Missing <em>Andor</em> ? Here's Your Next <em>Star Wars</em> Addiction.
Andor , a critically beloved prequel to the Star Wars films, stars Diego Luna as the rebel spy Cassian Andor, and recently aired its series finale on Disney+. Not merely more adult in tone and subject matter, Tony Gilroy's contribution to the franchise brought to Star Wars' fantasy universe a reality more grounded in history . Rather than epic battles between Force-wielding wizards, this was the story of regular people slowly being radicalized into revolutionaries. Less Flash Gordon , more (many, including Gilroy , drew the comparison ) Battle of Algiers .
Andor 's stylistic fidelity to a recognizable mode of historical fiction opened many fans' eyes to Star Wars ' capacity for more direct relevance to the real world and events currently taking place around the globe. Mon Mothma gave a speech before the Imperial Senate in the second season decrying the government's lies about the Ghorman people and total distortion of the truth about a massacre it perpetrated in the Ghorman Plaza. It was met with delighted astonishment by viewers critical of Israel's attacks on Gaza who have been petitioning for mainstream media to do the very same thing that Mothma (played by Genevieve O'Reilly) did in her speech: Call it a “genocide.” The show had methodically depicted the Empire's planning of the forced displacement and killing of the Ghormans, including using the violence of the local underground resistance as justification for mass slaughter. The parallels seemed hard to ignore. Here, fans marveled, was a work of art, made by great artists under the nose of the Disney corporation, released on one of the biggest streaming platforms in the world, saying what they hoped their own real-life leaders might say. Rather than dull its effect, the fact that the season had been written well before the events of Oct. 7 only served to highlight the ever-present reality of oppression across time and history.
This speech and the response to it showed something important: In its way, Andor is a series not just about the formation of the Rebel Alliance, but about the relevance of history. If other Star Wars properties have been happy to add new heroic tales of daring adventure to the series' canon, Andor sought to change our understanding of what Star Wars means. Gilroy has not been alone in this project, however. Last year, the British company DK published Star Wars: The Rise and Fall of the Galactic Empire , an in-universe history book written by an actual World War I historian from the UK, Chris Kempshall. This is, as the title suggests, a history of the Empire, from its complicated origins to its initial demise at the Battle of Endor in Return of the Jedi , and then its resurgence in the form of the First Order in the sequel trilogy.
The book is written from the point of view of Beaumont Kin, a member of the rebellion and a historian, portrayed in The Rise of Skywalker by Dominic Monaghan. As Kempshall, writing as “Kin,” explains in the book's introduction, “History tells us that, given enough time, all empires will fall. But if we do not also come to understand how and why they rise, we will remain trapped in this cycle forever.” Indeed, the book acts in a way as a redemption of the now commonly derided sequel trilogy ( The Force Awakens , The Last Jedi , and The Rise of Skywalker ), which saw the victories of Luke Skywalker and his friends rendered moot, and featured absurd twists—“Somehow, Palpatine returned!” Though the book doesn't make The Rise of Skywalker a better film, it does take advantage of its seeming contradictions and poor narrative choices to paint a picture of galactic history far more complex than most would assume. The cyclicality of history is its subject, as is its continuity.
Nothing, Kempshall's Kin reminds readers throughout the text, happens void of context, and The Rise and Fall acts as an attempt at contextualization, though by the author's own admission an incomplete one. This is a work of (fictional) history after all, relating on the sources available, and on the interpretive framework of its author. Kempshall even goes so far as to note competing interpretations of facts and events. As Kin, he frequently references, for example, debate among the galaxy's scholars over the veracity of claims about the Force and its magic-like powers, which Kin believes are more real than not, based on strange things he's witnessed (like Luke Skywalker levitating someone), firsthand accounts from figures like Luke and Rey, and supporting testimonials. Kin also criticizes previous (fictional) studies of the Emperor Palpatine, noting that their interpretations of his actions and character were limited by the fact that the only available sources were those Palpatine had allowed to survive his purges.
