Saving What We Love
On Star Wars shows in this moment, doing the right thing, and my constant (friendly) squabbles with Andor
In the sixth episode of the latest Star Wars show, Skeleton Crew, the aforementioned crew of four tweens has split up into unexpected pairs — one set being Wim, the frustratingly impulsive protagonist, and KB, a so-far secondary character who stands out because of her “augs,” a set of mechanical implements attached to her head, including a visor that usually obscures her eyes.
But KB’s augs, affected by the steam of the planet around them, have started to corrode, and she collapses to the surface, unable to move. Wim frantically tries to help, following KB’s quiet, gasping instructions: remove the old fuse. Create a new one from materials you find around you. Replace it in the computer attached to KB’s spine, and hope that it works.
It does (this is a kid-friendly show, after all), and KB is right as rain. “That was close!” she says, suddenly chipper. “You probably thought it would be more exciting to save someone’s life.”
Up until this point in the show, Wim has desperately wanted to be the type of person — to him, a Jedi — that would save someone’s life. When his classmates dream of being statistical accountants and systems analysts, he announces “I think I really wanna help people, you know? Like if there’s danger or something.”
As someone who sometimes writes about Star Wars, you would expect that, when thinking about my contribution to the “oh no what do we do now” discourse of early 2025 would be a meditation on Andor, a show that is lauded as the most politically left of Disney’s output, a show that is very much about what we do in the face of fascism. I won’t argue with that analysis; the best argument against it is that Andor is still a show that is made by one of the largest entertainment conglomerates on the planet, a company that certainly has no place in the revolution.
One common refrain about Andor is that it’s a “gritty, realistic” Star Wars, there are no Jedi, no sweeping John Williams scores, no moment where the hero blows up the enemy base and saves the galaxy. But Andor is still rooted in Star Wars, it is still a sci-fi/fantasy story, and what Cassian Andor does in his story is far from boring: outrunning and outgunning the local police, executing a bank heist and escaping through a hail of meteors, masterminding a jailbreak and then swimming miles to shore so that he can return home — galvanized by his comrade’s manifesto — to save his best friend from imperial torture and commit his life to the cause.
Cassian Andor is who we all think we would be, in his shoes — at first reluctant, then in turn inspired and inspiring, brave and strong and a good shot. We know that Cassian will die heroically in Rogue One, that his actions will lead the Rebel Alliance to their first significant victory. He gets to be who Wim wants to be, even if he’s not a Jedi. He helps people when there’s danger, and it’s very exciting.
In the grand scheme of things, I would venture that more of us have a life like Wim or his friends on the suburb-coded planet of At Attin than Cassian’s on his scrappy, community-focused homeworld of Ferrix or across his many adventures in the galaxy. Even if we do not live in a suburb, At Attin shows much of what an American existence is: schools and placement tests, tech jobs, public transportation, low stakes and small dreams. A place where escapism is more likely than actual escape, where adventure is something terrifying. Andor would not happen on a place like At Attin, nor, I think, would many people have the opportunity to do what Cassian does — especially do it successfully.
This is not to say that taking the message of Andor (even with the context of the platform playing it) and applying it to one’s own life is wrong-headed. It’s a great show, and exists at a time where it supplies a very specific catharsis. Maybe Andor couldn’t happen here, but Donald Trump certainly has, and many (myself included) have turned to Andor to feel galvanized. Characters offer strong monologues about how “power doesn’t panic,” that “freedom is a pure idea,” etc. “Remember this: Try” was peppered across my Twitter feed in November before I left the platform.
In Andor, to try is to riot, to resist torture, to break yourself and hundreds of inmates out of prison. It means operating a network of spies risking their lives, sacrificing allies for the cause. Would that we could.
There are many who see the world we live in as a powder keg that’s one struck match away from chaos; that we are one election or executive order or international conflict away from all-out hell. Collapse is imminent. Anarchy is inevitable. The next civil war is upon us, and suburbs and cities alike will be battlefields.
Modern history, at least in this country, says differently. Yes, the streets can be filled with protesters and fascists alike, yes, millions of people elected a vile man to a position of power who will sow discord and cruelty in his wake. But through all of that the status quo creeps like a strangler fig, pulling us back to a so-called normalcy: even as so many are harmed or abandoned by the system, the system continues. The streets are full of commuters again. Would that we could have a war, to know what side we are on, to be brave and bold and sacrifice ourselves to the cause. At least, then, we wouldn’t be so powerless.
In the final episode of Skeleton Crew, At Attin’s deputy supervisor, Fara, is being held hostage inside the supervisor’s tower that controls the planet. Her captor, the leader of a band of Pirates that await in the space above At Attin, demands that she lower the Barrier: a nebulous, deadly mixture of gas and satellites that has kept anyone from entering or leaving the planet for decades. To Fara, the Barrier is the greatest protection that her people have from the threats in the surrounding galaxy, and she cannot lose it. Instead, she offers to keep the Barrier up — but allow the pirates to enter. The ship descends, opening fire on the homes and people below, sending out skiffs of raiders to capture as many people as they can. And the Barrier, intact, stands in the way of anyone who could come and save them.
