How Andor Reclaimed Star Wars From the Empire of Nostalgia
Added 2025-06-04 19:04:02 +0000 UTCAndor Season 2 is a masterpiece — of craft, politics, and memory. But what does it really say about fascism, about rebellion, about who gets remembered and who is erased?
Comments
This was so, so so so important. Both a masterful textual analysis and a really, really important argument for what we need today, this very minute. Your voice has become so powerful. Thank you.
Michelle C Funk
2025-06-13 18:18:24 +0000 UTCFunny - I saw it first here and then went to watch it on YouTube, (daily to up her watch count)
Richard Guidorizzi
2025-06-12 03:28:32 +0000 UTCI just saw an interview with Gilroy - they called him on killing Cinta and he thought he was just treating Cinta like everyone else, unfortunately you were not the interviewer so they failed to bring up the Hays Code, and without that part and connecting it to their expression of love (and the lack of any relationship for Vel afterwards) locks your point in very clearly and he might actually get it - but you weren’t there (our loss). This is the interview https://youtu.be/FMOw6gP4r7Q?si=WDpz_S2OhJ9ZMa7h
Richard Guidorizzi
2025-06-12 03:27:44 +0000 UTCThis was perhaps the most important video I have watched in years. Saw it first on YouTube and immediately came here.
Valley Of Grey Pigeons
2025-06-09 02:47:44 +0000 UTCWatching it again on YouTube (watch time matters)- I think the title change was a good idea, I like it better
Richard Guidorizzi
2025-06-07 15:02:07 +0000 UTCJust finally watched this on nebula. Thank you so much. I so needed it. This 40 something queer anarchist really deeply appreciated it ♥️
Charles Kermit
2025-06-07 02:09:16 +0000 UTCI just had run out of Andor content from my other favorite creators. Watching this on Nebula now. Great stuff so far as usual.
Newsom J Gibson
2025-06-06 20:43:42 +0000 UTCOk- I good with everything except for the interpretation of the Bix ending. My issue is having seen several behind the scenes of Andor. Gilroy took over Andor with the agreement that we was re-writing everything they had which he tested with the Disney execs with the “we will open on a brothel and a murder” opening. Your points are totally correct, my issue is the attribution to Gilroy- he may have just left that part in. Now given the point you make in the comments I don’t know you should change any of it because your points are valid, I just feel the attribution to Gilroy isn’t necessarily justified.
Richard Guidorizzi
2025-06-05 23:39:40 +0000 UTCI am sorry you feel the need to leave the country- more sorry for the reasons you need to do so. I hope my Patreon $ help you get to a safe place.
Richard Guidorizzi
2025-06-05 22:39:35 +0000 UTCI’d only watched 2 hours, I hope it returns soon as I want to finish!
Conrad
2025-06-05 21:52:10 +0000 UTCIt will take days for me to watch... I have no problem with this.
spinoli
2025-06-05 21:12:26 +0000 UTCAs I'm writing this today it’s the Danish Constitution day - a celebration we acquired through decades long and hard battles against our oppressors. I haven't actually watched Andor but hearing you talking about it, gives me hope - even though Denmark is pretty progressive I worry what will happen to us with the growing global rise of Facism. I want to say thank you for all of this, wish you good luck with your art, and hope you successfully escape America. And most importantly Jessie I want you to remember as a friend of yours would say you are beautiful, you are valid, and you are loved.
Lasse Ehrenreich
2025-06-05 18:41:45 +0000 UTCThank you Jesse for getting back to your strength, deep insightful commentary with lots of “don’t look at the time code” comments because true insight takes time! I can glad you are back to your strength!!!
Richard Guidorizzi
2025-06-05 18:33:47 +0000 UTCThis looks amazing! BTW between minutes 38-39 there is a audio issue.
May
2025-06-05 16:29:02 +0000 UTCI love you but four hours???
David Golightly
2025-06-05 16:21:54 +0000 UTCat the time of my comment I hadn't gotten to the point where you discuss Andor and the monomyth. I can understand your read on it, and seeing the Gilroy clip it does seem to confirm it, but I didn't read it that way when I watch the show. Obviously it was always a reference to his predetermined fate in Rogue One, especially the whole "he's a messenger" and they get the death star plans out, but just in the context of the show, to me, I read it as he's a messenger for the rebellion, for that communal fight and building. To me, that's what "I have friends everywhere" came to mean for him, not just a code phrase, but because Cass, unlike Luthen, understood you have to connect with others to actually build the future. The little moments, the friendships we see him have, even the gal in the season opening. He connects with her. That's the message he carries to me.
