How Not to Be Fascist According to Andor (and Jesus)

For a certain kind of Star Wars Fan, the past month has been a sort of Hale-Bopp pop culture experience, and that’s only a minor exaggeration.

Do you remember when the comet Hale-Bopp appeared in the skies of the northern hemisphere back in 1996 and 1997? It was a once-in-a-lifetime astronomical event that was only discovered in 1995, a surprise long-term addition of cosmic beauty in the night sky that lasted for months. The comet won’t be back until the year 4383, and so people all over the world were encouraged to enjoy Hale-Bopp while it lasted.

For the first time since the 1970s and 80s, a Star Wars property managed to reignite those feelings of hope and awe that fans of the original trilogy experienced as kids. Nobody expected the Disney+ show Andor to become so beloved and respected — in fact, nobody asked for this show at all. But somehow, this adult-themed Star Wars series, created and helmed by a team of prestige TV veterans, has reawoken the inner children of a generation fascinated by lightsabers and starships. This time, however, that fascination turns to spycraft and rebellion. Like Hale-Bopp, Andor arrives unexpected and unbidden, only to vanish too soon — beloved, irreplaceable, and best enjoyed while it lasted.

The fact that this show exists is an act of grace itself. Undeserved, totally out of the blue, a gift that can’t be reciprocated, superabundant … and because it’s a show that asks human questions (not alien or Jedi questions), it’s a show that traffics in plenty of gospel-centered themes and ideas. Regardless of whether you love the show or whether you’ve yet to fall in love with the show, here’s why Andor may be not only the best show on TV this year, but also one of its most hallowed.

Spoilers ahead.

Counting the Cost (Again)

Season One of Andor asked viewers to count the cost of joining the rebellion, and it was a theme that transitioned over into the second season. To join the revolution against the Galactic Empire, one must slough off any idea of heroism or ambition and ask what they’re willing to sacrifice for the sake of revolution. At worst, you can end up like the first arc’s Maya Pei Brigade soldiers, stranded and starving in the jungle. At best, you’ll find serenity on the other side of loss like the galactic senator Mon Mothma.

Sacrifice is the key theme driving Mon Mothma’s story this season. Her plan to arrange her daughter into a loveless status marriage for her future safety is in full swing, and as the wedding arrives, we discover Mon’s marriage to Perrin to be even more loveless and status driven than we were led to believe. Remorseful that she is damning her daughter into a life she loathes, she tries to satisfy her conscience by giving her daughter a chance to call it off. Leida’s acerbic refusal denies her that satisfaction, but even then, when it comes to counting the cost, Mon has more lessons to learn. In this season, people around Mon begin to die: her money launderer and childhood friend, the people of Ghorman, her limo driver … “Welcome to the rebellion,” says Cassian sarcastically, as he dispatches Imperial spies in front of her without hesitation. The rebellion has not only taken her career and her family, but it’s also taken away the privilege of her erudite nonviolent political resistance. In the show’s concluding montage, the formerly resplendent senator is sitting at a guerilla base mess kitchen with a bad haircut drinking from a soldier’s tin cup. Still, as Mon chats with her cousin, it seems that Mon has made peace with her many losses, exuding a serenity that eludes many of the show’s other rebels.

(That peace is reinforced by Perrin’s concluding montage moment of boozy adultery with his daughter’s mother-in-law. Here is a man whose nihilism and hedonism clearly leave him empty and unfulfilled. He’s not tragic — he’s just pathetic.)

Along with Mon, Kleya, Lonni, and the Ghorman Front also have to count the cost this season, as each make fateful gambles for the future. Lonni wrongfully believes that he can rebel without having to make a sacrifice, trying to be both a mole and a family man. (I had hoped for a happy ending for him, but alas, the show’s inner logic demands he lose something as a result of his resistance!) Kleya is forced to murder her own surrogate father figure, a sacrifice she makes even though it leaves her empty and purposeless. Cassian’s great criticism of the Ghorman Front is that they have not counted the cost, that their resistance is, as the kids say, “unserious” (more on that in a moment).

