All eyes are on Ghorman, home of majestic twill, spiders and the Space French, as Andor‘s second season reaches its halfway point. Check out 10 things we loved in “Ever Been to Ghorman?” “I Have Friends Everywhere” and “What a Festive Evening.”
1. ‘Sacre Bleu!’
Modeling the Ghorman rebels on the French Resistance (and, to some extent, the Italian Resistance) is such a great bit of sci-fi-as-analogy, and provides a perfect vehicle for the production team to show off their stuff, from the use of French actors to the style of the clothes (those berets!) to a new fake, vaguely French language complete with gestures.
2. Ships passing in the night
Having Cassian — the man who brought Syril Karn and Dedra Meero together over their shared obsession with him — arrive on Ghorman from Coruscant just as Syril is leaving Ghorman for Coruscant is a delightful Sliding Doors moment.
3. Space Good Morning America
Showrunner Tony Gilroy has been very clear about how much of this show was written years ago and he’s not actively “writing to the news.” Nevertheless, the image of a strung-out Bix trying to forget her trauma while watching Space Good Morning America (or Today Show, if you prefer) as they talk about the parties surrounding the latest annual financial appropriations season in the Senate serves as a reminder of the pablum being put out to placate a society being steadily crushed under the bootheel of a fascist government, which has, uh, some … resonance with the world today.
4. The Tarkin Massacre
In Legends continuity, the big tragedy that triggered Imperial opposition and rebel sympathy on Ghorman occurred when Grand Moff Tarkin landed his shuttle on a group of Ghorman citizens. While Andor is seemingly setting up its own, canonical take on those events, working the original story into its own story as an earlier “Tarkin Massacre” is an appreciated acknowledgement of narrative history.
5. D’Qar
Saw Gerrera’s base in this batch of episodes is the same base used by Leia and the Resistance in The Force Awakens, before being abandoned in the opening of The Last Jedi. More fun continuity touches.
6. Whipping Votes
The extended montage of Mon Mothma trying to whip Senate votes to her side — and failing, even with the senator from Ghorman — is effective foreshadowing for Mon’s eventual break from trying to enact change within the system into open rebellion.
7. Huffing gas
If one of the things this series asks is “What are you willing to pay for the cause?” Saw Gerrera’s answer is “sanity.” I love that this series is just going all in on the bonkers Saw of Rogue One.
8. Space Jimmy Smits
Modern Star Wars has been a bit too reluctant to recast legacy characters, instead offering up shambling CGI approximations in their place. Which is why it was nice to see Benjamin Bratt taking up the role of Bail Organa when, according to Gilroy in Entertainment Weekly, Jimmy Smits was unable to make his schedule work to appear in the series (Gilroy also said that Bail will be appearing again later in the series; he put him in here so the audience could get used to the idea of a new actor before he actually had to do something).
9. ‘It’s Stuck!’
The amount of tension wrung out of Kleya simply trying to yank the bug out of one of Sculdun’s artifacts before Krennic and company notice her is remarkable.
10. Putting on sunglasses as the building explodes.gif
Cassian and Bix’s too-cool-for-school execution and walk away from his office as it explodes that ends this three-episode arc likely doesn’t mean the end of Bix’s troubles, nor an end to the tension between Luthen and Cassian even as he seemingly sent them on that mission. But it’s still a fun moment on which to end the arc.
Austin Gorton also reviews older issues of X-Men at the Real Gentlemen of Leisure website, co-hosts the A Very Special episode podcast, and likes Star Wars. He lives outside Minneapolis, where sometimes, it is not cold. Follow him @austingorton.bsky.social.
