used to through Syril. We once again meet Dera who had been previously identified when Will showed Cassian a data slate with her face on it, and she was singled out as a target.

Dedra is conferring with her supervisor, major Partagaz, and once again, he name drops the Emperor as saying that he’s taken an interest in the plan that’s going, but they’re going with the original plan, which is apparently bad luck for Ghorman and the app fleet will soon be arriving. Dedra is told of her possible career moves based on the success of this operation, and she lets the major know that.

You’re aware the insurgents have weapons at this point, and the major says we’re counting on it so we get the sense that they’re looking to go the Ghormans into a rash action. Touched quickly in a few other places as well is hearing of the Senate security asking for schedules and audio of media and news reports are saying there’s an escalation of the terror.

Terror campaign. We check in with the Ghormans and they’re arguing as well, stating finally that we are the gore, and if they aren’t, then what else is there? What’s left? And we bounce back to Yvan. And here’s the other major event of this episode. Cassian’s clearly in pain due to the blaster burn and Bix convinces him to go visit a force healer that’s available on site.

And this is, I think one of the few times within the entirety Andor up to this point that we’ve had. Any even mention of the force, let alone someone present that’s able to like to wield it to a small degree. I mean not a full-blown Jedi, but force-sensitive nonetheless. And she is able to heal the blaster burn on Cassian and says, thank you for the clarity.

And she gets a sense of. What Cassian’s fate may be that some people gather as they go. There’s a purpose to it. There’s a place they need to be, and this is the role for Cassian. He’s moving through. He’s our instigator, and we have a sense of what that place is, and we know what that’ll be coming soon.

There’s a really nice segment after this meeting with the force healer. Between Bix and Cassian it’s, it’s outside their cabin in the forest. And visually it looks a whole lot like Return of the Jedi. There’s a callback in the imagery to when Leia was a guest in the Ewok Village, and there’s a bit of the sense that Bix might become a bit of a force convert here as well.

From there, Cassian will soon leave, and there’s some words exchanged with the rebel commander, and we’re getting the sense that things will be changing here soon too, that they’re becoming a much more cohesive fighting force. This is echoed by Vel who comes to visit Bick soon after Andor leaves, and still grieving the loss of Cinta from the previous episode.

She says that they’re not Luthen’s puppets anymore and they’re building a real army. Casting as leader and needs to, you know, step up and actually show that he is one. And while this talk is taking place in his absence, he lands once again on Ghorman, posing as the fashion designer from episode five.

But there’s a curfew in effect. The imperials are much more present and we hear on the loudspeaker that an all around group shuttle has been canceled. So Cassian sits in the hotel room. With a completely different vibe,

and by episode eight, that vibe has shifted and gotten even more intense. Episode eight is titled, who Are You or AKA For me, it was Tuesday and we start with an overhead shot of the main city of Ghorman. It’s a nice city, and I love these overhead establishing shots that we get of these cities. It feels, again, very Game of Throne- esque, but it gives us a sense.

Of place. As we zoom in, we see that Andor is preparing a sniper rifle when the imperial start moving things around. It looks like they’re opening up the plaza, but according to Cassian, we see that they’re building the cell around the building, turning it into a fortress, and this disrupts his assassination attempt of Dedra.

She’s in the middle of a conversation with major par toga, and in it he says. Our struggles with Ghorman are well documented at this point, which means there’s a bit of a change in the narrative that’s been going on in the last year, and that change is echoed by the reporters that are allowed to be in the otherwise mostly empty plaza.

They’re echoing the ISB words. They’re saying that. The Ghormans are resistant to imperial norms. I’m wondering how long it’s gonna go on and there’s rumors of a general strike. Syril’s mom is watching all of us from tv, of course, and Syril has a confrontation with the old man who asks him, what sort of bean are you?

The mining stuff is getting set up on the planet. The population of Ghorman is aware and the Ghorman are wondering what the heck the Imperials are actually up to. This meeting seems to actually cut through to Syril a little bit. He took a slap last episode well deserved from one of the Ghorman woman who had brought him into the circle and is.

Realization is fracturing his dedication to the imperial cause. Somewhat. Cassian is checking outta the hotel, sharing a few words with the concierge who he spoke with originally in episode five, telling him to stay safe. And from there the concierge gives us a great line. He says that rebellions are built on hope.

As Cassian dives into the square, we’re teased the near miss between Cassian and Syril in the crowd. As more and more people are coming in, there’s a chant going on. “We are Ghorman, the galaxy is watching.” This soon shifts to song, led by the man, the one with the elbows up forearm gesture from episode four.

News stumbled onto the heist in episode six. The song’s in the native tongue of gore, they were using this a lot during the various scenes from week. Two, but I didn’t talk about it then, but I wanna bring it up here. It’s a vaguely European sounding language sounding at times Eastern European with a little German thrown in and talking about it.

Now I’m curious enough to look it up, so forgive me for a quick moment and, okay. It’s apparently a novel language created for the show with French roots to link it to the French resistance from World War ii. That is really wonderful. A real credit to the actors and everyone involved for being able to work in a made up language.

That’s amazing stuff. As more and more goers show up in the square, things are getting decidedly worse. However, the intensity is definitely rising and we know bad things are about to happen. I. Captain Cato shows up positioning his troops. I know he was introduced in the previous episode and I kind of glossed over it, but there was a lot going on.

He has a well orchestrated plan of how to escalate a bad situation and much like the FBI guys in diehard, he’s following the playbook to the letter. Syril is then. Back in the Imperial building and moved to a side room to stay until it is safe and he meets the combat droids and it starts to click for him what is likely going to happen.

He sneaks outta the room and confronts Dedra and uh, they are done. Of course, Dedra has known what’s been really going on for a while and has no misconceptions about it. Syril’s kind of finding out in real time and maybe not realizing what he was contributing to. Dedra drops a line on him as they’re breaking apart here.

He, she says, it didn’t seem to mind the promotions. He’s been moving up quickly over these years and maybe not realizing that one came from the other. I. As he storms out, Dedra is reminded that she has to give the command and all heck breaks loose. A couple comments here is I find it difficult to interject commentary on action sequences.

There’s usually a lot going on, and in this one, more than most it. Rivals and perhaps exceeds the frantic chaos of the jailbreak in season one. So I’ll just try and cover a couple major themes. The first one is that aesthetically with the dress of the Ghormans and the language that we mentioned before, I’m wondering how much visually this tracks with the movie like Reds, the movie from 1981 starring Warren Beatty about the October revolution.

I was young when this came out and only remember it being long and definitely not something I wanted to see, but from what I remember, yeah, that there’s this really close visual similarity with the long coats and the dress and the flags being waved by the Ghormans, just the single color flags that they’re flashing around at various points.

Given the French language origins, maybe I need to go watch. Lay miserable or something too, but that’s outside my frame of reference. Another thing I’d really like to commend the showrunners on is their use of the storm troopers within the scenes and in the show more generally. For the most part, it’s been pretty reserved.

The storm troopers are of course, an iconic symbol of the empire within the Star Wars universe, a signifier that’s reached beyond just. Popular culture within the show. We’ve largely seen human faces on the imperial officers, and even here the Imperials are often un helmeted and unmasked. We saw a number of storm rivers with the Imperials in the first week of shows accompanying the inspection team during the harvest and cut down by Cassian and the tie fighter.

And of course in season one they were involved when Cassian was arrested in episode seven. But they’re used sparingly here in episode eight. They’re much more prevalent, and it’s not subtle, at least not to me, but maybe it goes unnoticed by the audience. Within the square, the plaza, there is one set of steps that is manned by nothing but storm troopers, a literal wall of death, not the one you find at a mosh pit, at a metal show.

Part of the reason I think I might go unnoticed by the audience, though not the Ghorman Rebels, they know something is up, is how much the storm Trooper has been accepted through its normalization of popular culture. They can be seen making jokes and skits and cartoons. They’re dancing in the exhibits of Disney World.

They’re adopted into the culture here. They are not. There is no attempt to make them cuddly, to defang them. We have to remember they’re soldiers with a name chosen to echo the soldiers of Nazi Germany in World War II and deliberately designed aesthetic to match that of a skeleton to look like an army of the undead.

This is why so much of the normalization of storm troopers and the empire by groups like the 501st and others seems so regularly through cosplay and comic conventions and the like is deeply problematic. Fascist cosplay is fascist dress rehearsal after all. So credit to the showrunners and producers for emphasizing how deadly and dangerous the stormtroopers are.

They, along with the other Imperials clash, the Ghormans as Captain Kaido’s Sniper, takes out one of the Imperials to light the match of the powder keg that’s been building, making it look like a shot from the Ghorman started it and it soon turns into a massacre. The rebels are insurgents, blending into the crowd, really only identifiable from the civilian population by the weapons they hold firing back at the imperials and inflicting casualties themselves at Kaido’s order.

The combat droids are unleashed and the battle turns into a slaughter. The weapons that Ghormans have can barely scratch them, and the droids need little aside from mass and. Physics to deliver lethal destruction upon the crowd. Cassian is still attempting to take out Dedra, missing one shot due to a nearby explosion, and another to Syril him saving Dedra’s life once again, unbeknownst to her.

And it is on. We get a fight right out of John Carpenter’s They Live between the two. One with no holds barred furiosity, and in a brief moment of respite, Cassian utters, the titular phrase, who are you? And while Syril Karn seems to be winding up to deliver a soliloquy to let him know. Fate delivers a blaster shot.

This was likely how it was always going to shake out. As I mentioned in our review of week one, the show wasn’t called Karn after all, but I’m wondering what Karn was feeling there, learning that the object of his obsession did not even know of his existence. One of the driving motivations for him was this quote unquote mean character syndrome, something we could see time and again to his chafing at his lot in various points, or thinking that he was taking a bigger role in what was going on than was what was actually taking place.

I’m wondering how much allure the Empire has for individuals like Syril who join up and like his mother said in the previous episode, don’t be such an individual. There’s a further irony to this of course, because if Syril had felt just a smidgen less guilt for his actions, had stayed inside the Imperial compound and been less of an individual, he would’ve survived the Fer Riot just fine.

Of course to Cassian will and the escaping Ghorman Rebels. Syril doesn’t register much at all, but for us, the audience, this is a major shift. Honestly, I did not expect him to go out this way. I thought he might manage to fail upward a little bit more to a position on a newly formed battle station perhaps in the next couple of years.

But for Cassian, Will and the others, the escape isn’t quite over. They need to flee into the surrounding streets, along with the other citizens and rebels retreating as best they can. We hear from other radio stations that the crackdown is coming everywhere, and the combat droids here are terrifying, relentless hunters attacking indiscriminately in the street.

I think this echoes our own fears about autonomous war machines as they become something more likely to. Deployed in our timeline as well, but drawing on inspiration from the Weyland Yutani cinematic universe. Sometimes the best tool at hand to defeat a relentless predator is a power loader, or sorry, a hover truck.

It could go by many names. It’s able to pin a combat droid into a brick wall, effectively disabling it, providing some redemption for the driver that Ghorman rebel, whose blaster got sent to killed. Maybe here’s the right place to talk a little bit more about her death. I think Vel’s reaction to Cinta’s death stated, though not shown last episode in her conversation with Bix, that she threw herself into her role as a smuggler, as a means to process her grief about Cinta’s death, and she realized she was getting reckless interactions and decided to step it back and take a different role. 

And as we’ve noted before Andor as a show very much about the dualism between these competing groups, the Imperials and the rebels, the high class and the underclass, et cetera. And we see this here too, with veil’s reaction to Sintas death and the brief showing of Debra reacting presumably to the news of Syril’s body being found in the aftermath Klein at the collar of her imperial uniform.

That collar that drew so much attention back in episode seven of season one. Vel and Dedra are mirrors in some ways, both in their position within their side and their ability to be active agents and sometimes caught in demands from superiors. And I wonder if we’ll see Dedra follow Vel’s lead perhaps becoming more reckless or ruthless in her service to the Empire.