It’s Bix who ultimately makes the biggest sacrifice of the season. Her story is one of torture in season one and trauma in season two, she being the target of attempted sexual assault by an Imperial officer on her otherwise tranquil farming planet of Mina-Rau. In the show’s second arc she is a shell of herself, dependent on (illegal?) drugs to sleep and barely functional in her depression and anxiety. After that rough start, however, she begins to recover her strength and her heart, murdering the ISB official who tortured her in season one and finding spiritual comfort in the teachings of a Force healer on Yavin. She and Cassian develop a warm and loving life together in the jungle, supporting the rebellion but planning to leave when the opportunity arose. The (surprise end-of-show reveal) baby, of course, complicates those plans. She recognizes that Cassian was “touched” by the Force (a status Cassian rejected in every way), and chooses to leave him, withholding the news of her pregnancy and removing herself as a barrier to his providential mission. She intuits, perhaps through her own sensitivity to the Force, that if she stays with Cassian, he won’t fulfill his destiny to help the rebellion. She gives up a life of serene domestic bliss with the man she loves, a life healed and full after years of scrounging and abuse, for the sake of the cause. (I’m not crying, you’re crying). She has counted the cost and, like Mon, seems to have arrived at a place of peace.

It was the missionary martyr Jim Elliot who wrote in his journal that “he is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.” Jesus tells his disciples that following him will cost them everything, but also, what they gain will be worth it. Happy marriages, serene families, peaceful planets … the Empire is evil enough to put them all under threat. The rebels who recognize that threat are the ones who can make the sacrifices required to aid the rebellion. If the Empire has its way, they won’t be able to keep those meaningful aspects of their life anyway. Those who don’t recognize the stakes, the ones who try to have their cake and eat it too, are the ones whose experiences end in tragedy.

Resistance Is (Can Be?) Futile

It’s that tragedy that comes from not counting the cost that defines the planet Ghorman. One of my favorite new characters in season two is the Ghorman politician, businessman, and Front leader Carro Rylanz. Like other rebels, he sees the destruction Imperial occupation will bring to his people and planet. He forms a resistance, helping his people navigate the occupation publicly while directing the underground. He hopes that the truth and mostly nonviolent means will drive the Empire out, but others in the Ghorman Front aren’t so sure. Cassian, sent to evaluate them, concludes they’re not ready to bear the emotional toll of resistance. He’s not wrong. “Not much of a revolutionary, are you?” smirks Rylanz to Cassian, unaware he’s addressing the cause’s apex insurgent. Even double agent Syril sees their naivete and reports as much up the Imperial chain. When their childish and undisciplined resistance gets rebel agent Cinta killed, Vel lays it on heavy. “She was everything you daydreamed about,” she tells the responsible Front member, exposing the folly of romantic idealism.

The Imperials, masters of provocation, and eventually the revolutionaries under Rylanz reject his more pragmatic avoidance of violence. As they boldly march to the city plaza, singing and chanting with guns and bombs hidden under their coats, Rylanz realizes, to his horror, the stakes of the game he’s been playing. By the end of the day, his daughter will be dead, the Front will be demolished, the Ghorman genocide will have begun. It’s space Les Misérables, but Paris is the whole planet.

Rylanz is as tragic a figure as any figure in all of Star Wars. He comes to the realization, too late, that his cause is doomed. Violence, non-violence, it didn’t matter. The Empire has come for his people’s “deep, substrate, foliated kalkite,” and there was nothing he could do to stop it.

What Rylanz can take away from the day is that, despite his ignorance, he remains above reproach. Recall Nemik’s manifesto from season one, which ends in the urgent exhortation to “try.” Rylanz is one of the only figures to take upon himself the mantle of rebel and “try” without violating his conscience in the process. Like plenty of rebels before him, he experiences major loss: his nineteenth-generation Ghorman silk spinning house, his daughter, his planet. Still, though his heart is broken, his soul remains intact.

