Tag: podcast

(This was originally published as Implausipod Episode 48 on May 17th, 2025.)

https://www.implausipod.com/1935232/episodes/17048093-e0048-star-wars-andor-season-2-week-4

Andor concludes! (and Rogue One awaits?) Join us as we wrap up the second and final season of Star Wars: Andor with the fifth in our five-part series looking at the show. We’ll recap the final three episodes, released on May 13, 2025 (titled “Make It Stop”, “Who Else Knows?” and “Jedha, Khyber, Erso”) and provide our overall impression of the series as well. (If you’re just joining us, our Andor recap began with Episode 44, available on Implausipod dot com, or selected discerning podcast hosts.

Andor concludes and Rogue one awaits. Join us as we wrap up the second and final season of Star Wars Andor with the fifth in our five part series. Looking at the show, we’re recapping the final three episodes released on May 13th, 2025, titled Make It Stop, who Else Knows, and Jedha Kyber Erso, and we’ll provide our overall impression of the series as well on this episode of the ImplausiPod.

Let’s get right to it.

Welcome to the ImplausiPod, a podcast about the intersection of art, technology, and popular culture. I’m your host, Dr. Implausible. What makes a story a Star Wars story? Are there certain elements that let the audience know what they’re watching? The give it away. Surely there’s recurring elements and themes.

Is it the Jedi and the force? Those have been almost entirely absent through two seasons of Andor. Is it themes of empire and rebellion? Those are hardly Star Wars exclusives. Is it the tech, the droids, the starships, the blasters. Again, not exclusive to Star Wars, but some is the aesthetic. Definitely is.

Is it the characters? Well, again, no Jedi here. No Skywalkers in this particular saga, but. Maybe we’re getting at something closer. I think in the final three episodes of the season two of Andor, we’re clearly getting a Star Wars story, but we’re also getting something much more. Let’s get into how we can tell.

It starts in episode 10, titled Kleya’s Story. Or maybe Make It Stop, which might have been what the show owners were told. A shame really, but it does help us focus. This episode is all about Kleya, the ruthless backbone of the rebellion up throughout the entire run of the series. It was during a review of season one that we’ve noted how the women were the rebellion, obviously by about episode seven from threads that were starting in episode four, and Lea was clearly the one people were lying on to get things done.

She filled an archetype in the Star Wars story, one that’s been there since the very first release in 1977. One that we’ve come to expect and that clearly makes Star Wars. Star Wars. Now this archetype isn’t unique to Star Wars witness, Christina Hendricks’s, Joan Harris, of Mad Men or a different t Take with Amy Acker’s Root and Person of Interest.

But having a character around kind of like Leia in the OG Star Wars really does help make. Andor fit within the universe with the diversification of roles and, Andor with more room for strong female characters, different elements of Leia’s character can be ascribed to different people. So we don’t have to have Leia being all things to fulfill every role needed.

Mon Mothma is the diplomat. Bix is the mechanic and the love interest. Vel is the heart Dedra the dark mirror. And Kleya, well, like we said above, she’s the ruthless backbone. There’s other character archetypes that we’ve become accustomed to as well. Ones that make Star Wars feel like Star Wars, the Rascal and Cassian, the idealistic youth like Nemik, the wise Council, like Luthen, or perhaps Saw Gerrara.

The Droid, B2EMO, the shaggy muscle, in this case, K-2SO and more. We’re focused on archetypes here to distinguish them from say, stereotypes. Archetypes here aren’t the Jungian archetypes that are ascribed to various elements of human psychology. They’re more like story archetypes or character archetypes, personalities that we meet.

And they have a lot in common with the Star Wars tabletop role playing game from West End Games that we mentioned a few episodes ago in that game released back in 1987. The characters are defined by their quote unquote “type”. This could include several of the ones we’ve just mentioned, the smuggler, the bodyguard, the courier, and a few more similar to how we get a game like D&D would have a fighter, a wizard, or cleric.

And interestingly, force users were rare in that game too. At least according to the rules, but I think a lot of campaigns ended up with a Hidden Jedi or two. So those links to Andor are deep, the idea in the game that the type was more important than the specific character. And we’re seeing that we’re getting back to that archetype again.

