With Star Wars Andor returning for season two, we return to our coverage over the next four weeks, starting with the first three episodes released on April 22nd, 2025, titled "One Year Later", "Sagrona Teema" and "Harvest". Join us for a recap of those episodes and commentary on the themes that we're seeing then have carried over from season one in this episode of the ImplausiPod.

Welcome to the ImplausiPod, a podcast about the intersection of art, technology, and popular culture. I'm your host, Dr. Implausible. I. One of my first impressions watching Star Wars Andor as I described early last episode, is it was the most cyber punky Star Wars had ever been. It captured the mood and feel that we saw in early cyberpunk movies like Blade Runner, and that's held up and carried through in unique ways in the start of season two and old school cyberpunk fans from the eighties will likely know what I'm talking about.

We'll get to that it shows up a little bit later, though. We start off with slightly advancing the timeline and firmly pinning down what occurs within the largest Star Wars cannon with a flash of BBY4 going across the screen, which I guess stands for before the Battle of Yavin. It took me a little bit to figure out what that extra B was for, but I guess we're defining the ending of a new hope as the most singular canon event in the Star Wars universe and 

I think that's largely true. 

So before we get started with "one year later", or an episode that might be titled The Empire Sanction, which I'll get into in a little bit. Let's see what's going on. We'll do a quick round table with our players. We see a place called NAR Test Facility 73 in Cassian, and is doing spy type stuff, showing up as an imperial pilot working towards the extraction of a test fighter.

We're taken to a farmhouse on a rather bucolic planet and we see a very creepy looking dude, which turns out to be Bix having a nightmare. We're taken to a high society party of some sort, where Mon Mothma and the various other Corusant players are engaged in some kind of party or perhaps a wedding. So while everybody's spread all over the literal galactic map, they're largely doing the kinds of things that they were doing before.

Their story arcs are progressing along the paths that we'd likely imagine. But the most critical point is where we're introduced to a scene right out of a movie from the 1970s and given the release date of Star Wars and New Hope that that might not be by accident, we're given an overhead shot of something called the Maltheen Divide, and it looks like a mountain fortress.

And my first thought is that this feels like the Eiger sSnction, or maybe if we're gonna look at another Clint Eastwood film, maybe Where Eagles Dare, which to be honest, I always confuse with The Eagle Has Landed, which don't, doesn't really have the same plot. Both these films, much like Stallone's Cliffhanger, and I don't know, Inception several decades later, focus on the infiltration of a mountain fortress or perhaps having to risk things on the side of a mountain.

And I don't know if that's gonna play out later on in the season. Where Eagles Dare is really typical of a certain kind of big budget, sixties or seventies action movie, you know? A war movie set in World War II with a lot of spy type sequences as well. Drawing on that James Bond influence that was popular at the time.

The modern equivalent in the superhero era might be some of the scenes in Captain America First Avenger, where they're fighting the Nazis in the fortress in the mountains. And that explicit link to the fascists is what maybe brings everything together. We're brought into a conference with a number of high level imperial officers, a meeting that where they're outlining a campaign they're gonna have to undertake to destroy a planet in order to extract the minerals there.

They introduced us to a creature called a Ghorman spider, and I guess I'll have to stop referring to Syril Karn as Lieutenant Gorman now, as it might get confusing. But this is also interesting is the Ghorman Front is something that was specifically mentioned by Saw Guerrera in season one. And here the Ghormans are being mentioned as a new target for the Empire.

So I don't know if they were involved with the rebels before or after the events were seen here, but that was just a little confusing to me. In any event, what we're seeing here with the Imperial planning session is something fascinating. It's them drawing up the cassu belli for an action that they know that they need to take, in this case, to get the minerals for a power source for something large and figure out how they're actually going to go about, for lack of a better term, manufacturing consent for the actions that they're going to undertake.

And this is something we don't normally think about when we look at the empire in the Star Wars universe. That there is a political wing to it and that the Empire needs to engage in propaganda as much as any of their real world analogs do. So it's here where we're introduced to two characters that are about as likable and sleazy as Burke from aliens.

You know, they give off that same kind of vibe and they spend some time riffing off. The potential scenarios that they could use to sell this war to the larger imperial populace. Also present at this meeting is Dedra the Imperial Officer, who we spent a lot of time with in the first season, and here she has an alternative take.

When pressed on it, you suggests that propaganda alone won't get it done, and you may need some covert actors who can be trusted to do the wrong thing at the right time. I know there's probably some other parallels that have been drawn forth about this planning session, but we'll likely get into that in future episodes.

The other main element of this one year later episode is of course, Cassian Andor, who as we saw at the beginning, was, uh, posing as an imperial pilot in order to abscond with a prototype tie fighter, we can tell it's not your normal tie fighter because in the ensuing chase, it bounces off the cliff walls a couple times and from every other Star Wars show I've ever seen, we know that a tie fighter would instantly explode if that happens.