In Rylanz, we are given a vision of what it looks like to lose well, to refuse to gain the world at the expense of one’s soul, to keep dignity when the Empire’s mission is to crush it. So much of the romance and idealism around resistance is wrapped up in daydreams of victory and promises of freedom, and there is a place for this kind of optimism. (Rebellions are built on hope, after all!) In the inner logic of his show, and in the inner logic of any rebellion, Rylanz has lost, but he hasn’t failed. There was never a way for the Ghormans to get past the Empire without sacrifice and bloodshed. But Rylanz shows us how to lose well, with knee-buckling tears, with justice, and with an intact conscience.

His loss is, of course, a major domino in the great chain that leads to the defeat of his enemy. It’s also his fiery baptism into true rebellion. Because Ghorman “burns brightly,” many others in the galaxy will live. Unlike the Maya Pei Brigade from the first arc, the Ghormans have played, and will certainly play, a role in the rebellion to come.

The End of Approval

On the other side of the Ghorman massacre, our two Imperial leads — Dedra and Syril — are thriving in their jobs. Syril has gone from being a feckless mother’s boy to Dedra’s lover, trading one strong woman’s condemnation for another strong woman’s control. He’s demonstrated excellence at fulfilling the Empire’s bureaucratic needs. That alone, however, doesn’t satisfy his itch: his immature ambition for heroism persists as he becomes an Imperial double agent in Ghorman’s burgeoning rebel force.

Dedra, likewise, continues her meteoric rise, tapped to help the Empire acquire Ghorman’s kalkite supply. Her job is to help facilitate the rise of The Ghorman Front, which the Empire intends to scapegoat. She excels, taking a seat at one of the Empire’s most prestigious secret meetings and impressing Director Krennic with her insights. Working with double agent Syril to egg on the Ghorman Front’s naive ambitions, we (sadly) doubt she will fail.

Dedra and Syril are more alike than we might first imagine. Both crave approval, and both find it through their careers. Syril wants to be the hero and fill the needy void in his heart. Dedra, herself an orphan, chases recognition through professional success. “If I say this is the greatest day of my life, does that ruin it?” asks Syril after receiving a compliment from the demanding Major Partagaz. Dedra may be more composed than Syril, but her aspirations reflect a similar disposition.

Major Partagaz, the dispenser of approval for Dedra and Syril, becomes more important in season two. He masterfully wields the professionalism and meritocracy of the Empire, using attaboy carrots and crushing sticks to keep his team in shape. That Dedra has thrived under his leadership says a lot. When she is tapped for the Ghorman project, Partagaz’s only consideration is its professional implications: “It will appear as a demotion,” he explains, “but it will soon heat up. This is good news Dedra … Ghorman is a gift. Take it. Then win it.” As things on Ghorman do heat up, he encourages Dedra as she starts to lose her nerve, delivering one of the series’ key lines: “Let the image of professional ascendance settle your nerves.” Anything goes, including a bloody massacre, if it means ascending a rung or two on the career ladder.

The Empire offers both Syril and Dedra the approval they desire, but approval through career success in the Empire comes as a devil’s bargain. Syril gets to play the hero but discovers too late that his actions are not heroic. Even as he tries to justify himself to Rylanz (“I meant you no harm … I was here to trap outside agitators”), it dawns on him that he is the outside agitator, a space Javert among the Ghorman barricades. It’s too little too late — as the Ghorman massacre unfolds, Rylanz will have his just revenge only after Syril sees the horrific consequences of his own naive “heroism.” As Dedra reckons with the Ghorman massacre, or perhaps her loss of Syril, we see her try to unbutton her Imperial uniform’s tight-fitting collar. It’s a striking visual metaphor: a suffocating set of choking hands (like Syril’s were earlier in the episode), a dog collar for someone whose job is to obey, a damning noose that proclaims her guilt. Her shaky hands smooth her uniform as she composes herself to return to her murderous and violent work, but she and the viewers know she’s crossed a line.

