Star Wars Doesn’t Need Lightsabers, It Needs Politics

Illustration by Will Allen/Europinion

In Andor, the latest live-action Star Wars series to be churned out by Disney, there are no lightsaber duels. In fact, there are no lightsabers at all, the show is the first, and only, live action Star Wars series created by Disney to not feature a single lightsaber. It is a somewhat dramatic departure for the IP, considering there are nine films, ten live-action Disney TV series, as well as countless other shows related to the IP, all of which include lightsabers. This is because Andor is a different kind of show. It is a show that returns Star War to the organising principle the very first trilogy was based around, the thing that was, and has always been, Star Wars’ intellectual mooring: politics. 

For the Star Wars IP, and everyone watching the show, it is a development that is liberating. Star Wars is not, and has never really been, about the powers the Jedi have, or the lightsabers they wield. From the very beginning, Star Wars has been about politics, especially power - how it organises itself and its excesses. After all, the first trilogy, while charting the rise of Darth Vader, also closely follows the collapse of a democratic system and the authoritarianism that replaces it. The original trilogy (being the foundation on which everything sits) of course organises itself around a visible political statement, charting the resistance to an empire which replaced the democratic system seen in the prequels, and is undoing. Politics has always run through Star Wars, likely because the entire narrative is based around power, oppression and resistance. George Lucas, Star Wars’ inventor, made this point abundantly clear, noting the films were a political gesture, telling people time and time again that the politics “was the whole point.” It is no surprise then that the IP has been at its most powerful, and purposeful, when it unpacks the ideas behind oppression, the causes which make it possible, and the resistance it brings with it. Without it, you don’t really get much to chew on.  

This brings us to how Star Wars lost its way. If the first two film trilogies were defined by politics, the third instalment was defined by its absence. When Disney resurrected the IP in 2015, it tried to tell many stories across three films, but none of them were based around the IP’s intellectual mooring, politics. Across the last trilogy, there was no overriding message, no exploration of power and its many facets. Episodes VII, VIII and IX, were as apolitical as they were jumbled up. Instead, politics sat irrelevant and awkward, referenced in small slivers (such as the singular line about greed and profiteering off war on Canto Bight, in episode VIII), as if it was a chore that would distract the audience from the action, and of course the lightsabers. Episodes VII, VIII and IX could have deftly illustrated a whole host of unexplored ideas about the destruction of freedom and the resistance it breeds. They didn’t. Rogue One was a rare exception for the Disney years. If the trilogy was apolitical, Rogue One, a film about resistance, made space for ideas about its politics, and helped buoy a film focused entirely on filling a plot hole. But aside from this one film, Disney abandoned these ideas, and led Star Wars astray. Not telling us anything new about oppressive power, how it rises again, or how it falls apart, the Disney variants of the trilogy were destined to fail.

This absence of politics, was carried over into the live action series Disney began creating for TV. While some are vaguely interesting, either because they feed us beloved characters or pick up unexplored plot lines, none are truly engaging enough. Each has fallen flat exceedingly quickly as Disney has dragged these shows out beyond their welcome. Star Wars’ latest forays have all too often collapsed under the weight of saying too little, and adding almost nothing to the foundational concept that drove the original trilogy forward. When you say nothing about the ideas your IP is based on, there isn’t much point in saying anything at all. It also bores people. People who have grown up watching power corrupt and fail, both on screen and in the real world, can only use so many lightsaber duels and distractions before they become numb to gimmicks and hollow ideas. 

Illustration by Will Allen/Europinion

Andor is exciting, because it captures the exact essence of the IP George Lucas created. Andor talks about politics, and only politics. For two series, Star Wars, focusing on the emergence of the rebel alliance, once again becomes unafraid to explore the facets of authoritarianism, how it operates, and the slide further into it. It muses over how people resist the grip of unchecked power, and importantly draws your focus to the cost of resistance. In doing so, Star Wars speaks once again about the idea which made the IP so compelling and interesting in the first place. It also does this in a moment in which the parallels between science fiction and reality are increasingly intertwined once again. In a moment when people can be disappeared to foreign torture camps, unfettered genocide occurs for all to see, legislatures acquiesce and political power slowly becomes absolute, media and the stories it tells provides a means with which to understand the ideologies and systems of power that oversee us, and warn us. Andor is unafraid to explore these centres of power through endless ISB meetings, senate speeches and conversations between the emerging resistance groupings with radically different ideologies and aims. Even the small pieces of dialogue seek to flesh out the politics of Andor, turning every minute into an inescapable manifesto. It is a manifesto that comments on the world we find ourselves in, explicitly warning us, in plain language, that eventually “When truth leaves us, when we let it slip away, when it is ripped from our hands, we become vulnerable to the appetite of whatever monster screams the loudest.”

Illustration by Will Allen/Europinion

Each of these choices not only return Star Wars to its origins, but make it something more. The series, in lieu of its position in the Star Wars timeline, spends much more time focused on the minutiae of the Empire, its organisation and methods of oppression. There are valuable glimpses into the struggle to claim power and rise through the ranks at the ISB, the banality of evil in these acts is laid bare, and we see just how certain the organisation is of its power to control every part of society.  

Andor is a triumph to watch, simply because it reconnects Star Wars to its foundational principle, a principle that should guide each and every one of the films and TV shows that flow from the IP. Re-centring Star Wars around politics and its intricacies unshackle it from the misery of endless lightsaber duels, questions about parentage, and pointless dialogue, and made watching it enjoyable again. Star Wars has a story to tell, a story which is most purposeful when it centres on politics and the reasons we resist.