So it must be something special. Don't mean to mock it; the chase during his escape is actually pretty cool and I was invested in it. From there, he manages to escape and get to the rendezvous point at another planet where he is supposed to meet with his connect. But things have gone a little bit awry and we meet members of yet another rebel faction who we learn.

And a little bit later the Maya Pei Brigade, and again, this is another name that was mentioned by Saw Guerrera in season one and I, I like how they're drawing all these elements together. It's building up into a richer universe by the fact that there are these connects with what could be just a throwaway line in an earlier episode, in an earlier season, but it all builds to something much larger.

The other thing we learn is that the rebels may not necessarily be sending their best and brightest on this as the, my Pie Brigade has some internal issues, to say the least, but I think we'll learn a little bit more about that in the other episodes. Hang tight.

And we return with episode two called Sagona Teema, which I think stands for Coupling Corusant style. Throughout this episode, we have a very clearly defined shift as we touch base with various characters. We had met originally in Andor season one, and see how they've paired up some in ways that were well known and some in ways that were only shipped about.

It's at this point too where the shows started to feel very much like early seasons of Game of Thrones with adults in adult relationships, dealing with adult problems and accusations of marital infidelity and other interrelationships going on. It adds so much to the breadth of the Star Wars universe to be able to step away from space wizard power fantasies.

But it made the characters that we've come to know seem human and real and relatable despite living in a galaxy far, far away long, long ago. Of the three main threads we have, of course, the main one is the impending nuptials of Mon Mothma's daughter. As well as the incipient threat of the forthcoming audit on the farm, and of course, our namesake character's, predicament of being the prisoner in a tug of war between competing rebel factions.

But amongst all of these, I think one of the things that stood out the most, one of the couples that stood out the most was Syril Karn and Dedra. We see Syril Karn early, pumping himself up to the newer recruit, talking about how his particular actions a year earlier were crucial in helping fight against the rebel threat.

But. We of course, as the audience know the truth about the level of his involvement. It's interesting that while he is suffering from a severe case of main character syndrome here, I mean the series isn't called Karn after all, but rather his need to pump himself up to be his own hype man within the imperial hierarchy, I think speaks volumes to how things are actually run.

It also speaks to the character of the men that the imperium appeals to. So now once again, we see Syril Karn with a small modicum of authority, start to use that in ways that we've witnessed before. The other interesting revelation with respect to Syril was us learning of the change of his living circumstances we're again, treated to a walkthrough of a sparsely or severely decorated imperial apartment with appliances right out of a Braun catalog or something with a vaguely Swedish name from Ikea.

And as Deidre returns home from that conference, we find that Syril not expecting her to be there, has been ill prepared and has, and has basically gone feral, engaged in what we in 2025 would probably call "rotting", not really looking after himself too much. It's probably something he needs to spend a few moments of reflection on and actually like come to terms with, but that revelation may come at some later point in time.

In the meantime, Deidre still has much work to do with the Ghormans. She's been somewhat reprimanded for the previous escapades with Andor. Told to catch them first, then make them famous. But she has been also advised that Ghorman is a gift and she can really make a name for herself if that plays out. So we see career moves and coupling moves, but in almost all these couples, we see issues of communications.

While there are some problems with communications at the wedding, there's no place where the communications are worse. Then at the rebel standoff with Cassian Andor caught in the middle as a prisoner, Cassian's predicament seems to be compounded by the fact that it doesn't look like there's anybody really in charge with the Maya Pei brigade that's currently on planet.

Some of the brigadier will claim authority, but that can be largely contextual and is often ignored. They often devolve into like infighting between the various groups, and there's a lot of negotiation going on. But the fascinating thing about the brigadeers is that despite this infighting, they're still able to get things done, especially something that requires massive amounts of effort and a lot of time, witnessed them in their attempts to move the tie fighter across the surface of the forest. 

Now they're trying to do this so they can turn the fighter's cannons on their rivals and blast them away, but that isn't the point. Each collective pull on the ropes only moves the tie fighter a few centimeters.

It's so slow that the opposing side can measure how long it's going to take before they're actually in position. And that's gonna be hours. It's like our ancient ancestors moving a huge stone into position as part of some monolith. It takes forever, and we wonder how it can get done. Slowly, but with determination.

So we're witnessing this power of collective action, which is in complete contrast to the Imperial style, which is like a top down hierarchical format. There are hierarchies within the rebels. Of course, it is a rebel alliance, after all. But the other fascinating thing about the rebels trapped on the planet, aside from how hungry they are and their willingness to eat almost anything, is how they end up resolving their problem.

