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Middle East Eye
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- Middle East Eye
Hit TV show Andor spurs viewers to draw parallels to Israel's war on Gaza
Fans of the Star Wars prequel series Andor have taken to social media this week to draw comparisons between Israel's war on Gaza and the show's narratives of occupation, resistance, and authoritarian violence. Set as a prequel to Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, the Andor series traces the formation of the Rebel Alliance and Cassian Andor's role within it, focusing on the rise of resistance against the Galactic Empire. It provides context to the political and social conditions that shaped the early rebellion and expands on characters and events that influence the broader Star Wars narrative. Following the first season, which aired in late 2022, Andor viewers took to their social media accounts throughout the last season, drawing parallels between the show and Israel's war on Gaza. Specifically likening the Empire to Israel and the US, and the Palestinians to the people of Ghorman. Make no mistake, this shit is real. Right now. Just today, Israel announced the complete elimination of Gaza. Open your eyes to what this show represents. Real life genocide. If we don't engage with that then there is no purpose. So let the aid in and free Palestine. #Andor — Andres Cabrera (@SquadLeaderAce) May 7, 2025 In an opinion piece published back in April for The Guardian, film critic Radheyan Simonpillai detailed the similarities that were also echoed among viewers. 'In the new and final season of Andor, an occupied civilian population is massacred; their cries for help ignored by the Empire-run media, which instead paint the victims as terrorist threats to public safety. Meanwhile, the politicians who have enough backbone to speak out, and use the word 'genocide' to describe these aggressions, are met with violent suppression.' New MEE newsletter: Jerusalem Dispatch Sign up to get the latest insights and analysis on Israel-Palestine, alongside Turkey Unpacked and other MEE newsletters 'Star Wars fans will be forced to reckon with how this story isn't about what happens 'a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away'. It's about what's unfolding right now in Gaza.' Just watched this series and kept saying it reminded me of Israel and Palestine. Especially the part where they demonize those people in collusion with the press to manufacture consent for their genocide / destruction of their planet. — Anna (@annaskiba16) June 2, 2025 Although it is not certain that Andors' creator Tony Gilroy had Gaza in mind when writing the second season, he did mention Palestine as an example of the history that informed the show in a 2022 Deadline interview. In addition, actors from the show, like Irish actress Denise Gough, who plays a villain in the series, have been vocal about their support for Palestine. 'Andor' actress: 'I refuse to stay silent on Gaza.' "We're being asked by Palestinian people to speak,' so those who don't speak out can't say 'I didn't know what to do' says Denise Gough. WATCH: — BreakThrough News (@BTnewsroom) May 31, 2025 A recent Reddit post, in which a social media user says they have 'never felt more on the side of the Palestinian cause', has brought the conversation on the parallels between the show and Gaza back into the limelight one month after the finale aired. 'It showed me the side of resistance we often grapple with, the side where resistance more often than not becomes an armed resistance when the peaceful part of resistance doesn't get you anywhere,' the post reads. 'When your land is taken forcibly, when your city is besieged, when your land, sea, and air borders are controlled by an occupying entity, and you are left with one choice, to fight back, even if the empire (Israel/US) is overwhelmingly stronger, more powerful, and better funded.' The person continued to write that although the story is fictional, it made them see that in 'fighting an empire, you do not get to choose the terms. You are forced into the shadows, pushed into impossible choices, and made to sacrifice lives so others might have a future'. 'Right now, in Gaza, people are making those same impossible choices. When your children are bombed to smithereens, starved to death, your hospitals destroyed, your homes flattened, and the world either watches in silence or arms your oppressor, resistance stops being about right or wrong. It becomes survival.' This brought about a flow of responses that agreed with the post's writer. 'There is a shot of Gorman with white buildings and a golden dome-like structure reminiscent of the dome of the Rock. I immediately thought of Palestine.' Others disagreed that there was a parallel between the armed resistance of Palestinians to that of Ghorman's Rebel Alliance. 'People comparing the rebellion to Hamas is definitely not what I thought I would see today yet here we are," one person responded. There are also those who argue that attempting to draw the parallel in the first place was futile. 'Human history doesn't have a narrative as simple as Andor and never will,' one person said. 'What happened on Oct 7th was unjust and horrifying and counterproductive. What is being done in response is unjust and horrifying and counter productive.' The Reddit post found its way to X, and one person posted a screenshot of the thread, joking that it would be the end of the series. nah, they're about to cancel this series — Sana Saeed (@SanaSaeed) June 1, 2025 While many joked that the show cannot be cancelled now that it's already done, others highlighted the irony of how the show was produced by Disney, which has historically aligned itself with being pro-Israel. "I still cant process that disney backed a show about resistance while staying silent on the real thing happening in Gaza," one social media user wrote on X. "Ironic doesnt even cover it."