We have a comment on the TV within the show about the heroes of the empire, and I wonder if Syril will posthumously become one of those, his role as a simple bureaucrat, slain in the action taken up. He may become one of those. Empire action figures that were on the shelf of his room in his mother’s apartment back in season one, as we see his mother watching the news of the riot and the massacre on screen with some friends sitting on couches.

This media realism that we were seeing in the previous episode continues through to here, and I feel like we will soon see her. Interviewed by the media apparatus given a heartfelt tale of how she begged him not to go.

The pace keeps accelerating though, and the momentum does not let up. As we shift to episode nine titled, welcome to The Rebellion McKay. Come with me if you want to live. In our analysis of last week’s shows, we noted how the heist was so central to the cyberpunk genre, and here we have one that is almost.

Equally important, the extraction. This is where the heroes have to get a VIP, often a scientist or a rock star or a politician, and know of things out from wherever they are within the cyberpunk genre. This is often from a mega corp or occasionally a prison. And we can see it in novels like Count Zero in shows like person of interest and in video games where they often take place as quote unquote escort missions.

So with Andor as cyberpunk Star Wars, it’s no surprise to see a full on extraction plot line taking place. There’s some fits and starts to it as Cassian is hesitant. Telling Luthen, I make my own decisions and Luthen replying. Is that what you’ve been doing? Sometimes I wonder, this is after Cassian got some clap back from Kleya earlier and the sass game is strong from the rebel side.

So Cassian is sent in under the guise of a journalist. It seems to fit a bit with the idea of the media reality we talked about earlier, which is also taking place, but here it is also just, I guess it makes some sense as a realistic cover for someone that would be dropping in on a floater basis to a Senate hearing.

The whole idea that Cassian has with a highlight on the pass key that Clay had forged from earlier kicks into, um, an idea that’s called securitization. This is something particular to the study of international relations, and I was first introduced to it by a colleague giving an academic presentation on it and how it related to the early stage MCU movies like Avengers Age of Ultron Securitization is where issues and events are suddenly framed as being issues of quote unquote national security requiring extraordinary means to address them in it. 

A threat is identified and then the justification for it is presented and I’m taken up by the audience for myself. I sometimes conflate this with security theater, which we also see on display here with the gates and the ISB monitoring the entire Senate. But these are not the same thing.

Securitization is about the speech Act, and we can see this here as various cut scenes of the Senate as the other events are going on with various senators speaking out on behalf of the empire against the Ghormans and the massacre that took place. And owl headed Alien delivers a list of fallen imperials from the massacre and other aliens speak out.

Though a few human presenting senators do as well, they’re all speaking out against the Ghormans and I found it odd that we were seeing alien voices deliver this message working as proxies for the emperor. I’m not sure if this is meant to echo back. The prequel trilogy in Jar Jar Binks role in speaking to the Senate, or if there was an intentional point that the showrunners were trying to make here, and we’ll keep an eye on this.

As things accelerate, we get to the Senate with Senator, he drops the S word, which is perhaps the first time I’ve heard a swear in a Star Wars show. You know, not a made up swear. Perhaps I haven’t seen everything obviously, but it did stand out to me and there’s some procedural adjustments that’s taking place.

Some very Sorkin esque dialogue, very West Wing kind of thing. The kind of stuff that I’m most definitely am not the right audience for, but through some work in Organa invoking article 17 dash 252, we get to Mon Mothma’s speech. And much like in Maarva in season one. Mon Mothma delivers. 

Here she states quote, the loss of an objective reality is perhaps the most dangerous thing. The death of truth is the ultimate victory of evil. This chamber’s, hold on. The truth was lost yesterday. What happened was unprovoked genocide, and the monster who will come for us all soon enough is Emperor Palpatine. And once again, we have a show that was written in 2023, perhaps filmed in 2024, being very relevant to current events. 

We also kick into full on cyberpunk extraction mode, and casting is quick and ruthless when needed does not play. Of course, we have to recognize that he had just gotten here from the Ghorman massacre less than a day ago and has had not had. Any moments of respite since that began? The various ISB schemes unraveled with two quick blaster shots, one for the plant on Organa’s, team, one for the driver, and we are soon off evading the stormtroopers. And remember, they are the baddies. 

And they soon arrive at one of Luthen’s halfway houses. The one previously inhabited by Bix and Cass in when they were trying to cosplay as normal just a few episodes ago. And things are changing fast. Mon Mothma will get a military escort from Gold Squadron. Cassian takes the rescued Will back to Yavin separately.

And on Yavin we find that Vel is doing the intake that she mentioned in episode seven, inspecting blasters, and she finds one that is unique. I. Bix and Cass are reunited and he tells her that she is out and Bix is listening, but she seems hesitant. But, uh, Cassian knows his place in things. He says, quote, the only thing special about me is luck and I’ve overplayed my hand already and he wakes to find the Bix is not there. A video recording saying, I’m choosing for the both of us. I’m choosing the rebellion.

Well, things are definitely heating up. This has been a fantastic three episodes of television. It’s very cinematic. It definitely feels like it could have been a movie, but the fact that it isn’t doesn’t detract from it at all. Join us next week as we look at the final three episodes and see how any of our speculation might have turned out based on everything that we’ve seen to date.

I think it’s gonna be fantastic.

Once again, thank you for joining us on the ImplausiPod. I’m your host, Dr. Implausible. You can reach me at drimplausible@implausipod.com, and you can also find the show archives and transcripts of all our previous shows at implausipod.com as well. I’m responsible for all elements of the show, including research, writing, mixing, mastering, and music, and the show is licensed under a Creative Commons 4.0 ShareAlike license.

You may have also noted that there was no advertising during the program and there’s no cost associated with the show, but it does grow from word of mouth of the community. So if you enjoy the show, please share it with a friend or two and pass it along. There’s also a buy me a coffee link on each show at implausipod.com, which will go to any hosting costs associated with the show.

Once again, thank you for joining us. Until next time, take care and have fun.

(This was originally published as Implausipod Episode 46 on May 9th, 2025.)

https://www.implausipod.com/1935232/episodes/17048055-e0046-star-wars-andor-season-2-week-2

Part 3 of our 5 part look at Star Wars Andor, with week 2 of season 2 and the three episodes released on April 29, 2025 (“Ever Been to Ghorman”, “I Have Friends Everywhere” and “What a Festive Evening”). We’ll continue following the threads as they weave together, mirroring the first season in some ways and charting new territory in bringing the most cyberpunk Star Wars story seen to date. And if you want to catch up, feel free to catch the previous two episodes on the Implausipod dot com website.

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E0046 Andor S02 Week 2

If Andor is the most cyberpunk version of the Star Wars universe that’s ever been shown in media, then there’s nowhere that that’s more apparent than in week two of the second season of Andor. join us as we continue our look at the show with part three of our five parts series, recapping the three episodes released on April 29th, 2025, including “Ever been to Ghorman”, “I have friends everywhere” and “what a festive evening”. We’ll draw some connections, follow some threads, and see how they weave together and see how Season two is starting to mirror the episode arc of season one, but doing so in some new and interesting ways in this episode of the ImplausiPod.

Welcome to the ImplausiPod, a podcast about the intersection of art, technology, and popular culture. I’m your host, Dr. Implausible. So what makes Andor cyberpunk Star Wars? it isn’t just in the Blade Runner-esque city scenes, is the hover cars float toward the landing pad during episode six, but it’s also that and has more to do with the swagger and the ethos, the vibe as things are being called today.

But there’s other connections too. Way back in episode three when we gave a rundown of the Cyberpunk 1 0 1, we noted how cyberpunk wasn’t just signified by the aesthetics, the Black leather and Chrome seen in countless movies in the 1990s, but it was also highlighted by ruthless mega corporations, income inequality, and the enduring influence of the heist film.

Star Wars is somewhat lacking on the mega-corp front, but perhaps the Imperials slide into that role well enough, and the income inequality has shone through. However, it’s seen in many small ways in the dual lives of Mon Mothma and Luthen and the window into their worlds in the first season, and becoming much more apparent in the second season as well.

The cyberpunk connection to income inequality initially came as William Gibson was inspired by a book on the Victorian underworld and the differences across society during that gilded age. This vast gulf between the haves and have nots, the Star Wars universe comes screaming to the forefront in the second week of shows episodes four to six.

We’ll keep an eye out for the examples that they show up during this week’s episodes. The final connection making Andor cyberpunk Star Wars story is the role of the heist. Transmedia cyberpunk properties like Shadowrun and Cyberpunk 2020 and even archetypal novels like Neuromancer are about the run, the heist, the score.

We can see this in the first season where the run on the payroll by a small group of determined individuals is used to fund the rebellion. And we see it here in week two, where during this arc we have not only one, but three heists and some various other elements of spycraft as well. And six episodes in, we see how season two of Andor is mirroring season one.

We start with an inciting incident followed by a battle with the imperials where Andor gets away. In the first arc and in the second arc, it’s all about the heist, that big score. Here, we see how the different factions of the Rebel Alliance can pull it off to varying degrees, but we’re getting a little bit ahead of ourselves.

Let’s look at the episodes. As always, these comments are just my impressions of the episodes After they’ve aired, I’m not watching ahead or checking out the online discourse. And we start with episode four: “Ever been To Ghorman”, AKA “De Berbs”, where burbs may have more than one meaning. But first, a word on Ghorman.

I mentioned last episode, how I’ll have to stop referring to Syril Karin by his nickname of Lieutenant Gorman due to their increased presence on the show. But it turns out that the Ghormans have been present in the Star Wars universe for a long, long time. And maybe we need to take a quick look at this before we get into the episode proper.

It might seem hard to believe in 2025, but Star Wars wasn’t always this ever- present media giant with premium shows launching regularly and always available at the touch of a button with merchandising tie-ins available from High Street to Legoland, to Dollarama, to multiple books and comics and games and figures coming out on a monthly basis.

Back in the mid to late eighties, it was a different time following the recent Return of the Jedi in 1983, there was some popularity, sure. But things fell off. Aside from the remnant action figure sales, by 1987, there wasn’t much interest at Star Wars at all, save for the hardcore fans. So when West End Games released the Star Wars role playing game that year, the market was smaller and not a lot of attention was paid to it.

Tabletop roleplaying games like D and D were in a bit of fallow period as well, though there was a strong overlap between the audiences of the two. So West End Games got to producing material for the Star Wars universe to fill out the galaxy with stuff for the players to do.

They began with the original films and then some of the add-ons, the novelizations of the comic book series from Marvel, which was something but not a ton, not the way we think of media properties today. West End Games had to develop a lot of devices and droids and equipment and settings and plot elements and starships.

And the unique thing was that what they were developing was considered canon. It was still Star Wars all falling under the same umbrella. The distinction in types of media property wasn’t paid as close attention to back in the 1980s. So Star Wars was one of the first places where we saw transmedia storytelling.

This is similar in some ways to what was done with other sci-fi franchises like Star Trek and Dr. Who, and maybe Conan too. On the fantasy side, transmedia storytelling could also be understood as multi-platform storytelling, where a single story is told across different platforms and media. The above franchises would have a continuous narrative going, jumping between the shows, films and comic books.

Transmedia storytelling is a little bit different than Adaptation where the same story is retold in different places, often with subtle differences to account for the media. So the Dr. Who books are subtly different than the shows, as are James Blish’s novelizations of Star Trek, the original series, and Alan Dean Foster’s work on the Star Wars books.

Transmedia storytelling is something that was seen in media. It was something originally looked at by Henry Jenkins. We talked about some of his work back in episode 16 on Spreadable Media.

This brings us back to Ghorman and the Ghorman front. Like I said a little while ago, Ghorman has a long history with the Star Wars Media at first showed up, as I mentioned, in either the role-playing game from West End Games or in the X-Wing video game from 1993.

This was an early space flight simulator where you could Dog fight in outer space and fly other fighters from the Star Wars universe. I was able to confirm the appearance of Ghorman in the 1993 video game via Wookiepedia, but the appearance within the West End games wasn’t something that I could confirm directly vi.