They have a face off where they drop everything and "everything means everything". They're referring of course to their weapons and some callback to Mad Max beyond Thunderdome, and as they set up for the dual or the face off, complete with seconds, no less. We find out that their negotiation is rather non-lethal.

It's basically a game of roshambo, rock, paper, scissors, Spock and lizard are clearly absent as they belong in another universe. While this extended duel is taking place with everybody present and wrapped attention, it gives enough cover for Cassian Andor to finally make good on his escape. And I think it makes.

Since here to cut quickly to Bix and talk about what's going on in the farming planet. The first thing that I found amusing, I guess, is the little detail of like, how do you make a farm seem space, age? And here we had the funky, like over complicated wells as well as the upside down silo that we see located around the area, and especially in those far away overhead shots.

I get it that if you have grav technology, it probably makes sense to lift the whole things up so you can funnel it down at the bottom. But I mean, humans have been storing grain for millennia and we have a few systems worked out for it. It just seemed so odd, like a signifier that this is again, "the future", of sci-fi in some way with even like the tiniest little things.

It's amazing. But the other thing going on on the farm, of course, is that the imperials have shown up with a lot of implicit threat that they're going to be returning, and the full audit or accounting will be taking place. And there's a lot of discussion about the legality of the presence of certain people.

And in 2025, that's so on point that it seems almost unbelievable amidst all this discussion about the undocumented working the farm and people worried about how closely an inspection will look. We also have coupling as the young gentleman who looks much like Bruno Mars and the girl are out in the field further complicate things as the imperials show up ahead of schedule.

Stay tuned, and I think this bridges us in to our last set of coupling as well. There's a lot going on with this impending marriage. Like I said, it hearkens back to some of what we saw in earlier shows, like a Game of Thrones. So we have groupings and alliances and whispers and glances, and. All of this is taking place amongst the level of intrigue that's going on as some people are heavily involved in the Rebel Alliance and others not so, and great lengths must be gone to, to ensure that those involved, like Luthen and Mon Mothma maintain their safety and distance from those who may be less involved or perhaps not committed to the cause.

Some of this discussion takes place during a long hike up a mountainside, which resembles a pilgrimage in China or Europe. Perhaps it's one of those, I know I've seen it before kind of things, but I'm not sure exactly where, but it's part of their tradition. And this tradition also leads us to a ceremony where we get a speech by Mon Mothma's husband, and I guess it's high time I learned his name, which is Perrin Fertha and the speech is about the words, the title of the show, Sagrona Teema. Sagrona apparently just means welcome, whereas Sagrona Teemma in combination means a toast to your health. And in a comment, Perrin mentions how the language tends to add these depths of layers as more words are added to a phrase.

His toast is a bit of a callback to an earlier moment in season one where he asked Mon Mothma, why must everything be so sad? And I think we called that out in our previous episode. But here he goes on to state quote. "My hope is you learn from each pass through this constant cloud of sadness. I. Pleasure, Gaity Amusement.

These are the hidden things. The music buried beyond all this noise." End quote. He's talking about doing things with joy in the face of oppression, and that really stuck out back in January. Over on the blog, I made a post with a similar sentiment. It was done on January 26th titled Creativity in the Age of Strife.

I was responding to a video interview with Heather Cox Richardson, where her advice was to behave with joy as a means of resistance against an authoritarian government to quote, "do the things that matter to you and that you can bring to the people around you. That we can meet the moment and as scholars be honest, by doing the best scholarly work that we can to contribute back to humanity."

I had made a comment there how doing media commentary seems like such a small thing, but as the my pipe brigade said before, they're dual. Everything means everything.

And that joy takes us into episode three, titled Harvest, or perhaps "That's not a scythe. This is a scythe," but vague references to Crocodile Dundee and The Simpsons aside, there was a moment that was just pure joy for me. Right at the beginning of the episode, I mentioned part of what drew me into Andor was that it was one of the most cyber punky Star Wars shows we had ever seen.

The Dank and the rain and the neon lights of the first episode of the first season really kind of bringing that to the forefront. And there's a moment here with Cassian where he is dealing with an intergalactic communication device where he plugs in the cord to the quarter inch jack, and that just sent me, it's such like a eighties or early nineties sci-fi trope before various near field communication protocols like Bluetooth and wifi became prevalent in our computing devices.

We had that idea that you had to be like physically connected to be jacked in. We still see that in some places like the Matrix, but that notion of the trodes, whatever, being jacked in or connected physically to the computer was such a prevalent trope. It was like a signifier, right? 

And seeing it here at the intersection of Star Wars and Shadowrun and synth enthusiasts and echoing back to the earliest days of telephone switchboards. Just it was a moment for me of just like pure joy. So I wanted to share that with you. Now, the joy was short lived as it's a very dark episode, but. There's other moments of joy as well, the harvest on the planet, the wedding day.