But if I’m talking about roleplaying games, I’m digressing. This is Kleya’s story, after all. let’s get caught up with what’s going on. We begin with Lonni requesting an emergency meeting and Luthen goes to meet him. Telling KIeya, “I fear we’ve used up all the perfect”. He meets Lonni in public during daylight, and Lonni lets him in on the news of the plot, what he’s just learned about the battle station in the last few hours.

Fearing he’s been burned, Lonni gives Luthen all the details that he’s been in Dedra’s files for the last year. Luthen leaves and we later see Lonni found dead on the bench, though it isn’t clear what he’s died of, a blaster shot or poison or something else. Luthen sends KIeya off to get a message out and starts with destroying the equipment and prepping to leave, but Dedra shows up to the antiquities dealer.

He buys some time for the acid to do its work and then stabs himself, but is stabilized in time by a med team and he’s taken to the hospital. We get KIeya’s story, then told him flashbacks as she’s reliving them. In the flashbacks with KIeya and Luthen, we see some of the events that turned him to the resistor, those small acts of rebellion in Nemik’s words.

Taking place during a raid or some other military action where he subtly sabotaged the ship, allowing room for KIeya to stay aboard as a stowaway and likely preventing more mayhem. A young KIeya has witnessed to more imperial atrocities, including executions, as well as early acts of sabotage by Luthen.

She began picking up her skills at a young age. Some of these flashbacks take place while she’s traveling to the hospital where Luthen is being held and we get another cyber punky plot: Is she there to rescue him or take him out before he can be interrogated? And I wanna point out that the level of detail in the show here remains amazing.

We see the same symbol on the hospital sign on the roof of the building that we saw in the arm bands of the rebel medics in the previous episode. There’s a bit of a real-world conceit here as well, that of the hospital emergency that has played up based on the audience’s knowledges of the tropes of that genre, things that don’t necessarily make sense in a Star Wars universe, but are shown here as roughly analogous to our own, like the orderlies or the layout or the various wings in the hospital.

As we cut to the hospital, we see the Dedra is in charge monitoring Luthen’s status, waiting for him to be ready for interrogation. But she’s in charge only briefly, as she’s soon relieved of her duty. Apparently it was, she was snooping a bit to make the caller, and she’s overstepped her bounds.

Any who in all this distraction, KIeya manages to sneak in, detonate a diversion, saying the least, and then proceeding to use a meal tray in a pistol against several armed guards and a storm trooper that stood in her way of getting to Luthen’s room and she says goodbye. Before heading for the Exit, this is an amazing episode full of character and depth where we say goodbye to some of the most important characters of the series.

There’s a thread here where I’d love to see KIeya as a rebel operative between Star Wars and New Hope and Return of the Jetta, acting as a body double for Leia, serving as a decoy or engaged more directly in her own right. She’s already one of the most skilled members of the alliance. There’d be room to see more from her in the future.

But first we have to get there. It’s time for a return to episode nine’s cyberpunk plot. We need another extraction,

And we get that extraction in episode 11. An episode of CSI: Coruscant, or perhaps it’s titled, who else knows? Because we start with an investigation. Looking at the body of a dead storm trooper, and I’m left to wonder for a second at the incongruity of it, we clearly have the apparatus of a surveillance state in the empire, especially on Coruscant.

We have cameras everywhere, though, not quite a full panopticon. I’m wondering why there weren’t body cams on the storm troopers or officers to presumably show the imperials who was shooting them. It’s a little weird. But we have an ISB investigative team. We’re almost going through the motions of a buddy cop movie, and the detective here is issuing commands even as he’s trying to puzzle out the mystery

He’s introduced to the hospital director, which again, is a very modern conceit of how the hospital would operate. But the ISB detective is clearly flexing how he’s in charge saying: “arrest him. You’re slowing me down. That means you’re a suspect.” To which the hospital director soon concedes.

And as the investigation continues, we shift a bit. As much as last episode was KIeya’s story, this episode is Dedra’s. We see her in custody in a windowed cell or interrogation chamber, and someone turns off the monitors. The panopticon is not watching; just we the audience, and it’s Krennic that we see.

We’ve seen him earlier in the season, of course, during the fancy ball, but here on his own, he is not playing nice. There’s a magnificently framed shot during the interrogation where we can see Dedra’s eyes and only the lower half of Krennic’s face asking the questions with pure malice because his pet project has been found out.

“Say the name, the one that matters.” “Death Star.”  “Who else knows?”