A quick look through my own books. Didn’t really see anything there. But then again, I didn’t have the complete set in either case. Ghorman, the Planet and the Rebel Group has been part of Star Wars for quite some time, given that it’s been around this long. Let me ask you. Have you ever been to Ghorman?

It’s a good question. And what did we get an answer to early is the vibe here is definitely different with round windows and slanted buildings in a different colour palette. One that feels right out of a Wes Anderson movie. Right along with the diegetic sounds as Syril walks across the square, this is in stark contrast to the brutalist tenements we’ve seen on Coruscant earlier.

Following Syril around, we learned some of the lay of the land, similar in some ways to ferric where he was stationed earlier and yet. Unique. These similarities can be seen in the dirt roads and I wonder if they’re there for a reason. Maybe like cost savings or something. Or if the grab chucks that we see in the background leaving mean that paving is unnecessary.

And as Syril goes about his business in town, we see some more of what Ghorman is like. Syril has picked up a bit of trade craft, it seems, using floss to check of his residence is broken into. And his love for action figures continues with some spiders now on the shelves in his apartment. He walks back to his office and we see some berbs, real berbs actually, despite how strange they look.

These are pigeons, an English breed called powders. I had to go and check this into this one for sure. But that’s wild to see the burbs moving around. It gives it a real lived in feel. This. Walk that Syril has taken is overlaid with a conversation with his mother, with protestors in the background, protestors, chanting, stop the building, stop the empire.

Join us. This is all shown in subtitles. Syril’s mother is worried, thinking he’s making the wrong choice, thinking the job on croissant was better, but here he seems to be thriving and he’s better able to deal with his mother. We don’t quite get Syril car as Michael Scott, though. I’m sure Disney could milk a few spinoff seasons out of that if they wanted to.

But is Syril bugged? It looks like someone is listening in and Syril’s mother is worried, but he advised her that what she’s hearing about Ghorman is propaganda where they may have to have loyalty oaths just to keep their jobs and in 2025 Andor the whiplash effect is still in full force. Syril’s mom tells him: “don’t become too much of an individual”, and whoa.

Syril’s mom repeats the core imperial ideology for its citizens like. To fit in and go along, and this is an empire that thought the solution to building an army was to clone them. After all they want unity of thought. I wonder where Syril’s mother got the line. It feels like a catchphrase that you’d see on a billboard in John Carpenter’s “They Live”.

I’m literally shook. Syril takes it in stride though. But while Syril has a better handle on dealing with his mother, at least at a galactic distance, the spies who are listening in find are terrifying. But despite their fear, they decide that Syril might make a good candidate to contact for their cause to quote action him before he is replaced.

So Syril is a target and he’s approached by a spider vendor in the plaza, and I thought these were action figures, but they’re actually dried versions of the spiders from the video. In the first episode, I assumed that they were huge, perhaps like Sheila sized, but I realized that that’s part of the propaganda pitch and probably what were being shown to imperial citizens, like Syril’s mother as part of the propaganda campaign too.

Anyways, Syril unravels the message and then sneaks back into the office, but he’s bait. He’s undergone some imperial trade craft crash course over the last year and is actually using his quote unquote real job as a front to try and make contact with the Ghorman resistance and what’s going on. He shows up at the meeting as a civilian and watches what’s going on.

It feels more like a union hall, and we’re witness to an. Ongoing dialogue where the citizens are airing complaints about imperial trade interference, regulations, tariffs and certainty, and oof. This might be another example of the biter mean H effect or the frequency er illusion where. You know, we see something and now we’re exposed to it everywhere, or we start seeing it everywhere.

But seeing this here now hits home hard. The audience in the trade hall is interesting. A lot of ’em have this white shirt, black vest combo going on. Not all of them though. And I’m wondering if there’s some connection to a certain Corellian pilot that we’re gonna come to meet in Andor season four.

We’ll put a pin on that for later. The audience, one that Karn was asked he gives a rather weak the strength of feeling response. Like what does he feel there? It’s this strength of feeling like, what does that even mean? But the audience is incense. There’s a long history here, going back to about 16 years ago, and Grand Moff Tarkin killed five un 500 unarmed Ghormans in the plaza, and I guess that will link up to season four of Andor as well.

One of the more vocal union members does some kind of elbows up gesture and they are not happy about the building that the imperials are doing. The one that’s taking place right now. And of course, Syril flips us all back to Dedra on the quick. She’s busy. Meetings in the ISB boardroom, and they’re struggling with processing all the arrests they’re taking in.

There’s machinations going on here. Wheels within wheels and cliques and factions meet after the boardroom meeting. It’s like Succession or Severance, but with blasters overall, I’m impressed with how many of the officers have stuck around since the first season because I was under the impression that Imperial turnover was higher, to be quite honest.

But Dedra is doing more than it seems as Luthen soon finds out his plant. Lonnie takes the express elevator to heck to meet with Luthen, who is all business, and he lets him know what’s going on in the ISB quote “The smear campaign is an opening move, not an end game” end quote. And Dedra is running Ghorman in secret, even from other members of the ISB.

Luthen’s got a lot of irons in the fire and we’re taken to what looks like a rebel base and meet Saw Gerrera and his crew again, taking delivery of tech from Luthen, some specialized equipment that does something fancy, I’m sure.

Meanwhile, Mon Mothma is working the Imperial angle, fulfilling her role as a senator, of course, trying to build a coalition, willing to vote against the actions being taken against Ghorman.

We see many of the senators she’s talking to are like aliens of various forms after the Star Wars fashion, of course, but we haven’t seen many. Overall. I’m left with an impression of like colonialism here, but I’m not sure if that’s the right word for it. I just wanted to put a pin into like. The appearance and the prevalence or not of the aliens that we’re seeing within the Star Wars universe, through the lens of Andor, one of the politicos or one of the other politicos that she’s speaking with, tells her that “she’s confusing criminality and politics here”, to which she responds.

“Why, are we finding criminals are making them?” So the demonizing and manufacturing of consent that began in episode one. The last episode we talked about, it continues here as well. And of course, we open. The episode. This episode with Bix having another bad dream, something straight out of synth-tok with big buttons at a fader visible in the foreground or whatever machine was in her dream, she wakes into another nightmare where we hear again that “everyone has their own rebellion:, and Cassian makes the save. Bix is struggling with guilt and Cassian is struggling with being normal, getting Bix to tell him that the mission is dinner. I like this touch of normalcy from them, for them though that at its heart Andor as a show about the lives of regular citizens in the empire, but it’s not easy, and Bix struggles.

Highlight a key point quote: “If I’m giving up everything I want to win, we have to!” end quote. So when Luthen shows up to ask Cassian a question, the titular question of the episode, he’s kinda gotta.

Which leads us right into episode five titled “I Have Friends Everywhere” or maybe “Caught in a three-way dance, just like Gordon Lightfoot sang”. In either event, Cassian gets to walk through Ghorman as a fashion designer, seeing some of the sites that we’ve already been introduced to, but perhaps oblivious to some of the significance of them.

It’s kind of cool, but there was a moment at about the 8 45 mark that threw me for a loop at, as I think the exact same set or building rather, was used in bong June hose Mickey 17, with the circular stair. One of the few bits of pre-release coverage for Andor season two I caught by accident was that Tony Gilroy had mentioned how doing Andor was like filming four movies back to back and that they use practical sets for the most part as opposed to the volume used in other Star Wars shows like the Mandalorian.

So it’s not surprising that a vaguely futuristic real world shows up twice. It’s just surprising that I saw it twice within about a month. The other thing I found kind of jarring was at about the 28, 30 minute mark where. There’s a TV show playing on a monitor while Bix is kind of zoned out. This is new to my knowledge within the Star Wars universe.

We don’t see much in the way of other media or television specifically, or branding or advertisements, really. It’s one of the things that set it apart from other cyberpunk shows, and again, thinking of like Blade Runner here and the neon signs and billboards everywhere, that idea of a Diegetic TV show, one serving as an entertainment, has largely been absent in a show about the Wars. Naturally, I guess.

Overall Cassian isn’t too impressed by what he sees out of the Ghormans and soon gets a pickup from Luthen and I kind of popped when we see him setting up for and cruising into hyperspace. It’s assumed to exist in the setting, but it’s kind of a treat when we don’t see it much.

Luthen’s got some problems and Cassian not doing his job is only one of them. For Luthen, one of the bugs planted in a forged piece of art might be discovered when an audit has done of the work. So he has one chance to get it out. And meanwhile Saw Gerrera, in between shouting “comrades” after killing a traitor and shouting “revolution is not for the sane” has plans to switch targets on a different heist.

And of course, the Ghormans are being led into going through with their heist too. Despite Cassian’s misgivings, they are of course being baited into it by Nedra from afar, telling your commander that “they need to see what winning feels like”. So we have a triple heist coming together in the final episode.

How exciting. This is where the Gordon Lightfoot reference comes in. It’s time for the party.

And a party it is indeed, with episode six titled “What a Festive Evening”, AKA “Calibrate Your Enthusiasm” and when that line was uttered by the ISB leader, Major Partagaz, I nearly lost it. It was something right out of Demolition Man, where Wesley Snipes was asked, “what’s your boggle”? but does this connection make any sense? I don’t think so. Maybe only to me, but I chortled heartily and my enthusiasm was set to the max.

We’ve got multiple heists going on and a party happening too, so let’s get into it. This is where we get that lovely Blade Runner-esque shot of Coruscant with the flying cars coming in for a landing at the top of the building, touching down and departing, and the wealth disparity is clearly on display.

The party is mostly for the elite, though not all of them may be enjoying it. Showing that politics is pretty much the same everywhere, earlier on in the episode, Pen Firtha tells us that it’s going to be “hard to stuff a whole year’s worth of insincerity into three nights”. But Mon Mothma tells him, “he’ll figure it out”.

We cut to the Senate with some aliens making a speech. And if you had told me in 2004 that I would pop for the Imperial Senate to show up in a Star Wars Show again, I might have given you a bit of a side eye. But it does happen. And again, later when the party actually takes place, we see Senator Organa and I kind of pop for that too.

Seeing this episode on the same night as the 2025 Met Gala, I was getting kick out of seeing the party and the distinction wasn’t lost. That dualism that we’re seeing throughout the show in both season one and two, the high life and the low life, and what it is like for the elites and then the regular citizens of the Empire and these regular citizens are sometimes.

Imperial officers as well. It holds true for them too. As several of the officers who end up in the attendance realize this isn’t really a regular occurrence and they may never be back and they should enjoy the festivities. They’re there by dint of their position and is for the most part, an upper class party.

Not everyone is in attendance at the party; Cassian is sitting this one out. Luthen calls him out explicitly telling him “This fury, this lack of control is violating every protocol we live by”. Luthen thinks Cassian needs to think like a leader with respect to the Ghorman, something that he is definitely not doing.

And so the heists take place without him. In his place on Ghorman are Vel and Cinta, the very capable lovers from the heist arc we saw in episodes four to six of season one. So we have that mirror once again. Their reunion is touching, but it starts to feel like a Top Gun level of foreshadowing like Danny Glover saying he’s getting too old for this and is set to retire.

I haven’t seen Top Gun however, so my reference was actually Lieutenant Junior Grade Pete “Dead Meat” Thompson from Hot Shots. Instead, mentally I kept thinking he was portrayed by John Cryer, but he played Wash Out instead.

Vel is sent to help the Ghorman’s with the prep, but as they state during the planning sessions, “that prep is useless if you can’t follow orders”, and this is feeling like a rejected Batman lecture to Robin on prep time or just some more foreshadowing.

We return to the party when Luthen’s assistant Kleya is getting the job done. She’s a little bit ruthless, and she’s working on “the Book of the Blind” end quote, to remove the bug. There’s some symbolism there of the bug embedded in that particular book. And while this is happening, we have a sighting of one of the Imperial big boys, and this, again, feels like a parallel to our own planet, where the high ranking elites of the Imperials move through the party with ease and are accustomed to this life of luxury.