Pinball Witch
2025-06-05 13:46:07 +0000 UTCI want to offer some thoughts on the end of part 4, Syril's last day. Let me start by saying I have avoided all official paratext, and only engaged in light discourse about the show online, so I did not see a lot of the things you brought up myself, so I wanted to share how I read his arc in the show. I've found Syril interesting since his first appearance because from his point of view, he's living the "hero's journey" even though it was all a lie built up in his head. He's the exact kind of guy who believed he should be the hero based on that idea. To show how truly hollow it was for him end the end really struck me. "Who are you?" was to him the "For Bison it was Tuesday" of his life. What you said about the gendered and racist violence of how he reacts to his world falling apart are absolutely correct, but I also felt his end was more complex. Syril never had community, we see that from his family life, and then as a cop, he never has friends of any kind. He spent at least 2 years on Ghorman, working with people, getting to know them. It was probably his first experience with any real community. It's easy to forget that part since the extremely limited amount of time we get in each arc, but I think the way he was so focused on "outside agitators" really shows the lies he told to himself to ignore his eyes. And then, he finds out his own life had lied to him, for years, a woman in charge of the entire imperial apparatus on Ghorman, while the violence was very much reminiscent of domestic abuse, it was also the only actual way in that moment he could demand actual answers. It's not right or, but the context of the scene is way more complex than simple right or wrong, like all things in the show. Similarly with his attack of Andor, I never read it as him trying to save his wife in the slightest. He's already left thinking he'd probably never see her again. To me, he attacked Andor, because 1. Andor was the man who, from his point of view, is the one who set his life down this path, and 2. He fits perfectly in his lie about outside agitators. It gave him a target that would fit the tiny narrative he had left for himself. And then that was shattered completely in the moment the man he'd hunted for years, has no idea who he is. I do feel sad for him, had he made different choices, even just after getting to Ghorman, the point about it only being real to him after seeing people like himself being oppressed by the empire, he might have ended differently, but as his story came to a close, I felt no redemption or absolution was intended for him, just a sad end to a man never really stopped to think much for himself about his life. Again, the race based violence read is absolutely in there as well, but much like the violence against Dedra, it was a much more complex and complicated internal conflict from how I read the events. Also the points about how little Cinta is both in this season and mourned I agree with, especially about the biases of the creatives, Syril isn't mourned anywhere near as much as Cinta. She's remembered by friends at least, no one even mentions Syril in the final arc. As i said at the start, I didn't partake in paratext or any discourse about his death, so this is just my read from my watch thrus of the show. Sorry for such a long comment, I fully suspect no one will really read all this, but I really wanted to share what I got from this part of the show. I could write one of these for probably everyone in the series, cause I think about it endlessly.
Pinball Witch
2025-06-05 13:10:56 +0000 UTCThis was an incredible video.
General Kenobi
2025-06-05 06:38:15 +0000 UTCUh... at least earth architecture-history-wise that's kinda backwards Art Nouveau (soecifically the French & Spanish lines as opposed to the Austrian Secession & German Jugendstil ) were closely to the political right wing. Brutalism (coming in almost a century after A N is very focused on humanity & community. But a visual gearslip happens & Brutalism gets confused with the Neoassiccal Art Deco of fascists
Gil the Gilded Dragon
2025-06-05 00:35:10 +0000 UTCAaaa. I have to strongly disagree with Lucas that that the American Revolution can be analogicked to Vietnamese independence movements. The Americans were colonists from Britain not indigenous, the taxes that precipitated American discontent were levied to offset the cost of the military aid Americans requested. What has happened is that he's fit everything into a Campbell soupcan which given Joseph Consommé was an outright fascist. Thus the thesis & antithesis are confused with each other (Yielding not synthesis but confusion. It makes yhe repetition inevitable... which is why pursuit of redux sickens & new clarity revives) (Around 34 mins & I am validated!)
Gil the Gilded Dragon
2025-06-04 23:35:34 +0000 UTCAlso a thing with fascism is that it cannot make a death star. Slave labor, afraid labor, violated labor will yield a rotten harvest; a non functional wunderwaffe If they could automatize your doings they would already have done that
Gil the Gilded Dragon
2025-06-04 23:23:10 +0000 UTCThe epigram is from the Dao Dejing? But as to why cycles: Commercial art is an echo, seeing what was in years past , recuperated. The jackbooted thugs deporting illegally, the state striking those who oppose genocide... The USA was there (as my eyes see) twenty years ago Also: fascism for all its preening proclamations is not able to be eternal , it cannot be. The mode by which it rejects reality & action ability will always burn it up or force it into other modes of organization.
Gil the Gilded Dragon
2025-06-04 23:15:52 +0000 UTCDamn! You watched quick ❤️
Jessie Earl
2025-06-04 22:33:02 +0000 UTCFantastic work, really enjoyed it
Andy Poulastides
2025-06-04 21:22:39 +0000 UTCI agree I mean blame the Madolorian for using nostalgia I mean it probably the inspiration for the borderlands movie.
Jesse gartung
2025-06-04 19:39:21 +0000 UTCOh wow this looks epic!
Jinty M
2025-06-04 19:06:51 +0000 UTC