“I want the names I don’t know.” After Dedra offers up Partagaz and some other known parties, and here we start finding out how much Krennnic knows and how cooked Dedra might be. The scavenging, the rooting around in cases that weren’t necessarily related to her department. The stuff that allowed her to succeed early on because she’s able to draw those connections are what now have her in deep, deep trouble.

Because according tore, “I should have pegged you as a scavenger years ago.” The ISB is all about control, and part of that control is very much for the officers to stay in their lane as Partagaz mentioned in season one, they’re healthcare providers, and that healthcare is very much about maintaining control of the situation, and the situation has been very much out of Dedrae’s control.

The fact that Lonni had access to her files for a year, the fact that’s now been discovered by Krennic and others is what’s going to bring her down. As Krennic notes: “If you’re not a rebel spy, you’ve missed your calling.” But Dedra seems to have caught some of that main character syndrome that Syril was feeling, one BBY ago as well.

Contributing and thinking that her compliance will get her out of this jam, not realizing that much like Lonni last episode, she’s done. As Krennic states, we’ll do our best to carry on without you. From there, we bounce around through our fractured narrative quickly, cutting between the hospital and the buddy cops trying to track down the suspect and the dimly lit tenement where KIeya is getting some work done trying to send out an emergency message.

The tension is increasing as we cut to Yavin, where the rebels are starting to actually look like rebels, and we’re getting much closer to something from the original trilogy, which we may recognize, and we step into a situation that almost feels like something out of a Star Trek episode where we have a game of poker being played with Cassian and Melshi and K-2SO, having a moment of convivial downtime.

And that Star Trek reference goes a little bit deeper for me because as they’re playing poker with the droid, I, I almost feel like K-2SO sounds like Data in some ways. You know, this is, game is confusing, this isn’t logical. And the Cassian and Melshi laughing as they say, oh, “he’s going to droid you” here and start bringing out the, uh, the numbers where. K-2SO goes: “We’ve played 863 games. That’s a solid predictive sample” and being confused by the seemingly random actions of humans.

It’s nice to see here this, uh, friendliness and the banter going back and forth, but the tension is still escalating as KIeya’s message comes in and they have to decide on how they’re going to address it.

The debate doesn’t take that long, and they’re soon off. Meanwhile, the ISB investigation is proceeding as well. The ISB is using fears of a virus to help in the arrest of the subject Kleya plan put forth by Major Partaggaz. Again, part of his ideology is the ISB is healthcare providers for the empire. I mean, the virus seems like a plausible explanation, but I’m not sure it’d work here.

Our experience over the last five or so years seems somewhat contrary to that. But there’s multiple approaches to the ISB’s investigation and we cut to Dedra in a cell where we’re getting some real silence of the lambs type vibes in the interrogation, or at least that’s how it was coming to me. Her colleague comes to her asking for advice, uh, quid pro quo almost, and saying that “a quick solve may help her situation”, but realizing that otherwise she could well truly be cooked.

Her last line there, “it’s probably too late” is layered with meaning. Is it the rebels or for her? We have the rebels and the Imperials in a race to get to Kleya, and the intensity is incredibly high. Just well done Filmmaking to everybody involved here. The rebels get there first by just a bit, but an open communication channel.

The smallest of coincidences that a transmission is taking place while the imperials are actually talking and looking at it, leads for them to. Track them down and send an armored team, and we end with the ISB enforcers, not in full storm trooper armor, but close to it, ready to kick down the door. We’ve rarely seen a cliffhanger in this show, but here we’re moving directly into episode 12.

And episode 12 is titled, “This Will be on the Test” or perhaps “Jedha Kyber Urso”. KIeya needs some convincing and she doesn’t see Yavin as a safe option, and both Cassian and Melshi make the case for it being the safe harbor of the moment. The comms channels that have brought the ISB so close are cut with K-2SO assaulting the shuttle and Cassian’s blaster to the transmitter.

But for the ISB, this is close enough. And with that, we get into a fight scene in the hallway, and I’m wondering if I’ve actually stumbled into a different Disney show, like a Daredevil episode or something. Cassian and Meshi are holding their own buying time as K-2SO makes his way towards their floor.

We saw how destructive the enforcer droids were in the episode eight, where they were unleashed on the crowd by Kaido, and here we see it again too. Viewing the hallway from behind and over. K-2SOs shoulder to give the point of view of as he absolutely wrecks the combat squad. And in the midst of it, the inspector whose body armor does little protect him when he’s used as a human shield for the droid, A literal meat shield.