Krennic is talking about quote: “how insurgencies have a long history of puffing up their failures and. Criminals love to lie. Who wants to die for lawless ineptitude?” and the show goes right out to state it. I think it was Luthen who said: “My rebel is your terrorist. Something like that.” Obiwan is here in spirit, even though he is very much alive on Tatoonine in this timeline, but you know, letting us know it’s all about the point of view.

Kleya gets the job done just in time, and the other heist is going off relatively smoothly too, though the imperials are monitoring things via Syril, who’s on a bridge with a pair of goggles, and for the most part are just letting things proceed.

The only hitch is in the Ghormans themselves. As the line about prep comes home to roost, then they either wander off due to a lack of discipline or interfere, and in the confusion, Cinta gets shot with a blaster. A blaster that wasn’t supposed to be there, and the Ghorman heist becomes a pyrrhic victory.

We finish off with Bix going into the revenge business against Inigo Montoya’s advice, and she tracks down her torture and locks him into his own device if only for a moment.  Her attempt to leave was slowed down for about as long as Indiana Jones facing a swordsman in a marketplace takes, and Cassian helps with the explosive finish as we get the Robert Rodriguez slow-walk away from an explosion for the closer, but it feels cyberpunk as heck. Now we’ve gotta wait a year to find out what happens next.

Once again, thank you for joining us on the ImplausiPod. I’m your host, Dr. Implausible. You can reach me at Dr implausible@implausipod.com, and you can also find the show archives and transcripts of all our previous shows@implausipod.com as well. I’m responsible for all elements of the show, including research, writing, mixing, mastering, and music, and the show is licensed under a Creative Commons 4.0 ShareAlike license.

You may have also noted that there was no advertising during the program and there’s no cost associated with the show, but it does grow from word of mouth of the community. So if you enjoy the show, please share it with a friend or two and pass it along. There’s also a buy me a coffee link on each show at implausipod.com, which will go to any hosting costs associated with the show.

Once again, thank you for joining us. Until next time, take care and have fun.

(This was originally published as Implausipod Episode 44 on April 22nd, 2025.)

https://www.implausipod.com/1935232/episodes/17047980-e0045-star-wars-andor-season-2-week-1

We return to Star Wars Andor over the next 4 weeks, starting with first three episodes released on April 22, 2025, titled “One Year Later”, “Sagrona Teema” and “Harvest”. Join us for a recap of the three episodes, and commentary on the themes we see within, and that have carried over from Season 1 (which we recapped in Episode 44).

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With Star Wars Andor returning for season two, we return to our coverage over the next four weeks, starting with the first three episodes released on April 22nd, 2025, titled “One Year Later”, “Sagrona Teema” and “Harvest”. Join us for a recap of those episodes and commentary on the themes that we’re seeing then have carried over from season one in this episode of the ImplausiPod.

Welcome to the ImplausiPod, a podcast about the intersection of art, technology, and popular culture. I’m your host, Dr. Implausible. I. One of my first impressions watching Star Wars Andor as I described early last episode, is it was the most cyber punky Star Wars had ever been. It captured the mood and feel that we saw in early cyberpunk movies like Blade Runner, and that’s held up and carried through in unique ways in the start of season two and old school cyberpunk fans from the eighties will likely know what I’m talking about.

We’ll get to that it shows up a little bit later, though. We start off with slightly advancing the timeline and firmly pinning down what occurs within the largest Star Wars cannon with a flash of BBY4 going across the screen, which I guess stands for before the Battle of Yavin. It took me a little bit to figure out what that extra B was for, but I guess we’re defining the ending of a new hope as the most singular canon event in the Star Wars universe and

I think that’s largely true.

So before we get started with “one year later”, or an episode that might be titled The Empire Sanction, which I’ll get into in a little bit. Let’s see what’s going on. We’ll do a quick round table with our players. We see a place called NAR Test Facility 73 in Cassian, and is doing spy type stuff, showing up as an imperial pilot working towards the extraction of a test fighter.

We’re taken to a farmhouse on a rather bucolic planet and we see a very creepy looking dude, which turns out to be Bix having a nightmare. We’re taken to a high society party of some sort, where Mon Mothma and the various other Coruscant players are engaged in some kind of party or perhaps a wedding. So while everybody’s spread all over the literal galactic map, they’re largely doing the kinds of things that they were doing before.

Their story arcs are progressing along the paths that we’d likely imagine. But the most critical point is where we’re introduced to a scene right out of a movie from the 1970s and given the release date of Star Wars and New Hope that that might not be by accident, we’re given an overhead shot of something called the Maltheen Divide, and it looks like a mountain fortress.

And my first thought is that this feels like the Eiger Sanction, or maybe if we’re gonna look at another Clint Eastwood film, maybe Where Eagles Dare, which to be honest, I always confuse with The Eagle Has Landed, which don’t, doesn’t really have the same plot. Both these films, much like Stallone’s Cliffhanger, and I don’t know, Inception several decades later, focus on the infiltration of a mountain fortress or perhaps having to risk things on the side of a mountain.

And I don’t know if that’s gonna play out later on in the season. Where Eagles Dare is really typical of a certain kind of big budget, sixties or seventies action movie, you know? A war movie set in World War II with a lot of spy type sequences as well. Drawing on that James Bond influence that was popular at the time.

The modern equivalent in the superhero era might be some of the scenes in Captain America First Avenger, where they’re fighting the Nazis in the fortress in the mountains. And that explicit link to the fascists is what maybe brings everything together. We’re brought into a conference with a number of high level imperial officers, a meeting that where they’re outlining a campaign they’re gonna have to undertake to destroy a planet in order to extract the minerals there.

They introduced us to a creature called a Ghorman spider, and I guess I’ll have to stop referring to Syril Karn as Lieutenant Gorman now, as it might get confusing. But this is also interesting is the Ghorman Front is something that was specifically mentioned by Saw Guerrera in season one. And here the Ghormans are being mentioned as a new target for the Empire.

So I don’t know if they were involved with the rebels before or after the events were seen here, but that was just a little confusing to me. In any event, what we’re seeing here with the Imperial planning session is something fascinating. It’s them drawing up the cassu belli for an action that they know that they need to take, in this case, to get the minerals for a power source for something large and figure out how they’re actually going to go about, for lack of a better term, manufacturing consent for the actions that they’re going to undertake.

And this is something we don’t normally think about when we look at the empire in the Star Wars universe. That there is a political wing to it and that the Empire needs to engage in propaganda as much as any of their real world analogs do. So it’s here where we’re introduced to two characters that are about as likable and sleazy as Burke from aliens.

You know, they give off that same kind of vibe and they spend some time riffing off. The potential scenarios that they could use to sell this war to the larger imperial populace. Also present at this meeting is Dedra the Imperial Officer, who we spent a lot of time with in the first season, and here she has an alternative take.

When pressed on it, you suggests that propaganda alone won’t get it done, and you may need some covert actors who can be trusted to do the wrong thing at the right time. I know there’s probably some other parallels that have been drawn forth about this planning session, but we’ll likely get into that in future episodes.

The other main element of this one year later episode is of course, Cassian Andor, who as we saw at the beginning, was, uh, posing as an imperial pilot in order to abscond with a prototype tie fighter, we can tell it’s not your normal tie fighter because in the ensuing chase, it bounces off the cliff walls a couple times and from every other Star Wars show I’ve ever seen, we know that a tie fighter would instantly explode if that happens.

So it must be something special. Don’t mean to mock it; the chase during his escape is actually pretty cool and I was invested in it. From there, he manages to escape and get to the rendezvous point at another planet where he is supposed to meet with his connect. But things have gone a little bit awry and we meet members of yet another rebel faction who we learn.

And a little bit later the Maya Pei Brigade, and again, this is another name that was mentioned by Saw Guerrera in season one and I, I like how they’re drawing all these elements together. It’s building up into a richer universe by the fact that there are these connects with what could be just a throwaway line in an earlier episode, in an earlier season, but it all builds to something much larger.

The other thing we learn is that the rebels may not necessarily be sending their best and brightest on this as the, my Pie Brigade has some internal issues, to say the least, but I think we’ll learn a little bit more about that in the other episodes. Hang tight.

And we return with episode two called Sagrona Teema, which I think stands for Coupling Coruscant style. Throughout this episode, we have a very clearly defined shift as we touch base with various characters. We had met originally in Andor season one, and see how they’ve paired up some in ways that were well known and some in ways that were only shipped about.

It’s at this point too where the shows started to feel very much like early seasons of Game of Thrones with adults in adult relationships, dealing with adult problems and accusations of marital infidelity and other interrelationships going on. It adds so much to the breadth of the Star Wars universe to be able to step away from space wizard power fantasies.

But it made the characters that we’ve come to know seem human and real and relatable despite living in a galaxy far, far away long, long ago. Of the three main threads we have, of course, the main one is the impending nuptials of Mon Mothma’s daughter. As well as the incipient threat of the forthcoming audit on the farm, and of course, our namesake character’s, predicament of being the prisoner in a tug of war between competing rebel factions.

But amongst all of these, I think one of the things that stood out the most, one of the couples that stood out the most was Syril Karn and Dedra. We see Syril Karn early, pumping himself up to the newer recruit, talking about how his particular actions a year earlier were crucial in helping fight against the rebel threat.

But. We of course, as the audience know the truth about the level of his involvement. It’s interesting that while he is suffering from a severe case of main character syndrome here, I mean the series isn’t called Karn after all, but rather his need to pump himself up to be his own hype man within the imperial hierarchy, I think speaks volumes to how things are actually run.

It also speaks to the character of the men that the Imperium appeals to. So now once again, we see Syril Karn with a small modicum of authority, start to use that in ways that we’ve witnessed before. The other interesting revelation with respect to Syril was us learning of the change of his living circumstances we’re again, treated to a walkthrough of a sparsely or severely decorated imperial apartment with appliances right out of a Braun catalog or something with a vaguely Swedish name from Ikea.

And as Deidre returns home from that conference, we find that Syril not expecting her to be there, has been ill prepared and has, and has basically gone feral, engaged in what we in 2025 would probably call “rotting”, not really looking after himself too much. It’s probably something he needs to spend a few moments of reflection on and actually like come to terms with, but that revelation may come at some later point in time.

In the meantime, Deidre still has much work to do with the Ghormans. She’s been somewhat reprimanded for the previous escapades with Andor. Told to catch them first, then make them famous. But she has been also advised that Ghorman is a gift and she can really make a name for herself if that plays out. So we see career moves and coupling moves, but in almost all these couples, we see issues of communications.

While there are some problems with communications at the wedding, there’s no place where the communications are worse. Then at the rebel standoff with Cassian Andor caught in the middle as a prisoner, Cassian’s predicament seems to be compounded by the fact that it doesn’t look like there’s anybody really in charge with the Maya Pei brigade that’s currently on planet.

Some of the brigadier will claim authority, but that can be largely contextual and is often ignored. They often devolve into like infighting between the various groups, and there’s a lot of negotiation going on. But the fascinating thing about the brigadeers is that despite this infighting, they’re still able to get things done, especially something that requires massive amounts of effort and a lot of time, witnessed them in their attempts to move the tie fighter across the surface of the forest.

Now they’re trying to do this so they can turn the fighter’s cannons on their rivals and blast them away, but that isn’t the point. Each collective pull on the ropes only moves the tie fighter a few centimeters.

It’s so slow that the opposing side can measure how long it’s going to take before they’re actually in position. And that’s gonna be hours. It’s like our ancient ancestors moving a huge stone into position as part of some monolith. It takes forever, and we wonder how it can get done. Slowly, but with determination.

So we’re witnessing this power of collective action, which is in complete contrast to the Imperial style, which is like a top down hierarchical format. There are hierarchies within the rebels. Of course, it is a rebel alliance, after all. But the other fascinating thing about the rebels trapped on the planet, aside from how hungry they are and their willingness to eat almost anything, is how they end up resolving their problem.

