Andor, Star Wars, & Fantasy Worldbuilding

I’ve been watching ANDOR, and it’s an enjoyable if tense show.

It also presents a valuable lesson for writers of fantasy.

Specifically, that when creating a fantasy/science fiction world, you must be careful not to violate the precepts of your own worldbuilding.

Let us explore this some more below.

ANDOR has been praised for its “realism” (as much as a show with FTL travel can be realistic) – ie, showing the struggles of ordinary people dealing with the oppressive weight of the Empire. No Jedi, no Sith, no Force, just ordinary people caught up in big problems.

But here’s the interesting thing – without the Jedi, without supernatural aid, everything that Cassian and the other Rebels do is inevitably doomed to crushing failure.

Why? Because while the Empire in ANDOR is presented as an oppressive authoritarian state, it has one significant advantage that historical oppressive regimes have lacked. What Cassian the other Rebels don’t know is that the Empire is an oppressive state ruled by an Emperor who is an actual evil sorcerer whose evil magic actually works. Furthermore, the Emperor’s powers also grant him a significant amount of precognition. He is able to see into the future to a considerable degree, and is thereby able to prepare traps for his enemies to destroy them.

Without the Jedi and their supernatural abilities to oppose him, the Emperor cannot be defeated by ordinary people. Cassian and the Rebels will win minor victories, but the Emperor will eventually crush them.

In fact, the first serious defeat the Emperor suffers is because of Jedi supernatural abilities. If not for Luke Skywalker and Princess Leia, both of them possessing latent supernatural abilities, the Rebels would have been destroyed by the first Death Star. Everything the Rebels would have gone through in ROGUE ONE and Episode IV to get the Death Star plans would have come to nothing – the Rebels would have missed their shot, the Empire would have welded a plate or something over the Death Star’s reactor port to prevent that avenue of attack, the Death Star would have blown up the Rebel base and wiped out the Rebel leadership, and that would have been that.

Except Luke Skywalker, using his latent Jedi abilities, is able to make the impossible shot and destroy the Death Star.

In other words, the Rebels could never have have destroyed the Death Star without supernatural aid in the form of Luke’s Jedi abilities.

The same pattern is repeated on a larger scale with the second Death Star. The Emperor, recognizing that both the Rebellion and Luke now represent serious threats to him, designs a cunning trap to eliminate the Rebels and corrupt Luke to his side. The second Death Star will lure the Rebels to their destruction, but more importantly, it will goad Luke into a furious rage. If Luke kills his father Darth Vader while in the grip of hate and anger, it will open him to the dark side of the Force, and the Emperor can corrupt him easily.

Except it all goes seriously wrong. Luke refuses to kill his father, and actually convinces Vader to repent. And his sister Leia’s latent supernatural abilities are the final wrench in the Emperor’s plans. Not only does she help anchor her brother Luke, she also helps convince the Ewoks to attack the Empire. Without Leia, the Emperor’s plan would have worked.

Which means that without supernatural aid in the form of Luke and Leia’s Jedi abilities, the Emperor would have destroyed the Rebels. Everyday people like Cassian and the other Rebels could have risen up against the Empire all they wanted, but without something to counter the Emperor’s supernatural powers, their efforts would have eventually failed.

This, of course, grates on modern egalitarian sensibilities, because we all want to believe deep down that if enough ordinary people rise up, the world can be changed. The modern ideal is that large groups of people rising up can defeat evil, rather than a single hero defeating evil on behalf of the people. In other words, we believe in the idea of the Mandate Of The Electorate or The Will Of The People as much as people used to believe in the idea of the Divine Right Of Kings.

Except the “single hero” fits with the original building blocks of STAR WARS. George Lucas was very open with the fact that one of his influences was Joseph Campbell’s monomyth and THE HERO OF WITH A THOUSAND FACES, and one of the parts of the Hero’s Journey is that he descends into the underworld, confronts evil, and returns with powers and abilities to defeat evil and restore peace to the world. In the context of STAR WARS, Luke is that hero.

In terms of worldbuilding, I think this is partly why THE MANDALORIAN was well-received and THE LAST JEDI was not. The version of Luke Skywalker in THE LAST JEDI was a sad old man hiding from his failures in the middle of nowhere. This contradicts the earlier parts of the STAR WARS stories, like dissonant notes appearing in the later movements of a symphony. Whereas the version of Luke Skywalker who shows up at the end of THE MANDALORIAN is the Campbellian Hero With A Thousand Faces set up by the earlier movies – the main characters of the MANDALORIAN have fought as hard as they can, but Luke arrives to save them. While Luke is portrayed as a benevolent figure, he is still mysterious, powerful, and terrifying, as a Campbellian hero would be at that point in his journey.

The lesson for writers of fantasy and science fiction, I think, is to be careful about how you set up the terms of your worldbuilding at the beginning. ANDOR works because it focuses on ordinary people and can rely on the framework of the other STAR WARS stories to support it – we know that Luke will win because Cassian and the Rebels created a path for him. THE MANDALORIAN worked for basically the same reason, while THE LAST JEDI did not work because it violated the previously established terms of worldbuilding.

So when writing a book of fantasy and science fiction, be careful not to break the rules of the worldbuilding, since readers will inevitably feel cheated.

-JM