In the final arc, it is ultimately Dedra’s career ambition that becomes her undoing. She uncovers Luthen and his spy network, the “Axis” she has been chasing since season one. Instead of bringing in others to help her, she insists on the pleasure and accolades of catching Luthen herself. Her eager but sloppy execution of the raid means Luthen dies before she can interrogate him. As proud as pie that she figured out Axis, her downfall is swift, as Krennic informs her that her investigation led to leaks about the Death Star. I’m embarrassed at how much I enjoyed the delicious irony that her imprisonment represents.

If Andor’s Imperials teach us anything about the human heart, it’s that the strong need for approval can lead to unspeakable evils. The Bible, even in its earliest chapters, teaches the same; when God accepts Abel’s offering but not Cain’s, the jealousy and resentment from the lesser brother is overwhelming to the point of murder. David’s son Absalom spreads rumors to incite a rebellion against his father, whispering rejection: “The king is too busy to help you, but I am not.” The betrayer Judas, after Jesus shuts him down over a financial complaint, soon leads soldiers to where Jesus is staying, earning his betrayer moniker.

What if approval were removed from activity, if love were given apart from advancement, and the self regarded apart from its works? These are the questions that have redeemed Syril and Dedra, but they were not asked in time.

Control Is Constant (and Exhausting)

The relentless pursuit of perfection, professionalism, and power that Major Partagaz embodies ultimately ends in collapse. Like Dedra and his other charges, he faces failure — in his final scene in the show, his court martial is imminent. The hammer he once wielded on others has now come for him.

As he sits in the ISB boardroom, Partagaz listens to a recording of Nemik’s now-viral manifesto from season one. The young rebel’s words cut deep: “The Imperial need for control is so desperate because it is so unnatural. Tyranny requires constant effort. It breaks, it leaks. Authority is brittle.” In this moment, the camera lingers on actor Anton Lessor’s face, revealing the age and weariness etched into Partagaz’s features. The implication is clear: he is internalizing Nemik’s insight and his own exhaustion as a master of spies.

“Who do you think it is?” he asks the officer escorting him to his hearing, referring to the manifesto’s author. The question betrays Partagaz’s pride: assuming such clarity and wisdom must come from someone important — a leader, philosopher, or politician. It must be someone wise to have such an accurate grip on the exhausting work it is to maintain tyrannical order. But viewers know the truth. These deep insights into the weakness of the Empire came from a baby-faced rebel foot soldier. Partagaz doesn’t consider that someone so “average” could see through the system he helped uphold. And yet, Nemik’s diagnosis rings true. In the end, Partagaz takes his own life, choosing death (and rest?) over disgrace. The officer’s muted response is telling: we are meant to think Partagaz chose wisely.

Anyone with an ounce of spiritual wisdom knows: control is an illusion. We can’t control others, and moreover, we know we can’t even control ourselves most of the time. Whether it’s an oppressive regime or our own inner need to manage outcomes, control is unnatural. Cassian must learn this lesson too, that the providential guidance of the Force supersedes his desire to choose his own destiny and “make his own decisions.” Freedom comes as a “surrender to life as it is” as opposed to “straining for life as it should be.” As Princess Leia boldly reminds Tarkin in A New Hope: “The more you tighten your grip, the more star systems will slip through your fingers.”

Luthen and Love

One of the series’ thorniest questions remains unanswered: is the rebel spymaster Luthen a force for good? His hatred for the Empire is clear, but his willingness to sacrifice fellow rebels makes others pause. In season one, he allows Anto Kreegyr’s force to be sacrificed to preserve mole Lonni Jung’s cover. In season two, he murders Mon Mothma’s longtime friend and money launderer after an attempted bribe and knowingly supports the Ghorman Front — recognizing their martyrdom will become a catalyst for more revolutions. Other rebels sacrifice their personal life. Luthen sacrifices people. By the season’s third arc, as rebel leadership coalesces around Yavin 4, he is left on Coruscant, isolated and untrusted. We shouldn’t be surprised: Luthen foresaw this in season one: “The ego that started this fight will never have a mirror or an audience or the light of gratitude.”