They have a face off where they drop everything and “everything means everything”. They’re referring of course to their weapons and some callback to Mad Max beyond Thunderdome, and as they set up for the dual or the face off, complete with seconds, no less. We find out that their negotiation is rather non-lethal.

It’s basically a game of roshambo, rock, paper, scissors, Spock and lizard are clearly absent as they belong in another universe. While this extended duel is taking place with everybody present and wrapped attention, it gives enough cover for Cassian Andor to finally make good on his escape. And I think it makes.

Since here to cut quickly to Bix and talk about what’s going on in the farming planet. The first thing that I found amusing, I guess, is the little detail of like, how do you make a farm seem space, age? And here we had the funky, like over complicated wells as well as the upside down silo that we see located around the area, and especially in those far away overhead shots.

I get it that if you have grav technology, it probably makes sense to lift the whole things up so you can funnel it down at the bottom. But I mean, humans have been storing grain for millennia and we have a few systems worked out for it. It just seemed so odd, like a signifier that this is again, “the future”, of sci-fi in some way with even like the tiniest little things.

It’s amazing. But the other thing going on on the farm, of course, is that the imperials have shown up with a lot of implicit threat that they’re going to be returning, and the full audit or accounting will be taking place. And there’s a lot of discussion about the legality of the presence of certain people.

And in 2025, that’s so on point that it seems almost unbelievable amidst all this discussion about the undocumented working the farm and people worried about how closely an inspection will look. We also have coupling as the young gentleman who looks much like Bruno Mars and the girl are out in the field further complicate things as the imperials show up ahead of schedule.

Stay tuned, and I think this bridges us in to our last set of coupling as well. There’s a lot going on with this impending marriage. Like I said, it hearkens back to some of what we saw in earlier shows, like a Game of Thrones. So we have groupings and alliances and whispers and glances, and. All of this is taking place amongst the level of intrigue that’s going on as some people are heavily involved in the Rebel Alliance and others not so, and great lengths must be gone to, to ensure that those involved, like Luthen and Mon Mothma maintain their safety and distance from those who may be less involved or perhaps not committed to the cause.

Some of this discussion takes place during a long hike up a mountainside, which resembles a pilgrimage in China or Europe. Perhaps it’s one of those, I know I’ve seen it before kind of things, but I’m not sure exactly where, but it’s part of their tradition. And this tradition also leads us to a ceremony where we get a speech by Mon Mothma’s husband, and I guess it’s high time I learned his name, which is Perrin Fertha and the speech is about the words, the title of the show, Sagrona Teema. Sagrona apparently just means welcome, whereas Sagrona Teemma in combination means a toast to your health. And in a comment, Perrin mentions how the language tends to add these depths of layers as more words are added to a phrase.

His toast is a bit of a callback to an earlier moment in season one where he asked Mon Mothma, why must everything be so sad? And I think we called that out in our previous episode. But here he goes on to state quote. “My hope is you learn from each pass through this constant cloud of sadness. I. Pleasure, Gaity Amusement.

These are the hidden things. The music buried beyond all this noise.” End quote. He’s talking about doing things with joy in the face of oppression, and that really stuck out back in January. Over on the blog, I made a post with a similar sentiment. It was done on January 26th titled Creativity in the Age of Strife.

I was responding to a video interview with Heather Cox Richardson, where her advice was to behave with joy as a means of resistance against an authoritarian government to quote, “do the things that matter to you and that you can bring to the people around you. That we can meet the moment and as scholars be honest, by doing the best scholarly work that we can to contribute back to humanity.”

I had made a comment there how doing media commentary seems like such a small thing, but as the my pipe brigade said before, they’re dual. Everything means everything.

And that joy takes us into episode three, titled Harvest, or perhaps “That’s not a scythe. This is a scythe,” but vague references to Crocodile Dundee and The Simpsons aside, there was a moment that was just pure joy for me. Right at the beginning of the episode, I mentioned part of what drew me into Andor was that it was one of the most cyber punky Star Wars shows we had ever seen.

The Dank and the rain and the neon lights of the first episode of the first season really kind of bringing that to the forefront. And there’s a moment here with Cassian where he is dealing with an intergalactic communication device where he plugs in the cord to the quarter inch jack, and that just sent me, it’s such like a eighties or early nineties sci-fi trope before various near field communication protocols like Bluetooth and wifi became prevalent in our computing devices.

We had that idea that you had to be like physically connected to be jacked in. We still see that in some places like the Matrix, but that notion of the trodes, whatever, being jacked in or connected physically to the computer was such a prevalent trope. It was like a signifier, right?

And seeing it here at the intersection of Star Wars and Shadowrun and synth enthusiasts and echoing back to the earliest days of telephone switchboards. Just it was a moment for me of just like pure joy. So I wanted to share that with you. Now, the joy was short lived as it’s a very dark episode, but. There’s other moments of joy as well, the harvest on the planet, the wedding day.

These are times of celebration as well. But we’ll stick with Cassian for just a quick second here because the one thing that really stuck out, aside from the quarter inch stereo jack, is the lack of opsec. Like there’s supposed to be speaking in code on a secure channel. He’s in a stolen imperial fighter, posing as an imperial test pilot for a rebel alliance where exposure would bean death.

And he’s been working with them for a year and he can’t even speak in basic coded phrases or language that, you know, they could write in a way that even we could understand as an audience. And it, it just struck me, it was frustrating. Like what kind of a, how are the rebels actually not like all lined up and dead?

And maybe that is reflective of the incompetence of the Imperials, but Oh, it was just like. Frustrating. That lack of OPSEC led to a further breakdown in discipline as he takes the stolen fighter heading into what was clearly defined as like an imperial blockade, like what’s he gonna do? But this is a Star Wars story. Of course. We’ll get back to that in a sec.

We also have another moment that could be joyous, but is often fraught with tension. And that’s meeting the parents of one’s partner. And that happens with Syril and Dedra. We show Syril neurotically going through great lengths to prepare the apartment to make it just perfect.

And then we see that his mother has finally arrived and met Dedra for the first time. Things don’t go perfectly during this weird fondue like meal, I guess. Stabbing things with a sharp object and cooking dinner in front of you has a really Imperial aesthetic to it, though. During the course of this, Syril’s mother manages to induce several of his neuroses, and while he nopes out for a bit, Nedra drops the hammer on Syril’s mom leaving in no uncertain terms how the relationship is going to continue going forward.

And while Dedra is definitely an antagonist in so much what goes on here, we can appreciate this insight into her competence here. Like I said, it’s the little things while the overall scenes between Syril and Nedra and Syril’s mom were cringe and a little tough to watch. The payoff was worth it.

There’s some other cringe moments that take place during the wedding as well. The introduction of the piece. Art, I just, this is a bit of a bugaboo for me. I guess. Whenever we see this, whether it’s in fantasy or s fiction or modern media in any form, the piece of art that they uncovered was supposedly 25,000 years old, and I just wanna state how long.

And ancient. That really is, I think sometimes these years get thrown around. I know when we’re talking about things like, uh, war Hammer 40 K and something from the 41st millennium, where we see it in the Dune universe as well. But the, a number of things that we have that have survived that length of time and would still be meaningful in some way to the audience.

Like here, there’s. 12 statues and they’ve recovered nine of them, uh, 25,000 years is a long, long time. And so to have this restored piece of artwork, I guess presented, speaks to again, the wealth and the dis wealth disparity that’s going on and what’s being shown. But also, I guess it just kind of throws me for a little bit.

You could say it’s 5,000 years and it would still be meaningful, but, um, sometimes it feels like the dates and timelines in these things are just thrown out just willy-nilly as this has moved away. We have cries of Tema from the previous episode and we drift into a dance. First dance, of course, as we often see in weddings, and then a much more joyous and celebratory.

One is everybody gets involved and Mon Mothma joins in and lets herself be carried away as she has to deal with the repercussions of what’s going on. Her friend, the banker, has been making inquiries that will have to be dealt with and the decision is being taken out of her hands. The scythe must fall. And that brings us, of course, to the harvest.

It struck me as interesting as we were introduced to it as the children were racing through the setup and we saw the various droids as assistants as well as a big beast and a few non-humans at the table, which has been rare. And, Andor usually we just saw a few dogs in Ferrix and I don’t know how many other non-humans we’ve seen total.

I haven’t really been keeping count, but I’m sure there’s some. It’s just, it seems so rare that it jumps out. When you think of that being something that’s really identifiable with the Star Wars universe, but right now it’s the humans are rebels that are hiding away, that are having the problems. There’s an incoming inspection and they’re getting some forged documents that would allow them to get away.

Again, things don’t go to plan and they have to bug out. This leads to one of the darker moments in the entire onscreen Star Wars Canon, and I say that with some context. Of course, there is a destruction of a planet at the hands of the Imperials, several times, the torture and subsequent imprisonment of Han Solo again by the Imperials, the murder of innocent children by Anakin Skywalker, working on behalf of the Imperials.

It’s a fairly dark universe, even if it isn’t fully war hammer or 40K grim dark, and we know who the baddies are, right? You can see that even in the imagery of some of the vehicles that’s evoked when they show up at the farm. The hover vehicles that are reminiscent of the half tracks used by Germany in World War II, the Volkswagen Kubelwagons, and the S-D-K-F-Z tens and elevens that were seen in so many of those movies that we mentioned at the start of this episode.

The Eagle has Landed, Where Eagles Dare, Force 10 from Navarone, the big budget action films of the sixties and seventies. So when they’re showing up here, when that design aesthetic is being used, it’s a clear indicator to us who the baddies are. And as the crisis unfolds on the ground, Cassian Andor is able to break through the blockade and arrive. The tie fighter, the Tie Avenger, becomes the scythe in his hands reaping through the Imperial forces, making short work of them, but sadly not quickly enough, as his longtime friend Brasso has fallen to a bolt from a storm trooper’s blaster.

So the joy in the episode is tempered by sorrow and loss felt by Cassian, and shared by Mon Mothma, driving her dance. And throughout the ending of the episode, we’ll see where this dance takes us as we look at future episodes of Andor season two next time on the Implausipod.

Once again, thank you for joining us on the ImplausiPod. I’m your host, Dr. Implausible. You can reach me at Dr implausible@implausipod.com, and you can also find the show archives and transcripts of all our previous shows@implausipod.com as well. I’m responsible for all elements of the show, including research, writing, mixing, mastering, and music, and the show is licensed under Creative Commons 4.0 ShareAlike license.

You may have also noted that there was no advertising during the program and there’s no cost associated with the show. But it does grow from word of mouth of the community. So if you enjoy the show, please share it with a friend or two and pass it along. There’s also a buy me a coffee link on each show@impplazapod.com, which will go to any hosting costs associated with the show.

Once again, thank you for joining us. Until next time, take care and have fun.

(This was originally published as Implausipod Episode 44 on April 22nd, 2025.)

https://www.implausipod.com/1935232/episodes/16983572-e0044-star-wars-andor-season-1

What can we learn about the Star Wars universe from the lives of its regular inhabitants? What is life like under an authoritarian Empire? How does the resistance form, and who is behind it? And how can a show that first aired in 2022 capture the current age in 2025? Join us for a recap of the first season of Andor as a refresher before the second one airs beginning on April 22, 2025.

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On the eve of the launch of Star Wars Andor season two, we’re going to do a recap of the first season of the show and see if we can answer some of these questions. Over the next five weeks, we’ll be covering this show with a recap episode each week after it airs. So I hope you’ll join us as we take a deeper look inside the heart of the resistance and the empire in one of the greatest Star Wars stories ever told in these upcoming episodes of the ImplausiPod.

