Editor's Note: The following contains spoilers for Season 1 of Andor.
Andor has a heavier emphasis on the lives of civilians under the Empire than perhaps any other Star Wars story we’ve seen. The show follows Cassian Andor (Diego Luna) but not the dedicated rebel we know Cassian to be in Rogue One, instead, we meet him before he takes up arms with the rebellion as a guy desperately trying to scrape by under Imperial rule. Through him and the other characters we meet over the course of the show, we come to know a different side of the Empire. One that isn’t dominated by powerful figureheads who sit at the helm of the Empire but instead gives us a clearer view of the systems in place that keep the Empire running smoothly. More than anything Andor is about people living under tyranny and the many, many different ways that tyrannical power is enacted and maintained. Darth Vader may be a formidable Sith, and he may be a powerful figure within the Empire, but he is still only one man. He alone can only do so much. The Empire is not maintained through his atrocities alone, instead, it relies on complicity throughout its entire being; from the top commanders to the lowliest officers, Andor shows us how depraved every aspect of life under the Empire is.
The Empire’s Dedication to Order Means Their Presence Is Always Felt
Fear of the Empire is ubiquitous with living in it. The Empire’s dedication to keeping order means their presence is always felt. The corporate security officers who follow and harass Cassian in the pilot episode aren’t Stormtroopers but they maintain the Empire’s sense of order in the same way and engage in the same excessive, power-trippy behavior. The rent-a-cops taunt Cassian in the bar as he’s looking for information then follow him out and try to shake him down for a made up fine. Cassian has done nothing than provoke them other than having what they consider to be a suspicious appearance.
They pull their weapons on him and Cassian reacts in kind by fighting back. An officer is killed by accident in the skirmish and the other tries to talk his way out of it, but the damage is already done, Cassian kills him because he knows there’s no compromise or way to smooth this over. An attack on their own only leads to more interest in the case, even with higher-ups trying to cover it up, dedicated cronies like Syril Karn (Kyle Soller) will keep pressing because their dedication and belief in the system encourages them to seek “justice”. The Empire maintains its control through people like that who will uphold the Empire’s way of life without question.
We see this overreach of local authority and blatant disregard for the civilians both the corporate security and Stormtroopers display on multiple occasions. While the corpos are hunting down Cassian, most civilians hide, but those out on the street like Bix (Adria Arjona) are treated like criminals. She’s handcuffed to a wall while her boyfriend is shot and left on the street like a dog. These acts are not committed by generals or Sith, just complacent officers overextending their power whenever they see necessary. This is compounded upon later in Episode 8 when Bix and other people suspected of being in contact with Cassian are detained without warning and subjected to cruel means of interrogation. Again we see how the Empire maintains its power through its willing participants and the drastic measures those participants will take against any perceived threat. Being suspected of contact with a suspected criminal of a suspected crime is enough to get you tortured and this is clearly something with a lot of precedent. We see other officers like Dedra (Denise Gough) who will gladly carry out these tasks for the sake of the Empire and the career it's given them. She’s not some cruel and unusual Imperial officer, she’s one of many bureaucrats fulfilling her designated purpose.
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Injustice Within the Galaxy Is Common
The excessive and unreasonable actions of security officers and Stormtroopers is present across the galaxy. They were used to displace and coral the people of Aldhani into Imperial townships to work in the Empire’s factories. They maintain their control over the planet and its people by giving occasional concessions to the culture they’ve suffocated, like letting the Aldhani make a pilgrimage to see The Eye but incentivizing them to stay away with promises of work or gambling at strategically placed outposts along the way. They enforce control in every facet of people’s lives by making them beholden to the Empire for work, community, and leisure. This is demonstrated even further after Cassian leaves Ferrix.
While hiding on Niamos, Cassian is in the wrong place at the wrong time. He gets questioned by a Stormtrooper who refuses to listen to him and actively aggravates the situation with unnecessary aggression. The Stormtrooper decides to arrest Cassian without a proper reason, and he’s violently detained by a KX-series security droid. Though he’s a tourist on the planet he’s given no opportunity to explain or defend himself against the imaginary crime he’s being charged with. In a matter of moments, he’s been arrested, charged, and sentenced to six years in prison. It’s stomach-churningly efficient and in his sentencing scene, we can see how numerous these rapid judgments are. It’s blatant, it’s dehumanizing, and it’s cruel, and it shows just how efficient the Empire is at dealing with any perceived threat and destroying it.
After his sentencing, Cassian is sent to do forced labor in a prison. All day he works on an assembly line with other prisoners, desperately trying to meet their quota to avoid punishment, at night he’s locked into a small cube-like all the other prisoners, eating flavorless goo from a tube, and watching the artificial number of days he’s consigned to tick down. There’s no due process, no chance for a lighter sentencing, and no hope. The other prisoners explain that their sentences have all been artificially inflated for no apparent reason. The prisoners walk around barefoot, are confined to tiny cells during their free hours, and are forced to shower en masse under misters. It’s a hopeless and dehumanizing place made of sterile white walls and uncomfortably white lights.