K-2SO is frightening here. An icon of the real world fears we have of the development of humanoid robots that we’ve seen and discussed before. You can check it out in episode 29, here at the podcast, his arrival makes short work of the remaining ISB troopers with the sergeant firing away point blank at his approach echoing back to Cassian in the same position during the Ghorman massacre.

The apartment hallway doesn’t have room for a power loader to make the save for him, however. Cassian and Melshi and K-2SO are able to escape with Kleya who is injured in the fight. This is aided by the Imperial’s own search efforts for Kleya. With everyone tracking down the false virus leads and unable to respond in time, we returned to Yavin.

And much like in the previous episode, the rebel base looks nearly complete with as many sparks flying is in a heavy metal music video from the 1980s. The quote unquote alliance is still fragile though as we see Saw Gerrera arguing with Mothma and Organa accusing her of sending spies his way, confusing the imperial spies with internal factions.

Saw Gerrera gets in a dig just before he closes the comms channel. “If you could only fight as well as you lie.” End quote, symbolizing the mistrust that is high in the alliance. The most difficult part of maintaining this where discovery could mean death, and Cassian’s return is not welcome, treated as a potential hostile and brought in under guard by both X-wings in the air and the general and troops on the ground.

I was delighted to see one of the Mon Calamari, one of Admiral Akbar’s species in the flight control room, and at the Table Council. It made this feel a little bit more like Star Wars too. Cassian brings the three data points that are the title of the show: Jedha, Kyber and Urso and Andor the show at this point is a masterclass in rhetoric.

If I was still teaching a class on that, I think I might use this boardroom scene as an example. Cassian makes a strong case on Luthen’s behalf, but the rhetorical situation is swayed by the general mistrust of Luthen by all involved. Organa lists some of Luthen’s faults. Quote, “his paranoia, his secrecy, his inability to collaborate the web of doubts that he created.

It makes everything unbelievable.” End quote. And when you’re trying to believe in the construction of a moon sized battle station called the Death Star that needs the mining of an entire planet to function well. Yeah, it’s a little hard to believe.

I think it highlights how much Andor, again the show, and the rebellion as a whole, is built on these speech acts like the securitization of Ghorman that we saw in weeks two and three, as well as Nemik’s voiceover that soon comes in here. Nemik’s words – repeated from the tape that he made in season one, episode five – play over a montage of a number of characters that we’ve seen throughout the two seasons, helping bridge Andor the series to where it needs to be at the start of Rogue One.

We hear Nemik’s words as a diegetic voiceover, listened to by Major Partagaz of the ISB, realizing that the viral spread that he was talking about last episode was not that of Kleya, but of this speech out of control of a system that desperately needs it. Partagaz faces an imperial fate with the blaster kept in his desk for emergencies, and a little later we see Dedra in an imperial prison, much like Cassian last season with us, knowing what awaits her.

Much like the closing scenes that we’d see in the final episode of a season of The Wire, we step through all the ensemble characters and see where they’re at and where they’re going. Vel and KIeya discussed the personal and emotional costs of the rebellion. The toll that their course of actions and the decisions that they’ve made have taken upon them.

Vel with some regret, speaks with Cassian and advises him to not wait too long in regards to reconnecting with Bix, and we know how bittersweet that that will be.

Cassian is soon suiting up to go on a mission based on the intel that Luthen brought in, and we close out Andor with the scene of Bix in the field of the harvest planet with a newborn swaddled in her arms.

I’d like to wrap up with some final comments on Andor both as television and for Star Wars more generally. First off was Andor too short, was the Two seasons enough? It’s hard to say, but I feel like the answer is no. We’ve been with these characters for eight movies now, effectively treating each of the major arcs of season one and season two as one movie in its entirety.

And notably by doing so, each block gets close to my favorite runtime of just under two hours. And it feels right. It didn’t outstay. Its welcome. The need to focus to tell the whole story in season two led to the show really getting down to the key points. And I feel that that economy of storytelling really helped.

I feel that if Andor had received that rumored five season arc that they requested, they wouldn’t have managed to maintain the intensity, something that they held to quite well. On a longer timeline, we’d get various shaggy dog stories thrown in, which might have been cool in the moment. You know, a three episode arc where, Andor is trapped by Jabba or something.