Welcome to the ImplausiPod, a podcast about the intersection of art, technology, and popular culture. I’m your host, Dr. Implausible, and as stated in this episode, we’ll be doing kind of a vibe recap of the entire first season of Andor. Back in 2024 after watching Star Wars Acolyte and thinking it was not too bad, kind of enjoying the story, a friend of the show suggested that I should check out Andor that it was quite fantastic television and I’m quite glad that I took them up on their suggestion Now, it did take me a little while to get through watching the show because

reasons, but there’s no time like the present. So let’s check it out. And if you are new or returning to this show and you haven’t been with me, as I do a recap before, well first of all, welcome. And again, this isn’t a point by point entry into each and every element of this show. This is more of a vibe recap.

It’s similar to the ones we did for Dr. Who in the recent seasons as seen in episode 40 with Dr. Who goes boom. So if you’re looking for a deep dive, this may not be the show for you. We’re looking more at the overall themes and meaning and the elements that stand out. So without further ado let’s get Into the Dank, which I believe is the title of the first episode, but it might also Bluedles or perhaps Casa, but why into the Dank?

Well, from the first scenes, this is perhaps the most Blade Runner esque I’ve ever seen a Star Wars property look like. It looks like it’s something right out of our cyberpunk primer if we are doing an Appendix C charting the rise of cyberpunk Andor would be included. And it’s totally capturing this feeling.

Sci-fi in the seventies and eighties seem to exist on this continuum between clean and gritty. Prior to that, it was almost all clean. Think of like Star Trek, the original series, or Kubrick’s 2001, and in the seventies it started getting messed up a little bit. You can think of this in shows like. The Starlost or the ruined space station, parts of Space:1999 or Star Wars itself, and things got even messier in the future as the seventies went on.

So we have this continuum of the two major properties. I think it was always Star Trek on one side, star Wars on the other, and then we had, I guess a third would probably be like the Aliens universe, the Weyland Yutani universe, which really kind of greased up the future and made space seem messy. From there, we got further into the eighties and the grim darks started to take hold of the science fiction imagination.

But we can think of all these properties existing as somewhere. On that continuum between clean and gritty, between shiny and greasy. And for some reason the grittier ends of the spectrum always had more of a cachet. They had a sense of authenticity. And that authenticity is something we’ll come back to a little bit later Andor has that authenticity in spades.

It feels like a lived-in universe. It feels credible and knowable and understandable, and we can relate to the characters, whether they’re humans, non-humans, or droids that we meet in the story. The other thing Andor has going forward is it’s very visually striking. Like the scene with the gloves on the wall and these patterns in the background and the shot later on of Bix climbing through a tube.

It’s really visually engaging in ways that I haven’t seen in a lot of the other Star Wars media. Granted, I haven’t seen everything, but I’ve bounced off a lot of the Star Wars media that’s been presented, and I think this is part of the reason why. Now, I’ll admit I’m not great with names. We’re introduced to a number of various characters as they flash around during an opening episode, which is kind of the way things work.

We meet Casa and Bix and Lieutenant Gorman and we have a flashback scene with some kids, which I’m assuming mean maybe Casa, but I don’t know. I hope that they don’t drag out this flashback thing for the entire season. Westworld, I’m looking at you, but if there is some kind of parallel flashback thing, I hope that they pay it off quick.

Don’t drag it out for more than you have to. And amidst all of this that’s going on, there’s one thing I really wanted to point out, and that’s the bluedles, which is probably not their official name, but I’m, I’m not gonna look up Wikipedia for anything here. It’s just not how I roll. The pointed is, is that the attention to detail, to the minutiae of daily life that the show owners have here in the Star Wars universe really shows there’s a lot of care that’s going into the production of the show. And that to me as a watcher means, okay, this bear’s checking this stuff out. ’cause if they’re putting that level of care into the making it, even if it’s an aside thing, like the bluedles, or maybe it was just a prop master having a joke or something like that, then there’s care going into the production of it.

And that means to me like, okay, this is worth paying attention to. It should pay off down the road. Not necessarily as. Chekhov’s bowl of noodles. Not everything has to have a deep significance, but it’s a signifier, right? It shows that they’re putting in the effort. It’s like the M and M’s test that Van Halen used to put in their contract riders.

If the producers are taking care of that level of detail, it means they’re also taking care of the lighting and the sound equipment and all the other stage setup stuff. So you look at the small details that show that attention to care is being paid. And so, yeah, with the. We have an overall great first impression, so let’s do this.

We’ve got a murder, we’ve got a mystery. We’ve got a Q 36 space modulator, and we’ve got a plot going on. Let’s get into the show and see how it goes.

Well, we talked about how sci-fi can be either grit or shiny, and Star Wars tends towards the gritty. Sometimes it can be very shiny. Indeed. And I think that’s my favorite part of Star Wars Andor episode two, which is titled, is that you Mr. Johnson? Or it might be That would be Me. But either way, it’s that Wild Bell at the beginning of the episode.

I guess this is a tubular bell of some kind, but regardless, it’s got layers to it. And some of those layers we talked about just a few moments ago with respect to episode one, that authenticity and attention to details, a signifier of quality, but it’s also that those layers have nothing necessarily to do with, you know,

the Force or Jedi, or all the sci-fi stuff, they’re just part of daily life. The fabric of the daily life for the people on this planet. And that’s one of the things we glossed over in a review of the previous episode, that the Imperials were treating this planet where the incident was taking place as a real backwater planet, you know, really on the periphery of the empire, which is why they didn’t have much of a presence there.

So they’re dealing with this other firm where we’re seeing the security guards from. Things are done a little bit differently here, and for a lot of the Star Wars shows or movies, that doesn’t necessarily seem to be the case. It almost echoes all the way back to the first movie to episode four, A New Hope where tattooing was just like way out in the middle of nowhere.

And then all the events took place more in the core. So we have that linkage to like early versions of the Star Wars universe and it really gives it some weight. And I like how it ties in with the mining themes and the stuff that we’re seeing as well with the guys. Sitting here striking the bell, we can see that it’s kind of been worn and bent in by years and years of use.

And again, it’s those visually striking set pieces that are jumping out at me. But if we look at the other main event from this episode, it’s the appearance of Mr. Johnson, in this case portrayed by Stella Skarsgard. We have this wonderful establishing shot where it looks out. Over the scenery in the town where this is all taking place.

And that’s amazing. And obviously I’m referring to him as Mr. Johnson because if Andor as a cyber punky Star Wars, then there clearly must be one mr. Johnson here, right? I have, again, only seen two episodes and I have no idea where this is going, but that remains to be seen. We know how the Mr. Johnson plot plays out and.

That’s the reason why I’m calling our Mr. Johnson by the actor’s real name Stellan Skarsgard, is that challenge that comes when you have a lot of those “Hey, it’s that guy” character actors, right? I find it’s really hard for myself at least, to separate the appearance of an actor that’s recognizable from having a role in the show, right?

You can see that with a lot of. I think it happens with HBO shows as well as Law And Order and other serialized shows on television where if somebody recognizable shows up, you know they’re gonna have an impact on the plot just by the dent of them showing up in that position. So sometimes it can be a bit of a giveaway.

Right? That we’re hinting that there’s more going on taking place with this character than we’re originally suspecting. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, and I’m not suggesting by any means that Stellan Skarsgard should stop acting, but just, you know, I wish we had some more of those kind of actors that we can spread it around a little bit.

And these are. Incredibly trivial quibbles, right? We have amazing actors in key roles with strong attention to detail, playing to the background elements, and it’s gonna be fantastic, I think. What more could we ask for as fans? Really the second episode of Andor is one where we’re introduced to more characters and there’s more moving parts kind of happening, but we’re starting to see where that’s gonna go, but we don’t necessarily know yet.

This is one of those moving pieces that introduces a nuance to the board, so we’ll stick with it. We’ve also got the backstory with the kids going on as well, and a few other things I haven’t touched on, but we’ll see what’s up in episode three.

And in episode three, the hammering continues of those tubular bells, which is titled, I think 38 Simulated with Lieutenant Gorman featured heavily here, but it might actually be called The Reckoning. So I’ll let you cue up a tune by, except in the background, or we talk about this guy, Syril Karn. Now, I haven’t mentioned his name up to this point, even though he is featured heavily in the show.

When I do a review, I usually don’t refer to anything else I don’t like. Trailers are spoilers and I don’t look at other sites. I don’t check other reviews. I’m just going on the text of the film, or in this case show as presented and seeing what it brings to me and drawing those associations for myself.

I’m terrible with names. I’ll admit and I’ll catch on eventually, but I’ve been referring to Lieutenant Gorman here as Lieutenant Gorman because of that association that name has, with another text. In this case, the genre defining film. Aliens, which I hope to be talking about in depth later on this year when we look at the Weyland Yutani cinematic universe.

But in that, Lieutenant Gorman was an iconic character that had a lot of the same newbie energy that we see here with Syril Karn, especially in the drop scene. Referring to 38 simulated drops, but no live action. So when we use another character as a reference, that referent the thing that’s being referred to, brings all their associations and tropes and stereotypes and everything else with them.

So we kind of overload that operator by using that name. There’s a whole lot more there to unpack and there’s a lot going on here with serial carn as well. We can think of the role of the Imperials and the junior officer here who’s not imperial, but related to it, uh, with their first big assignment. But the one thing that really stood out and.

There’s a lot to like here. The one thing that really stood out is those tubular bells, or rather it’s the cultural practice of the hammering that we saw in the beginning of episode two that came through from the miners and the workers in the previous episode. It’s kind of like a line through all of these episodes that we see in the local practices for the people, but.

How the imperials or imperial adjacent, uh, security officers react to it. And as they’re walking through the streets and reacting to the hammering of the populace on the wind chimes and pieces of metal, they think that it’s all intimidation, which is. Absolutely the wrong take, right? The Imperials as a colonial administrative force absolutely misread this situation with arrogance on the level of some of Rick Martel’s best heel work, but also something that’s going to cost the Imperials dearly.

Yeah, so for Lieutenant Gorman or Cyril Karn, we have that moment where their arrogance comes back to bite them. Not that that ever happened to Rick Martel either, but all these references, all these associations can come to add more layers to the story, not just internally like we saw with the hammers.

Bells carrying through from episode one to the next, but also the external associations as we draw on the tropes of other characters. And that makes it something really interesting as viewing, not just from a Star Wars perspective, but you know the story that they’re trying to tell. But there’s a lot going on in episode three and 14 minutes into this podcast.

We haven’t really even talked much about Cassian Andor himself. So let’s get into that because we see him here as a child and. Oh my child. Can you leave your family behind? Can you travel the darkest road? That quote is what’s running through my mind. As we look at Cassie and Andor and flashback, we see that mirroring the juxtaposition between Andor, and the past and the present.

The mirror between the corporation and the rebels, or the. Rebels in the different worlds that we see colliding. The main point of the reckoning of, uh, episode three of the series that is, is about Cassie and Andor and the impact that he as a character has on those around him and the lives that are impacted by the decisions that he makes.

Sometimes those decisions are very centered on the self, even though from. Outward appearances, they may seem to align with another cause. We can see that with him smashing the imperial tech as a child in this, in the crash spaceship, and then the juxtaposition of that, the scrap yards in the part of the episode.

It might look like it aligns, but the path that Cassian Andor is on is rather different. That bit that I quoted a few moments ago is paraphrased from an almost 40-year-old novel by Guy Gavriel Kay. It’s book three of the Fionavar Tapestry called the Darkest Road. It’s a pretty good fantasy series if you’ve never read it.

I guess nowadays we’d call it a Isakai novel or something where there’s a blending of real world people within a kind of melange of Arturian and Fantasy mythos. Kay was a Tolkien scholar at the time, so there’s a lot of those really classic fantasy tropes within that novel. It’s, uh, good. Check it out.

And a lot of that series is really about fate and destiny. And that brings us back to our main character Andor, and the path that they’re on, the choices that they make, and those that are left behind that cannot accompany the character on their full journey. Well, some of the characters will come back during the course of the show.

Like I said, it’s, I’m going in pretty spoiler free here, so I don’t know, but I’m just making assumptions based on how traditional storytelling, which, if it’s told as anything, is that likely some of these characters will show up again, but this feels like it’s all been prelude that the first. Two and a half episodes has all been getting us to this point.

