Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today we’re returning to the far flung planets of Andor, where our hero Cassian has found himself in a whole heap of trouble. Not that he’s actively trying to be a hero or anything; he’s only seeking his sister, lost in the fallout of whatever happened back on Kentari. But it is rarely an innate sense of heroic responsibility that leads us to enact great changes on our world; just like the unfortunate string of coincidences that led to Cassian’s downfall, heroism is mostly our retroactive designation for a combination of desperation, opportunity, and luck.

Andor has done an excellent job of grounding its drama in mundane realities, and of emphasizing how, when lodged under the heel of oppression, most people simply carve out a nook where they can be pressed down upon with greater comfort and security. That in turn increases its sense of urgency; with no hope of a messiah lifting these people out of their circumstances, the threats they face feel that much more implacable, and their small acts of solidarity and rebellion that much more essential. We don’t need to be heroes to fight what seems inevitable; we simply need to embrace solidarity over comfort. Rebellion is housing the hunted, hiding the knife, keeping the secret. Fascism’s greatest strength is its presumption of inevitability; in truth, defeat is only inevitable if we believe it so.

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Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today I thought we’d take a quick jaunt to a galaxy far, far away, as we check back in on the harried Cassian and his adventures in Andor. Our first episode offered an anxious pressure cooker of a premiere, with Cassian’s unintentional killing of two empire sentries instigating a pan-galactic manhunt at the hands of one overzealous deputy inspector. Meanwhile, Cassian himself is basically cashing in all favors, his pursuit of his long-lost sister temporarily yielding to the necessity of surviving the next forty-eight hours.

It was a gripping, grounded premiere on the whole, articulating the lived experience of the empire for those huddling below, with no great destiny or magical powers likely to save them. And Cassian himself embodies that refreshing realism; he is not seeking to change the world, he is only pursuing his sister, hoping to carve out some fragment of peace and normalcy under the omnipresent but frequently indifferent gaze of their oppressive overlords. Cassian isn’t a “chosen one,” he’s just determined and unlucky, one of the countless nobodies that fate has thrust into a position to do some meaningful, lasting good in the world. We are not naturally destined to kick fascism’s teeth in, but when that jaw is presented, it is our collective duty to kick with all our might. Let’s see how Cassian fares!

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Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today we’re checking out a new property, one which falls well outside the site’s general wheelhouse, but which has received enough positive buzz that I’m eager to explore it for myself. Thus I find myself engaging with one of the inescapable franchises that have so effectively narrowed our collective imagination, as we explore the Star Wars miniseries known as Andor.

Alongside fellow blockbusters like Jaws, Star Wars was one of the death knells of the rich and varied New Hollywood era, signaling the advent of a dumber, simpler cinematic landscape consolidated around a handful of endlessly replicable genre scripts. I suppose it’s not exactly fair to blame the original film (a fine riff on Flash Gordon-style adventure serials) for the death of cinema, but it certainly didn’t help – particularly since Star Wars has continued its zombie existence for decades, and now stands alongside superheroes and “live-action” remakes as one of the main artery-cloggers of film and television.

Our perception of science fiction is narrower for the outsized footprint Star Wars has left on the genre; as is readily demonstrated by the impoverished imaginations of modern isekai, the more your inspirations all resemble each other, the less rich and distinctive your own fantasies will be. All that said, if you want to reach people, you need to speak in their language – and from everything I’ve heard, Andor uses the language of Star Wars to speak of oppression and rebellion in genuinely meaningful, well-crafted, perhaps even inspirational ways. Thus, with my antipathy for Star Wars as a cultural institution established, I nonetheless dive into Andor with great curiosity as to how good it truly is. Let’s get to it!

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