The Presence of the Empire Is Pervasive and Wide-Spread
In this place, Cassian is entirely under the Empire’s control, beholden to exactly what they assign him if he wants any hope of survival. There’s no specific officers in charge, no big bad who’s making the prison worse, it’s the way it is on purpose because it suits the Empire’s needs. And it's haunting to see how quickly Cassian gives into it, with no choice but to go along and perform his assigned task. It’s no fault of his own, but it shows how pervasive the Empire is. It’s an all-consuming entity that will find a way to use you, if he could not serve the Empire as a willing participant outside, he will serve them by force and to whatever degree they require.
When the prisoners discover that not only are their sentences being artificially inflated but that when their clocks finally reach zero they won't be returning to the outside world, they know their only way out is in a fight. The Empire knows it can get away with false sentences and nonsense reasons to keep extending them. A prison is a closed system and Cassian and the others quickly realize there's no hope of outside help. They're completely alone at the whims of an organization that seeks to keep them completely unaware and subservient. By keeping these people imprisoned forever the Empire has access to an unlimited stream of free labor, it's another extension of the Empire's way of worming into every aspect of life and exploiting the people under its control.
If Cassian and Kino Loy (Andy Serkis) hadn't discovered the truth about the riot on another level, if they hadn't exploited the fact that the prison was understaffed, none of the men in the prison would have survived it. The Empire maintained their control in the prison, just like elsewhere, by maintaining enough force to create fear should the oppressed group decide to retaliate. Even when they are not actually as strong as they seem, the Empire maintains the illusion of power and control and that can often be enough to squash any inklings of rebellion. Their structure and their assumed total advantage over those they have their boot over makes them seem like a threat that can not be overcome, but that is not the case.
This tactic is similarly employed while Dedra Meero and her cronies lie in wait to ambush Cassian at his mother's funeral. Not only is it just downright cruel to exploit such a tragic occasion to give oneself the upper hand (by now it'd be stranger if the Imperials didn't do things in the most inhumane way possible), but it's also used to reassert Imperial control over all the people of Ferrix. The funeral attendance is limited in numbers beforehand by Dedra and the procession itself is barricaded by armed Imperials who watch over the whole thing. Maarva's (Fiona Shaw) final message is able to play out to a crowd of her mourners and waiting Imperials alike so when she calls for her people to fight back against the Empire both groups respond in kind. And here too, the Empire manages to show off its strength. The mourners have no weapons, so they fight hand-to-hand with Stormtroopers. But this citizens' rebellion is quickly quashed with many people, including some of Cassian's friends, being killed by the callous fire of Imperials raining down from above. Ultimately, some of Cassian's allies are only able to survive by fleeing Ferrix entirely. An act that mirrors Cassian having to be spirited away from his own home planet to escape capture. The Empire is absolute and brutal, to defend your own by going against them is an act that can only be answered with annihilation.
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The Empire's Control Lies in Systems of Oppression Not in the Sith
The Empire maintains its power through oppression. This comes in countless forms and is maintained through many different avenues. The corporate security officers are low-level, but they still maintain the Empire’s order, keeping peace in Empire company towns, and generally being nuisances to the people they claim to protect. The Stormtroopers do the same but with an even more eager trigger finger and more bureaucratic power to carry out their duties with. They strip people like Cassian and the Aldhani of their culture, their lands, and their languages and assimilate them into the Empire by offering them small comforts as caveats. Suspicious people are detained and sentenced without question, forced into prisons where they serve the Empire as wageless laborers with no hope for escape unless they submit to the system entirely.
The Empire is not just made up of villains who shoot lightning from their fingertips, it’s the countless officers that maintain their power, and the callous systems that will maintain their shape through the continued subjugation and oppression of the countless people it presides over. These more mundane acts of oppression and tyranny create unease through their clear parallels to structures existing in our own world. This is not an organization full of a few powerful individuals committing massive atrocities but rather interlocking systems of bureaucracy that will maintain the status quo at any cost. Andor shows us a terrifying image of the Empire not as something that can be defeated by knocking down their most powerful player but an intricate set of systems that support each other.
Darth Vader can kill a dozen rebels with his lightsaber in a minute, but the Empire’s prisons can accomplish even more by draining its prisoners will to try at all. It’s a frustratingly inhuman conflict in Andor, we watch people struggle against the Empire, but it isn’t something that can be defeated with a few smart moves. It’s an intricate set of interlocking systems that cannot be defeated alone. It’s a massive organization that requires organized, intricate destruction. The Empire is a beast of its own beyond Palpatine or Darth Vader and Andor shows us just how massive that beast is.