This has been act one and the episodes that we’ve seen to this point are all connected and it’s been fantastic.

As we close off episode three, we shift into the next set of episodes, but there’s one last part I’d like to bring up with respect to episode three, kind of a bridging element, and I think this applies to Star Wars as a whole as well, and it’s the role of droids within the Star Wars universe. In other episodes of the podcast, we’ve really been looking at, uh, the nature of artificial intelligence in a lot of ways.

And in episode 29 and 30, we talked about that idea of the Butlerian Jihad and the roles that robots have within society. And we talked a little bit about that in episode 39 on the California ideology as well. What triggered this for me was that appearance of that stairs droid that greeted tel scars guard as his land, or came into the station and allowed him to disembark from the craft that he was traveling on.

It reminded me so much of the butter robot from within Rick and Morty, whose only purpose was to pass the butter. It had the same energy and it kept me up that night and I, I know there’s a lot going on and. We all have different priorities, but it continued on into episode four. It’s that question of what’s the difference between embodied intelligence and embedded intelligence as as playing spot the droid in episode four, I was thinking that this is one of the few times that we actually saw one within Star Wars.

We normally think of droids as these various. Ambulatory devices, right, that they’re ais that are embodied within robots or other machines. And here we saw a different form, one that’s more akin to Jarvis from the Avengers or the computer and Star Trek, or Hal 9000, a computer that’s embedded within a particular installation,

but can use all the facilities that it has around it. And it got me thinking to the nature of Stellan Skarsgards character Luthen, within the show and the roles that he plays, how would he go about trusting that in particular, embedded intelligence, one that would have. All the flight logs, all the communication, all the video of everything that takes place in and around that ship, especially with him going back to Coruscant and having these various roles that they, he takes on having seen only up to episode four.

I think this ties back to a conversation we were having over on the blog and in other episodes about the idea of trust in search engines. You know, the idea of a credence good, but this relationship that.

Luthen has, in this case, with an embedded intelligence and everything that it has going on within it.

Yeah. Who do you trust? The man or the machine? I. It’s a fantastic question and it’s one that Luthen must have on an answer to and absolute trust and faith in the reliability of that answer. As we follow Luthen back to Coruscant, we’ve become much more aware of how involved he is in the risk that he is at, and the greater depth of the story and the reach that this story has as we travel into the heart of the empire.

Episode four is called Aldhani, but it could is easily be called Architecture of Oppression, because this is what really sticks out to me, is reviewing that episode. There’s a quote early on in the episode from Mon Motha’s husband, where he says “must everything be boring and sad?” yeah, that’s a vibe, isn’t it?

It captures the reality of daily life under the empire, and in an episode that’s a recentering episode. It’s still full of those elements of daily life that we looked at earlier, those key things like the bluedles or the droids or what have you, and. In this episode, one of the things that they really use to convey those elements of daily life is the architecture.

We see that in this brutalist imperial building and in some of the other buildings too, like the apartment complexes, I can’t tell if they’re real buildings from our world. There’s something that’s just all digitally composited into the show, but it still gives us. Ominous feeling of dread, just looking at it right, like that bit too, with Cyril Karn returning to his mother’s apartment, and it’s an apartment complex, but it has this sense of awfulness to it. We mentioned earlier that there’s this attention to detail in the show, and in this case it’s an intentional lack of detail, like this minimalist aesthetic or this brutalist aesthetic that’s.

Everywhere within the civilized, quote unquote parts of the Star Wars universe. And it’s a kind of fascinating contrast. And this show is all about those contrasts, those dualities, right? Like it introduces us to four different women within different positions. We see Imperial versus Rebel, high culture versus Highlands.

We get these contrasting positions to always kind of. Emphasize the difference of them, and it’s not really subtle, but it really does come across, and this jumped out to me as well. One of the other things that jumped out to me in this episode was the quotes after we’re walked into the shiny but brutal security bureau I.

At the round table we have this interaction. We are here to further security objectives by collecting intelligence, providing useful analysis, and conducting effective covert action, sir. End quote, to which the commander there responds, quote, very good, dear that is verbatim from the ISB mission statement.

And wrong. Security is an illusion. You want security called the Navy launch a regiment of troopers. We are healthcare providers. We treat sickness, end quote, and that’s amazing, right? That cultural aspect of it. The rationalization of what they do, they go onto state quote, whether they arise from within or have come from the outside.

The longer we wait to identify a disorder, the harder it is to treat the disease. End. Quote. It’s like their attitude is. The disease and I’m the cure. And apparently Officer Cobretti got his line from a galaxy far, far away. And these parallels that we keep seeing again and again in media from, uh, Renegade eighties cop to the Imperials of Star Wars, to Agent Smith and the matrix regards humanity as a virus.

We keep seeing these again and again and again. In that scene in the ISV, we get our first real introduction to Deidre, whose ambition is recognized, and she’s told to steady the ladder before she starts climbing and not to look down. And we’re also introduced to her direct opposite the contrasting character of Vel.

The leader of the Rebel op, and it’s this subtext and the dialectic between the various characters and the positions that they occupy that I hope will continue through the show. But we see this massive internal shift within episode four, and I think the show is amazing for it.

And one of the things that makes this show so amazing is that it was released in 2022 under the Star Wars umbrella owned by Disney. It was appointed about the 12 minute mark of episode five, an episode titled The Axe Forgets, where a character by the name of Nemik, a rebel in Training, hiding out in the Aldhani Highlands, along with, Andor goes off on a bit of a rant.

I mean. It’s also confusing. Isn’t it so much going wrong, so much to say, and all of it happening so quickly. The pace of repression outstrips our ability to understand it, and that is the real trick of the imperial thought machine. It’s easier to hide behind 40 atrocities than a single incident. End quote those 13 seconds and the minute before and the minute after.

It’s part of an ongoing discussion Anyways, that message rarely gets through. It’s part of the ongoing critique of the empire in Star Wars. It’s taking place within the show, but like we mentioned with episode four, that critique is a dialectic showing two sides of the coin. And we also see part of that critique through the lens of Syril Karn.

Here he is shown still staying within his mother’s apartment, still looking for work and being somewhat discarded by the imperial system. And as we get a panning shot of a sparsely decorated apartment, we see the action figures on the shelf over to the side, representing various heroes of the empire as aspirational figures, we marketed to young men.

It reminds me of nothing less than Dark Helmet playing with action figures about halfway through the movie SpaceBalls. So once again, it’s the intentionality of the placement of the little things in this show that matter. I know some people will be quick to dismiss pop cultures being not that deep, but it doesn’t mean it can’t be, as we’ve discussed before, and are episode on the Old Man in the River, and we see that depth too here in the little details like the Blue Milk in a bowl of cereal.

As Karn eats it, we see that the little sugar bowls look like planets. And for Kane, the world is not enough, or even a bowl full of worlds like the Galaxy. There’s volumes contained in some of these little details, but when we open up the cover, we might not like what we find inside. One of those volumes is Jordan Carroll’s “Speculative Whiteness”.

You mentioned this a little bit in our previous episode, Terminus Est the book came out in 2024, but it parallels with what we’re seeing and we’re talking about when it comes to Warhammer 40,000, and Warhammer 40K shares a lot of cultural DNA with Star Wars. What we find in both Caroll’s book and in Star Wars Andor is the appeal that the Empire and Star Wars has for a recently unemployed young men like Syril Karn.

But for other young men, the rebellion is more attractive. As Nemik mentions later on in the episode, everyone has their own rebellion. And while the ax forgets, the tree remembers it’s all part of the process.

The challenge that we see in Andor for Luthen is how do you trust the process when you don’t know what the process is? We hear trust the process often when you’re. Starting a new project or watching a tutorial on YouTube, trust the process and you start off and the first couple steps, it looks like hot garbage, and then you’re like working at it and working at it, and eventually it starts to come into focus.

It’s that idea that you have actually have to work through it to get to those step where it starts to look like an end result. And that’s as true for Luthen and, Andor as it is for myself and for you, the listeners of this podcast, because when I say trust the process, it means that this episode is going to be about Star Wars and, Andor, and planning and economics and communication.

And we’ve touched on much of that, but we’ve also barely gotten started. We’re 27 minutes in and we’re only halfway through the season. But for Luthen and Andor, they’re trusting the process in something that is long range. And as we’ve reviewed the episodes of this season, one of Andor, the process for myself has been to find those little things that make something jump out.

And sometimes that happens and sometimes it takes a little bit, you gotta kind of stew on it episode by episode, think it through, and then it’ll pop. And you can see those connections and. When I was originally reviewing this, I was struggling with episode six to try and see those little things, but then it struck me that what we were looking for wasn’t really in episode six at all.

This is at the end of episode five. What we’re seeing, the plans that Luther had put into motion were starting to come to fruition, and at that point, at the end of episode five. He doesn’t know. There’s a lot of moving parts and potentials and contingencies and things that could go wrong with a very complex and ambitious plan, and we will see that in a moment here.

But right now, at the moment, halfway between episode five and episode six, there’s something taking place halfway across the galaxy, and there’s no way for him to impact the outcome. It’s effectively out of his control. One of the conceits of Star Wars universe has always been that hyperspace travel, the FTL travel that allows from passage from point A to point B relatively quickly compared to at least the laws of physics that we’ve encountered in our own universe here.

This is the one big lie of most science fiction, right? The bit of hand WA that makes all the stories go round and round. We see it in Star Trek and Star Wars and Warhammer and so many other places because without it, the stories would be very long and very boring. If we were looking at actual Interstellar travel or Interstellar trade or Interstellar communication at relativistic speeds, you know what?

We actually have to the best of our scientific knowledge. They’d be very different stories. Very slow, very boring, but still interesting. However, people have studied this, right? One person who studied this is famously is former New York Times columnist, uh, Nobel Prize winner, Paul Krugman in an economics paper titled The Theory of Interstellar Trade that he.

Published back in 1978 when he was a lowly assistant professor at Yale. Krugman theorized that when dealing with interstellar trade time is relative to the people doing the investment, not necessarily the people on the ship who are usually our point of reference characters, which we see in Star Wars and much other sci-fi media.

But here in Andor we see Luthen is the person doing the investment and he’s the one observing this and unable to impact the outcome at all. So he has to trust the process. This is true of almost any form of asynchronous communication as well, right? A lot of economics boils down to communication information problems, so asynchronous communications, even something like posting on the internet, like.

This podcast, I don’t know if you, the audience are going to hear this or see this or when, or even if you’ll ever hear it, given how the algorithms work. So we together as creator and audience, have to trust the process as well. How Luthen finds out is revealed in episode six, or a customer in the shop asks.

“Got anything from Aldhani?” “Excuse me?” “Aldhani, a big rebel attack last night.” We, as the audience have already learned what’s happened, but Luthen’s trust in the process is finally born fruit. Some of what’s aided Luthen’s plan is more than just a little bit of luck, and I. Also that contingency that he put in place of having an Andor on the team.

And that third thing that we noted back in episode three is the arrogance of the empire. As noted early in the episode, the empire doesn’t play by the rules. They don’t care enough to learn because they don’t have to. The imperial plans for the Alani are much like what author James C. Scott talks about in his book Seeing Like a State.

There’s an imperial plan of rationalization and homogenization that takes place that ignores the local differences in local knowledge and the ignorance of that. Local knowledge is something that the rebels are able to exploit as they carry out their heist. The eye is one of the few points in this series so far that we’ve seen a classic Star Wars element of a space battle, and it is fantastic and.

Much more tense than we see with the Jedi Normally being involved, Cassian Andor as a pilot also has to learn how to trust the process to allow for the rebels to make their escape.

And here we’ve reached the halfway point of the season and the show feels like it’s just getting started. It keeps surprising me ways that I can’t even believe it really hits the mark. But how do you hit the mark when you shoot your shot three years in the past? I mean, we think of so much speculative fiction as being predictive, but it’s not.