And yet, when it comes to Cassian and Bix, he seems remarkably caring and considerate. He pulls back missions to allow Bix time to recover, provides the intel to murder her torturer (bringing her some level of closure and healing), and helps Cassian’s dear friend Wilmon escape from Ghorman. Are these acts of genuine affection? Or is he so desperate for Cassian’s skills that he takes care of his heart to keep him as an asset?

Luthen’s love is ambiguous, whether toward Kleya as his surrogate daughter or Cassian and team. And it has to be ambiguous for him to be an effective spymaster. Love makes you vulnerable, and Luthen can’t afford that. His friends and allies, even Kleya, can never know if he’s being genuine, or if there’s some alternate outcome at play. Ambiguous love is not love, and so it’s little wonder why everyone’s relationship with him is so complicated.

Regardless, when he dies, Kleya weeps. And when the S.O.S. signal arrives, Cassian comes running. His defenders recognize his sacrifice and honor him for it, (though his accusers are usually dead before they can stand to condemn him). What makes Luthen such a great character is that he knows how his spymaster job destroys his soul, but he does it anyway. He tells Lonni as much in season one: “I’m condemned to use the tools of my enemy to defeat them. I burn my decency for someone else’s future.” His love may have been in question, but his dedication was not.

A Word About Fascism

Anyone hoping to find a straightforward allegory in Andor about a modern geopolitical cause will be disappointed. The show is a pastiche of sci-fi, spycraft, and history, and the creators deny any direct commentary on current events. Still, it’s hard to ignore that the Empire is, essentially, an organization of space Nazis. The show asks viewers: Would we send our children into loveless marriages to quietly fund the resistance? Would we join the barricades in Ghorman plaza? Would we dispatch any loose end to protect the cause? Half the fun lies in watching a show’s leads struggle within these great moral quandaries and asking What would I do?

Fascism is notoriously difficult to define, but every real-world expression of the ideology combines populism and power. To belong to a fascist movement is to help consolidate the movement’s power while simultaneously syphoning off a piece of it for yourself belonging to that movement. That’s what makes fascism so potent: it is not driven by a specific ideal, but by a collective desire for power and control. Dedra and Syril weren’t just loyal to order or security — they were drawing on the power of the Empire’s fascism to fill a hole in their hearts. Still, one of the key themes of the show is how fascism consumes even its most ardent supporters, which has been the case for just about every Imperial character on the show. Aligning oneself with the Empire comes at a cost that is, arguably, worse than aligning oneself with the rebellion.

Andor‘s rebels show us how to resist the forces of fascism, and many, if not all, of those suggestions are spiritual. They’re transferable in that respect: by watching them, we might learn how not to get swept up in the tyranny of political extremism, even in our own day.

We might learn, for example, how important it is to root our identity in something beyond career success, heroism, and the approval of others. This is what the New Testament calls “justification by grace through faith,” the doctrine that God’s approval is not linked to our successes, failures, good works, or bad deeds. Remember Maarva’s blessing over Cassian in season one? “Tell him I love him more than anything he could ever do wrong.” That level of unconditional love provides the firm foundation of the rebel forces, who are fighting for home, family, or justice. It’s the lack of that affection that drives Syril and Dedra into the Imperial machine. One cannot imagine Partagaz, or any Imperial, offering that same token of grace to their underlings.