In character as Beaumont Kin, Kempshall forwards an interesting take on the events of Star Wars, revealing that in many ways, the feared Emperor Palpatine is not really so important. “He's a Sith Lord, and he can shoot lightning from his hands, and that'll probably ruin your day,” Kempshall told the hosts of the Lawyers, Guns, Money podcast in an appearance discussing this book last year. “He's not the guy who's going to kick your door in at 3 o'clock in the morning. He's not the guy who's going to stamp your passport. He's not the guy who's going to throw you in prison for 1,000 years. He's the guy at the top who most people don't really have that much of an understanding about. The Empire is everything else.”
This basic idea undergirds Kempshall's book, in which he lays out the history of the Empire as one of often incremental encroachments, first sowing discord within the Republic before its collapse, and then maintaining many of the Republic's structures years into the newly formed authoritarian regime, and keeping a haphazard hold on that power. “Palpatine wanted to rule the galaxy, but he had no interest in running it,” Kin explains in the book, going on to lay out the hierarchical structures Palpatine implemented, allowing his various generals and taskmasters to run their domains as they saw fit.
In the Empire, power, Kin writes, was often expressed through violence, while the extractive enterprise of colonization and oppression across the galaxy benefited those in the wealthy core systems, who found themselves putting up with moderate impositions on their freedom. “Many civilians did not object to the changes going on around them because the Empire arrived wearing—initially at least—similar clothes to the Republic that had existed before,” he writes, later going on to say, “They embraced a society that had seemingly been designed expressly for them, without either realizing or caring that if they were not paying the price for it then somebody else was.” Kin explains how Palpatine's Machiavellian plotted to overthrow the Republic while casting himself as the galaxy's defender and ingratiating himself to a willing public, writing, “This is an important lesson for the galaxy moving forward: there will always be those who are prepared to accelerate the death of democracy if they believe power is being given to someone worthy.”
The Rise and Fall of the Galactic Empire is an exploration of the idea that empires are, in fact, complex entities, pushed and pulled by the wills of powerful individuals, political realities, historical context, and ideological interests. Those who've studied real empires, wars, and genocides will recognize the patterns, including how the Empire managed to make itself into the only option in town through cultural bans, educational programs, takeovers of industry, and more. “You would struggle to find a more significant hero of the Rebel Alliance than Luke Skywalker,” Kin writes, “but even he, while growing up on Tatooine, felt so trapped by the life there that he was eager to join the Imperial Academy to escape it.” This mostly slow-rolling consolidation of power came along with plenty of violence, some of it highly organized, but much of it not. The Wannsee Conference-esque meeting to plan out the Ghorman genocide was but one path. As Kin notes, other genocides were conducted at the whim of local generals often left to their own devices, but always working toward the goals of the Imperial hierarchy.
Beaumont Kin's primary takeaway is that the success of the Rebel Alliance over the Empire—and later the Resistance over the First Order—should not be understood simply as an unlikely set of military victories by scrappy revolutionaries. That, when looking more closely at the historical record, it's possible to see the deficiencies in the authoritarian system of power, which was often as divided against itself as the early rebel groups that would go on to form the Alliance. “The Imperial need for control is so desperate because it is so unnatural. Tyranny requires constant effort,” writes the character Karis Nemik in his revolutionary manifesto, featured prominently in Andor . “It breaks, it leaks. Authority is brittle. Oppression is the mask of fear.”
Perhaps more importantly, though, the book seeks to understand the rise of the Empire, and how, even in defeat, it managed to rise again—an uncannily familiar sequence for anyone living in the United States in the year 2025. It traces how, in the devastated ashes of the Empire, those with a righteous spirit took their eyes off the ball, allowing the galaxy to languish and people to starve and fend for themselves despite the formation of the so-called New Republic. No wonder, then, that the First Order was able to gain footing. “I can certainly recall older members of my own family who would, in quiet and unguarded moments, reflect after the war on how much better, easier, or simpler things had been before,” the fictional Beaumont Kin writes. “I ignored them when younger but now, as I have become a historian, I often wonder when exactly these simpler times were under the Empire? How were they better? Simpler for who?” This nostalgia for supposedly better times under the rule of a corrupt regime committing genocides across the galaxy suggests a deeper problem any revolutionary movement must contend with. “How,” Kin writes, “can we stop the Empire from continually haunting our galaxy when the ghosts of its acceptance exist in our own homes, our own families, and refuse to stay buried?” For this question, neither Kin nor Kempshall has an easy answer.