There’s something else at work. You kind of take a look at current trends and you extrapolate on that a little bit. You know, you crank it up a notch or three and put the dial all the way to 11 to just, you know, heighten the drama or the tension. Then you let reality catch up and sometimes you’re amazingly on target, you hit the bullseye from miles away.

And that’s what we’re seeing here with, Andor it’s capturing the current moment in 2025 in a spectacular way. But first off, the foreshadowing in this episode is amazing. If I wasn’t aware of the title, um, I think it was called collared or the cut of your Jib. That’s if jib means collar because early on in the episode, we.

Return again and again to tailoring. We see Dera putting on her ISB uniform with a focus on the tailoring and a closeup of the collar. We see another ISB officer at about the 14 minute mark with his tunic collar askew. We see Cyril Karn in the apartment that he’s in that’s not much bigger than a prison cell.

Looking out at the oppressive brutalist architecture beyond. And then we see him again later as he is taken to his new workstation, which is part of some open concept from heck. And it’s here that the story really shifts. Even though the series is ostensibly about Cassie Andor he is referred to as a loose end, we come to understand that the story is really dominated by six women.

The tale of Teema and Marva, and Dedra, and Vel, and Cinta and Klaire, who are active and engaged in the resistance or the rebellion. Dedra excepted, of course. We’re still talking about Star Wars, of course, here within the context of the show Andor the women are the ones getting everything done. They’re the ones doing the work behind the scenes, pushing and prodding the men within the show to actually, you know, move things along and stay on target when necessary.

This is painfully obvious by episode four as more characters were introduced, and since then it’s become more about. But what happens to Cassian Andor is still a crucial part of episode seven, the announcement it takes place later in the episode as he is queried on the beach of the vacation planet.

Niamos, a storm trooper asks him a set of leading questions. He ends up being the wrong guy at the wrong time with the assistance of an imperial droid, something that may not respond to Cassian’s attempt to negotiation. All that foreshadowing comes together. And Cassie and himself becomes collared.

We’ve spoken before about the idea of robots out of control and the Butlerian Jihad, and I think this two minute sequence really gets the heart of what all that other robot content has been about. It’s about the way we interact with them and the way that might be beyond our control or under the control of somebody else.

It’s such a pivotal moment in television, the three minute sequence, one where Cassian is arrested, that I really wanted to highlight it. You could write a dissertation or a paper on it, I’m sure, but there’s so much encapsulated in that moment and about our current moment and how we’re dealing with robots or droids in this instance, and how they take commands from users.

And it might not necessarily be what we expect or the outcomes of those commands might not. Be what we expect. I’ve said again and again that science fiction isn’t necessarily predictive, but here it shows how it can be used to discuss something collectively with a shared imagination. In this case, what robots would look like if they’re used by a police force from an imperial state.

And as Cassian ends up being collared, we have yet another shift in the series.

There’s a scene early in Andor season one, episode eight, where we see just how fractured the quote unquote rebel Alliance really is. Saw Guerrera played by Forrest Whitaker asks, aren’t you tired of playing behind the scenes? Luthen? To which Luthen replies, aren’t you tired of fighting with people who agree with you?

And Ooh, that’s gonna burn. Apparently the circular firing squad originated long, long ago in a galaxy far, far away. It seems that whenever you’re working against Empire, you need to have a big tent and, well, star Wars is no exception. Saw Guerrera later highlights the problems, though. Quote, “Krieger’s, a separatist. MyPai is a Neo-Republican. The Gorman front, the Partisan Alliance Sectorists, human Cultists, Galaxy Partitionists end quote. And then like a young Jedi and a smuggler, and a Wookie, and some other folks join later on. But right now it’s a Motley Crewe. The point is that it could be difficult to align all these fractious forces into working towards the same goal, even if it’s one that they’d all ultimately benefit from.

So the challenge is to keep everybody on the same page, or at least have an idea of what the page looks like and try not to, you know. Shoot each other in the foot too much while that’s happening. But while much of episode eight, as well as nine and 10 focuses on Luthen and the other major players of the rebellion like mamma, and the collective action that is required, the plight of Cassian Andor trapped in an imperial prison comes to the fore.

This is where we learned that the backup title for a eight could be on program, as the prisoners are forced to halt and raise their hands at the command of their imperial captors. Their prison itself is mostly clean and gives the impression of a tightly controlled, well kept facility. But the reality is somewhat different and time passes somewhat differently in the pit as well.

The void of natural light saved when the prisoners are herded through the hamster like hammer trails from the dormitories to the factories on their never ending 12 on 12 off ships. It’s a 24 7 prison. And the most shocking thing about the prison depicted here is how it pales in comparison to the prisons we have on earth.

Reading Jonathan Crary’s work of the same title 24 7, which is a work on sleep and light and acceleration and capitalism. In the early pages of it, he goes into the use of illumination for the purses of sleep deprivation in the prison system. It’s chilling. Read about the rationalization for its use, how the illumination induces a state of abject.

Compliance in its subjects and its harrowing. So the Imperial Prison in Narkina five has all the hallmarks of that modern system, and the episode that follows episode nine and 10 feel like a hole, like a single Star Wars movie about a prison break that could have been made combined with the first two arcs.

There’s enough here in the series for an Andor trilogy or Quad Trilogy even is, it definitely feels like several movies worth of content. So I want to tackle them together. We find out through the tracking of shifts, that time is passing rapidly here, that the story is advancing through the actions of the rest of the cast of Luthen and of Dedra and Cyril.

But we as the audience, are also caught in a weird fugue state waiting for the outcome of casting’s time in prison. Part of this waiting is because there is no action on the part of the other characters to find them, say for perhaps Cyril. But it’s odd to think that a rescue effort would come from that direction.

So we as the audience must assume that Cassian’s hopeful escape comes at his own hand. And sure enough, we’re soon given the glimpse that Cassian is trying to exploit the system, working stealthily to test the limits of the cage, defines himself trapped in he continual argues with the supervisor Keno Loy, portrayed by Andy Serkis about trying to take more direct action.

But Keno is head down and focused on his own release counting down the shifts. Cassian recognizes that despite the over show of strength by the Imperial Guards, that this is a paper garrison maintaining order via fear with lower numbers than expected, and that nobody is listening. In episode nine, it’s remarked that the prisoners are.

Cheaper than droids and easier to replace end quote, much like we talked about in episode 39 with the California ideology, which sought out robots to replace human workers. Here we see the opposite effect that much of the power in the empire is a fuko, biopower, and the labor derived from those trapped by the empire.

It takes an extreme event to motivate keno and the rest of the prisoners into action. When news of a lockdown in different prison block due to a riot reaches them, and that the entire shift was put down due to the fact that a prisoner that was thought to be released was simply taken to a different cell block, and that there is no true escape from narkina five.

The entire unit of prisoners comes on board with the escape attempt.

And this leads us to episode 10, titled Up and at them, or perhaps one way out, if Wikipedia is to be believed, and it seems odd to have less to say about an action packed prison break episode than the quieter, more reflective episodes that led up. To it. But I think that’s part and parcel of the style of storytelling that we’re seeing here, that the action delivers its own narrative and there isn’t much to describe.

So much of what we see within action movies relies on tropes that are firmly established within the genre and the prison break genre, as well as established all on its own. So we see much here that’s been replicated in other media many, many times before The heroic sacrifice and the Valiant Escape attempt narrow escapes and success against long odds.

The acts of daring and eventually releasing other prisoners to join in and overtake the entire facility. And all this plays out in an enthralling rapid fire fashion. Two chief takeaways from the episode, again, a dialectic showing opposites within the Star Wars universe are the loss of varied individuals along the escape, but the success of collective action.

It’s a powerful message, once again, delivered in a story set in the Star Wars universe, but a story that’s absent Jedi and forced powers and all the other sci-fi trappings that we’ve come to expect within a Star Wars story Andor is ultimately a human level story without the power fantasies that suffuse the other tales within the franchise.

Or if there are power fantasies that are a much lower level than the ones we’ve come to expect. As the escape takes place and we see which prisoners are able to make it out. Much fewer than we expected, but at least some, including our namesake character, Cassian Andor. We take a trip with Luthen back to the dank, cyberpunk underbelly of the Star Wars universe where we started the series.

Here we learn of a spy within the ISB in the setting of a trap for some of the rebels. Here we learn that Luthen faces a difficult, almost impossible choice to warn an ally and potentially reveal the existence of a spy, or to save the spy and risk a potential bloodbath. And Luthen, whoever the pragmatist chooses to save the spy.

It speaks to the calculus that he employs, the amount of resources that must go into getting one spy deep within the system and the difficult calculations that he’s constantly making.

And in the final two episodes, we see how those calculations of all come together. Much like we did with the prison episodes. We’ll take episodes 11 and 12, daughter of Ferric and Rick’s Road together as a whole with the first we see how the death of Marva Andor, Cassian Andor’s adoptive mother, the ones who rescued him from that imperial ship.

So long ago as a child is the incident that draws in all the players from across the galaxy as they learn of what has happened through various means and channels, which says much of the various strengths and weaknesses of the communication networks that are employed by the various actors, whether they’re Imperial, rebel or other.

Each of the major players has ways of finding out the information about Marva’s death. Though they each recognize independently that this could be the one thing that would bring. Cassian out into the light long enough for them to act either seize or slay or otherwise tie up loose ends and to bring our story to a close.

So we have this scene setting that rearranges the players on the chessboard, bringing them all into one corner for that final act. And so much of what we see is callbacks to those little things, those facts that were established earlier on in the story. This is what brings so much weight to the final episode.

As a daughter of ferret has afforded the opportunity for a proper. A funeral ceremony. This is undertaken by the daughters of Ferrix who are respected and the Imperials allow some local customs to be observed, lest their full suppression lead to a larger uprising. Again, we see Foucaultian Biopower in play, but there are limits to the extent of that Biopower, and we see them in the final episode in Rick’s Road.

And the various competing groups here start getting in each other’s way, and things get wildly out of control. This gives Andor the opportunity he needs to rescue Bicks from imprisonment and torture. But the streets of Rix Road are up in violence, but within the violence there’s some fantastic quotes.

Much of it comes from Marva whose speech as a hologram, given as a eulogy is what motivates the citizenry to action as she states. “Remember this. Freedom is a pure idea. It occurs spontaneously without instruction.” “The imperial need for control is so desperate because it is so unnatural,” and this gets to the heart of the fight between the rebellion and the empire.

After the riot, we see many of the characters make their escapes and Luthen retreats to a ship, uh, ship that has design cues much in common with the Millennium Falcon. And there he learns that he has a. Stowaway on board that Cassian Andor has joined him, offering him a choice to either kill him or recruit him, to which I suspect we already know the answer.

And finally, as we end, we pan out to see the labor of the prisoners of Narkina five worked into the surface of the Death Star as it is assembled. We as an audience are left knowing that there is more to this story. But not quite sure how it yet connects.

So what happens next? Well, we’re not quite at Rogue One. We still have season two of Andor which begins. Now as this podcast episode is being released Andor season two has just begun airing with three episodes a week. So for the following four weeks, join us as we do our best to recap the previous three episodes before the next one’s there.

These should be coming out on Sunday evenings or Monday mornings, depending on your time zone. So this is your first time joining us. Feel free to subscribe on the podcast player that you heard us on. We’re not available everywhere, but we are happy you’re with us. I’m your host, Dr. Implausible. You can reach me at drimplausible@implausipod.com, and you can also find the show archives and transcripts of all our previous shows@impplazapod.com as well. I’m responsible for all elements of the show, including research, writing, mixing, mastering, and music, and the show is licensed under Creative Commons 4.0 ShareAlike license.

You may have also noted that there was no advertising during the program and there’s no cost associated with the show. But it does grow from word of mouth of the community. So if you enjoy the show, please share it with a friend or two and pass it along. There’s also a buy me a coffee link on each show@impplazapod.com, which will go to any hosting costs associated with the show.

You can also find us over on the blog as well as a few social media sites, including Blue Sky and Mastodon. Until next time, hopefully just a short week away. Take care and have fun.