The Guardian
24-04-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
In Andor, the real world political parallels are impossible to ignore
In the new and final season of Andor, an occupied civilian population is massacred; their cries for help ignored by the Empire-run media who instead paint the victims as terrorist threats to public safety. Meanwhile, the politicians who have enough backbone to speak out, and use the word 'genocide' to describe these aggressions, are met with violent suppression. Andor goes there. And when it does, Star Wars fans will be forced to reckon with how this story isn't about what happens 'a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away'. It's about what's unfolding right now in Gaza. Sure, we're talking about a prequel to a prequel to the most popular escapist fantasy of the past half-century. So not exactly the kind of show you turn on expecting an urgent and furious indictment of the most contentious conflict of our time, where Israel has reportedly killed more than 60,000 Palestinians while those in the US protesting the continued violence, such as Mahmoud Khalil and Mohsen Mahdawi, face deportation. It may feel especially surprising because Andor is coming out of Disney, which acquired the Star Wars franchise in 2012. This is the studio that reportedly got weak in the knees when their new Snow White star Rachel Zegler tweeted 'Free Palestine'. And that's not the first time Disney has shown a general aversion not just towards politicized content, but also inciting that loud section of their fandom who oppose identity politics and so-called 'wokeness' in their movies. Back when Rogue One – the spinoff prequel that Andor leads up to – was arriving in 2016, Disney's CEO, Bob Iger, responded to sentiments that the movie was anti-Trump – and 'woke' due to its diverse casting – by declaring that it was not 'a political film' in any way. 'There are no political statements in it, at all,' he said. But Star Wars has always been political. George Lucas spoke about the original 1977 movie, in which rebels battle an authoritarian empire, as modelled off the Vietcong standing firm against American imperialism. Even Lucas's much maligned prequels – their confounding plot about intense trade embargoes now seeming prophetic in light of Trump's tariffs – dramatized how fascism can be borne out of democracy. Revenge of the Sith (2005) even took swipes at George W Bush's 'war on terror', with the movie's young Darth Vader, played by Hayden Christensen, paraphrasing the then US president's 'you are either with us, or against us' remarks. Andor, the best thing to happen to Star Wars since The Empire Strikes Back, is far more rigorous, intense and steeped in today's language around occupation and self-determination – even if it can't directly name the wars raging in our galaxy. As of this writing, the show's creator Tony Gilroy (a writer on the Jason Bourne movies) hasn't admitted to drawing from specific contemporary conflicts. However, he did, in an interview with Deadline, refer to the Russian Revolution, Haitian Revolution, the ANC and Palestine as all part of the cyclical history that informs the oppression and colonialism dramatized in the first season. Gilroy's labyrinthine thriller, which ditches the lightsabers and the force while striving for something more akin to The Wire than The Mandalorian, gets downright forensic in its accounting of how fascism sows the seeds for rebellion. The series, which premiered in 2022 and returned this week with its sophomore season, is built around Diego Luna's Cassian Andor, one of the rebel spies who steals the Death Star plans beamed to Princess Leia in Rogue One. The first season, set five years before Rogue One, is about Cassian's radicalization as he endures military occupation, police brutality and the industrial prison complex. He also forges alliances among rebels who share a cause but are often fighting among themselves, because their goal posts, tactics and tolerance for violence vary. Observers online saw in that premiere season's storytelling the struggles for Black Lives Matter, Ukraine and Indigenous communities. But Andor recalled the Palestinian struggle most of all in its granular details, depicting communities living under the boot of a militarized force; their movement restricted, lands seized, holy sites desecrated and resistance often resorting to throwing rocks. Those associations are