We might also learn about the importance of surrendering worldly ambitions. Power, status, money, fame, sex, greed … the Old Testament prophets refer to these as “dry cisterns,” places where one would expect to slake their thirst but ultimately cannot. Not only are worldly ambitions unsatisfying, but they can easily be taken advantage of by dark forces. They’re bait in the trap of ideological slavery. The rebels in the show are marked by virtues that eschew these worldly ambitions — most of them wish for universally applicable values like freedom, peace, and justice, even if they sometimes stray from those values in their pursuit of them. The Imperials of the show are turned inward, concerned mostly with their own advancement and status. The same can be said for Perrin, whose hedonism is little more than escapism. Dedra and Cassian, for example, have a common trait: they both break the rules and skirt the bureaucracy of their institutions to accomplish their missions. The difference is that Cassian breaks flight log protocol for his friends, but Dedra reads other people’s documents for her own justification. Cassian gets away with it because his leaders understand his virtues and values. Dedra’s actions lead her to a horror movie dystopian space prison. There’s an inverse relationship between the ambitions of the empire and the freedom of the rebellion. The two cannot coexist together, and freedom is definitely the better choice.

One final lesson we also might learn: expect loss. The Protestant reformer Martin Luther called this having a “Theology of the Cross.” Spend any time with the Jesus presented in the Bible, and you see a figure marked by a sacred mix of joy and sorrow. He brings goodness with him everywhere he goes with his healing and exorcism work, but laments that his message of God’s love for sinners goes unheeded by just about anyone within earshot. He rejects fame and political leadership and tries his hardest to inspire a spiritual revolution, but none of it seems to stick. His ineffectiveness reaches its peak during the sufferings of Good Friday, but victory is assured with his triumphal resurrection on Easter Sunday. Which is to say, life is a mix of good and bad, high and low, extraordinary gain and cutting loss, and this realization is what sustains the best members of the rebellion. They have the capacity to suffer loss and defeat for the sake of their cause. The Maya Pei brigade, the Ghorman Front, and the Empire have what Martin Luther called a “Theology of Glory,” where the only losses and hardships they expect to see belong to their opponents. Suffering is alien and surprising to them. Defeat is anathema. Their pride is insufferable. And as a result, their anthropology becomes a hamstring. They are blindsided by the ordinary courage and resilience of regular people. “We fight to win. That means we lose,” explains Luthen in a flashback with his young protege Kleya. “We lose and lose and lose until we are ready.” The Theology of the Cross finds no home in the Empire, but it finds soft soil in the heart of a rebel who will lose and lose and lose for the sake of something bigger and brighter.

I don’t believe there will ever be another show like Andor, much less another Star Wars show like Andor. It’s remarkable, an arrow to the heart for this middle-aged man who dreamed of starships and space wizards but finds himself faltering at the amount of darkness in the world. There’s much to learn from the Rebel Alliance of Andor about freedom and facing darkness, and it’s remarkable how much of it aligns with the insights of a gracious, world-weary, works-light Christianity. Commit to the belief we are justified by grace through faith. Despair of worldly ambition. Expect loss. In doing so, not only will the tyrannic forces of this landscape fail to find a foothold in your heart, but you’ll become a beacon of hope in a weary world.

Strays:

• One problem with Disney-era Star Wars across the thirteen years since purchasing the franchise from George Lucas is that it has tried so hard to craft shows that fans want to see instead of creating new programming for fans to fall in love with. Andor, and maybe Rogue One, are the exceptions to this trend. Fans would do well to not ask for a third season of Andor, but instead, encourage more top storytellers to spend time playing in the Star Wars sandbox.
• This season of Andor was just as “woke” as last season, and again, nobody seemed to care one iota. Showrunner Tony Gilroy jokingly describes how Cassian’s essential purpose is to bridge the stories of five women whose sacrifices are the most meaningful and whose outcomes are the ones we’ve invested in the most. To be sure, 80% of the audience will be nerdy men, but anyone who loves a good show about girl power should take note.
• My biggest critique of the season: I didn’t like how Cassian was bottled up on Yavin 4 during the first arc of episodes 1-3. That was a lot of time to strand the show’s lead to prove a relatively small point: that the rebellion hadn’t coalesced in the four years prior to the events of The New Hope.
• There are some thoughtful attempts to try and make Cassian a sort of Jean Valjean in conjunction to Syril’s Javert, but I’m not sure the analogy sticks. If Les Mis is a spirit-filled reflection on the power of mercy, Andor is the equivalent reflection on spiritual warfare.