Fara’s desire for safety stands in contrast to Wim’s yearning for adventure and heroism; after all, the Barrier is what’s kept him from the excitement and danger of the galaxy. But I cannot sit here and say that one impulse is more right than the other: I have wanted both, in my life. So have you.
The downside: I am not as coordinated or skilled or charismatic as Cassian Andor, nor am I as self-sacrificing and restless. Likewise, I can look at the safe havens of my life and see that, like At Attin, I have abundance where others do not. And if I only prioritize my own safety, I might allow dangers in anyway — concessions made, over and over, to keep a sense of security.
Fara does finally destroy the Barrier, which melts away from the sky in a burst of light. The people of At Attin, exposed to all that could come to them, look up and see the stars for the first time.
So: what do we do now? In the first episode of Skeleton Crew, Wim says that he wants to help people, “if there’s danger or something.” Later, we see what this means in the stories he reads about Jedi: fighting great beasts, powerful Lords of the Sith, protecting the planet from within the mystic stronghold of a Jedi temple. He yearns for the extraordinary, and can’t we all relate: who doesn’t want to go to the right protest, or make the right statement, or take the one action that will turn the tide and save the day? All the small brushstrokes of resistance are collapsed into the big picture. It is natural to want the easy solve, to find the happily-ever-after at the end of injustice — or to find ourselves at the end of that long arc of history where justice is found. Some, echoing Luthen Rael in Andor, will note that we are always far from the end — that we burn our lives for a sunrise we will never see.
And true, many people have more fuel than they assume for such a fire. There is always more that can be done, and the doing is what matters. I want the world to go on after I am gone, and I want it to be a better, safer, kinder place. But is Luthen’s way of burning oneself, of committing to a life of sleeplessness and struggle, to abandon the selfish joys of love and pleasure, friends and companions, the right choice?
I write a lot about storytelling, because I adore it more than any other creative form, but also because I believe that it is an aspect of human nature to tell stories about ourselves — whether in our own minds, or how we appear to others. This is not to say that these stories and ideas about ourselves are false and meaningless — we tell them to ourselves in order to live — but they are not necessarily true, either.
Doing the right thing can be hard. It can also be easy, or frightening, or costly, or enriching for your soul. It can be thrilling, and more often, it’s not that exciting. During the height of Covid in 2020, the right thing was wearing a mask and washing your hands: dull, unglamorous actions that saved countless lives.
The pity about these small, boring, unseen actions is that they don’t do much for a sense of empowerment. In Skeleton Crew, as soon as a lightsaber enters the story, it is used by both heroes and villains to signal that they control the situation. The hum of a laser sword in your hand, one that can slice through metal and bone, signals control, or the illusion of control.
And we cannot control the shifts in the world around us. In a democracy, no one person can control who will rule (at least, ideally). Under capitalism, we cannot control the greed and behavior of landlords, executives, and the politicians in their pockets. We cannot control the passage of time, the wearing down of our own bodies, the loss that shades over our lives. The reaction to powerlessness can be to retreat behind a barrier, or to brandish arms, or to despair. All of these responses have their place, and none is the right thing to do every time. Being able to make that discernment, to be able to shift from tool to tool, is an essential part of the work that is being a person with a conscience.
I often wonder why Andor has reached the high esteem it has amongst critics of Star Wars. I know why it is good — and despite my critiques, it is very very good — but it is not the only good Star Wars. The word “mature” gets used, or “grounded,” indications that the show uses the appropriate amount of seriousness for the subject matter. Andor tosses the frivolities of other stories from that era; the hijinks of Star Wars: Rebels, the easy heroism of the original trilogy. The baby in this proverbial bathwater, though, is hope. Not that Andor is a hopeless show, rather, it argues that emotions like hope, or love, or the need for companionship, are worth sacrificing for the greater good. Burn yourself, it argues, so that others may see the sun rise. When Cassian tells his mother that he will always worry about her, she replies “that’s just love,” as though pain is necessary for love to be real.
Skeleton Crew — and Rebels, and the Original Trilogy, and other stories within Star Wars — is full to the brim with loving, hopeful characters. The term found family is often used as a cornerstone of the best Star Wars stories; the fight against darkness being strengthened by the empathy and bonds that happen between allies.
Towards the end of The Last Jedi, Finn — a character who has finally been radicalized not just to hate the First Order but to defeat it — tries to fly his small skiff down the barrel of a cannon; an act that is brave, potentially ineffective, and certainly fatal. Before he can succeed, he thrown from his course by Rose, the Rebel soldier who radicalized him. Anguished at his defeat, he pulls her from the wreck:
“Why would you stop me?”
“I saved you, dummy. That’s how we’re gonna win. Not fighting what we hate — saving what we love.”
To call this naive is understandable. In Skeleton Crew, when looking over a war-torn planet, the child Neel asks why the factions don’t just apologize to each other so they can get along again. To act out of love and not hate, like freedom, is a pure idea — uncomplicated, almost impossible, entirely necessary.
So what do we do now? There is no single method, no silver bullet against the attacks and atrocities we may bear witness to in the years to come. But I know that we will be able to do something, many, many somethings in fact. We can save lives, even when it isn’t exciting. We can resist and stand up for what is right without burning ourselves. We can save what we love. I don’t know if we will. But I have hope.