even more pronounced in the second season, which is arriving in three-episode chapters released weekly, each set a year apart to cover the remaining period leading up to Rogue One. In the first episode, top-level imperial strategists meet in secret to workshop a plan to colonize Ghorman. The most scholared Star Wars aficionados – the kind who read the sourcebooks to role-playing games – would be familiar with the planet where the aforementioned Ghorman massacre, a flashpoint for the rebellion, takes place. We learn in Andor's first episode that those events are set in motion because the Empire's energy program is after a mineral buried deep within the ground. The extraction would require relocating Ghorman's Indigenous population with 'a hand firm enough to silence any resistance', as Ben Mendelsohn's imperial commander Krennic puts it. Gilroy told the Hollywood Reporter that the 1942 Wannsee onference, when Nazi commanders gathered to plot the 'final solution', was inspiration for this scene, in which Imperial advisers boast about the strategic propaganda they disseminate to stir hatred towards the Ghorman population. The narratives they concoct, easing the pathways to genocide, recall antisemitic rhetoric used to vilify the Jewish population before the Holocaust, and so many other instances throughout history when propaganda swayed public sentiment towards violence. They also hatch a plot to puppeteer the Ghorman resistance, incite rebel attacks and denigrate their entire population. 'You need a radical insurgency you can count on,' says Denise Gough's tyrannical imperial officer Dedra Meero. 'You need Ghorman rebels you can count on to do the wrong thing.' Her tactics echo Benjamin Netanyahu's own. The Israeli prime minister, who is currently a fugitive from the international criminal court wanted for war crimes committed in Gaza, has been accused of propping up Hamas to sow division among Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, and serve his own agenda. He boasted to police interrogators (as seen in videos recorded between 2016 to 2018) that when it comes to Hamas, he's 'controlling the flames'. He even borrowed a line from The Godfather ('keep your friends close and your enemies closer') to describe his relationship with the group that led the 7 October attack, which killed 1,200 Israelis and hand-delivered Netanyahu the war that is keeping him in power. The parallels don't end there. So much of the language in Andor's second season immediately recalls the fear-mongering that facilitates the current onslaught against Palestinians in Gaza. Intergalactic news reporters paint Ghormans simply as terrorists, ignoring the imperial aggressions and settlements stirring their rebellion. Meanwhile, imperial commanders and agents working in counterintelligence stoke fears about outside agitators manipulating the Ghormans, much in the same way defenders of Israel's unmitigated attack on Gaza would call Hamas a dangerous proxy for Iran. In Andor, all these tactical narratives build towards that much-anticipated confrontation from Star Wars canon between the Ghorman population and imperial troops. During the standoff, the locals protest imperial occupation peacefully, singing a song about Ghorman identity. In their chorus, they repeat the words 'valley, highland', as if shifting the geography a bit from the chant that calls for Palestinian liberation ('From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free'). Meanwhile reporters serving the imperial agenda describe their protest as a 'volatile insurrection', justifying the subsequent and ongoing violence directed towards the Ghormans as the price of safety. You know where Andor goes from there, and not just because it is drawing from the history of colonialism, occupation and genocide that is repeating itself in Gaza. Though the second season makes few concessions to the franchise, it's still a prequel. Its narrative, somewhat disappointingly, still bends towards the original Star Wars movie. As political as George Lucas intended it, that fantasy, subtitled A New Hope, just feels a bit too tame and pat in our current reality. Andor, which often feels like the story taking place in the gulf between our social media feeds and news channels, is fantasy too. It could only exist as a sci-fi story finding safety in a galaxy far, far away from Israel and Palestine. Only there could the word genocide be spoken out loud.