But ultimately these arcs would’ve detracted from the overall narrative arc of the show. The temptation or management pressure to throw in a Jedi or something, to show Darth Vader in the background, or have the emperor actually appear on screen, the temptation would’ve been too much and the overall story would’ve been less due to that addition.

Andor also, quote unquote, “cracked the code” for streaming, with regards to the schedule. The three episodes per week, four weeks schedule allowed for each week to feel suitably epic, and didn’t necessarily tie down viewers to feeling obligated to binge the show or avoid all social media less. They risk spoilers while still allowing the show to maintain some momentum and not get bogged down by six or eight or 12 weeks of releases, and give time for the good word of mouth to propagate. The diffusion of information takes time, after all,

Andor isn’t without its faults, of course. I don’t want to spend a lot of time on these and cast a negative pall over the series as a whole, merely mention them so that it’s noted or maybe something to be looked at again in the future. Some of these criticisms of mine are ones that we’ve highlighted over the last few podcast episodes.

The media realism that we spoke about during the run ups to the Gjorman Massacre, and the subsequent fallout is one of those where real world, 21st century and media culture gets deployed to a galaxy long ago and far away. Our mediated lives are particular to our time and place, and they’re very much rooted in our history and the technology that we use.

There’s no reason for it to exist in that way within the universe of Star Wars. So too with some of the other analogs to the 21st century, the office politics and the hospital, these elements exist as a conceit to the audience to allow us to follow along without having to explain too much more or obfuscating things beyond recognition for the sake of “science fiction realism”, and the role, or lack thereof, the non-human characters in this show and the universe at large needs to be examined.

Part of this is that the story being told,  that very human story, but the alien races that are so iconic to Star Wars are often they took on an ancillary role as a mouthpiece for the emperor’s wishes. They could have been integrated into the story so much more, but perhaps it’s that very fact that Andor is a human story or human presenting one at least. And that was the focus of the show set on Coruscant and Ferrix and Ghorman and Yavin rather than the broader galaxy. And that was the story that the showrunners wanted to tell.  

Maybe the alien races, those who have already rebelled, and those who were Captain Kaido and others honed their imperial playbook for riot suppression, and that’s why the aliens are hardly there.  This kind of makes sense. You test out your pogrom on an outgroup before bringing it in internally, and the real-world analogs sadly, continue.

Was Andor “cyberpunk Star Wars”. Yeah, I think as close as we’ll see, cyberpunk draws on other tropes and traditions, both within sci-fi and without. As much as Star Wars drew on sources for its own inspiration, and it’s no surprise that there’s some crossover, but the trade craft and the missions and the roles the characters filled made this a wonderful blending of the two intentionally, or not in a way we’re unlikely to see again.

And finally that question that we had at the start of this episode: is Andor Star Wars? Well, most definitely, though Star Wars on the home front showing that what is taking place across the galaxy has impacts on a personal level, despite the lack of any mention of Jedi lightsabers or nearly any mention of the Force it still felt embedded within the universe, making it make sense and feel real, where the stakes mattered.

Did it make me dust off my old Star Wars RPG and look into grabbing some action figures or maybe a Star Wars model or two? Maybe. I’m not saying it didn’t do that. It definitely sparked some joy and it made it exciting to watch some new Star Wars material for the first time in a long time.

The final takeaway for me are in the speeches, those of Mon Mothma and Luthen and Partagaz and Nemik, of changing the narrative away from “May the force be with you” and replacing it with “the rebellion begins with hope”, and “I have friends everywhere”; catch words and catchphrases more relevant to the here and now and needed here in the 21st century.

This wraps up our Andor coverage here on the Implausipod, save for one more episode sometime in the future. Thanks for joining us over the last month. It’s been a lot of fun watching something with you in real time. That one more episode will be Season Three of Andor: Rogue One, of course, which I haven’t seen since its release. And I intentionally didn’t go back to rewatch during or before the Andor viewing. I want to be surprised.

When we get to that. I’d like to touch on some of the ongoing meta commentary we’ve been seeing around Andor the last few weeks; content I’ve intentionally been nescient of. We’ll look at that sometime soon.

Coming up, before that though, we have a few episodes on recent happenings in cyberspace, returning to some academic material on the internet, and in the month of June, we’ll be starting our look at the WYCU, the Weyland-Yutani Cinematic Universe, something we’ve mentioned over on the blog and in the newsletter. And we’ll have more on that soon too.

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 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 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.

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.

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.

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