These are times of celebration as well. But we'll stick with Cassian for just a quick second here because the one thing that really stuck out, aside from the quarter inch stereo jack, is the lack of opsec. Like there's supposed to be speaking in code on a secure channel. He's in a stolen imperial fighter, posing as an imperial test pilot for a rebel alliance where exposure would bean death. 

And he's been working with them for a year and he can't even speak in basic coded phrases or language that, you know, they could write in a way that even we could understand as an audience. And it, it just struck me, it was frustrating. Like what kind of a, how are the rebels actually not like all lined up and dead?

And maybe that is reflective of the incompetence of the Imperials, but Oh, it was just like. Frustrating. That lack of OPSEC led to a further breakdown in discipline as he takes the stolen fighter heading into what was clearly defined as like an imperial blockade, like what's he gonna do? But this is a Star Wars story. Of course. We'll get back to that in a sec. 

We also have another moment that could be joyous, but is often fraught with tension. And that's meeting the parents of one's partner. And that happens with Syril and Dedra. We show Syril neurotically going through great lengths to prepare the apartment to make it just perfect.

And then we see that his mother has finally arrived and met Dedra for the first time. Things don't go perfectly during this weird fondue like meal, I guess. Stabbing things with a sharp object and cooking dinner in front of you has a really Imperial aesthetic to it, though. During the course of this, Syril's mother manages to induce several of his neuroses, and while he nopes out for a bit, Nedra drops the hammer on Syril's mom leaving in no uncertain terms how the relationship is going to continue going forward.

And while Dedra is definitely an antagonist in so much what goes on here, we can appreciate this insight into her competence here. Like I said, it's the little things while the overall scenes between Syril and Nedra and Syril's mom were cringe and a little tough to watch. The payoff was worth it.

There's some other cringe moments that take place during the wedding as well. The introduction of the piece. Art, I just, this is a bit of a bugaboo for me. I guess. Whenever we see this, whether it's in fantasy or s fiction or modern media in any form, the piece of art that they uncovered was supposedly 25,000 years old, and I just wanna state how long.

And ancient. That really is, I think sometimes these years get thrown around. I know when we're talking about things like, uh, war Hammer 40 K and something from the 41st millennium, where we see it in the Dune universe as well. But the, a number of things that we have that have survived that length of time and would still be meaningful in some way to the audience.

Like here, there's. 12 statues and they've recovered nine of them, uh, 25,000 years is a long, long time. And so to have this restored piece of artwork, I guess presented, speaks to again, the wealth and the dis wealth disparity that's going on and what's being shown. But also, I guess it just kind of throws me for a little bit.

You could say it's 5,000 years and it would still be meaningful, but, um, sometimes it feels like the dates and timelines in these things are just thrown out just willy-nilly as this has moved away. We have cries of Tema from the previous episode and we drift into a dance. First dance, of course, as we often see in weddings, and then a much more joyous and celebratory.

One is everybody gets involved and Mon Mothma joins in and lets herself be carried away as she has to deal with the repercussions of what's going on. Her friend, the banker, has been making inquiries that will have to be dealt with and the decision is being taken out of her hands. The scythe must fall. And that brings us, of course, to the harvest.

It struck me as interesting as we were introduced to it as the children were racing through the setup and we saw the various droids as assistants as well as a big beast and a few non-humans at the table, which has been rare. And, Andor usually we just saw a few dogs in Ferrix and I don't know how many other non-humans we've seen total.

I haven't really been keeping count, but I'm sure there's some. It's just, it seems so rare that it jumps out. When you think of that being something that's really identifiable with the Star Wars universe, but right now it's the humans are rebels that are hiding away, that are having the problems. There's an incoming inspection and they're getting some forged documents that would allow them to get away.

Again, things don't go to plan and they have to bug out. This leads to one of the darker moments in the entire onscreen Star Wars Canon, and I say that with some context. Of course, there is a destruction of a planet at the hands of the Imperials, several times, the torture and subsequent imprisonment of Han Solo again by the Imperials, the murder of innocent children by Anakin Skywalker, working on behalf of the Imperials.

It's a fairly dark universe, even if it isn't fully war hammer or 40K grim dark, and we know who the baddies are, right? You can see that even in the imagery of some of the vehicles that's evoked when they show up at the farm. The hover vehicles that are reminiscent of the half tracks used by Germany in World War II, the Volkswagen Kubelwagons, and the S-D-K-F-Z tens and elevens that were seen in so many of those movies that we mentioned at the start of this episode.

The Eagle has Landed, Where Eagles Dare, Force 10 from Navarone, the big budget action films of the sixties and seventies. So when they're showing up here, when that design aesthetic is being used, it's a clear indicator to us who the baddies are. And as the crisis unfolds on the ground, Cassian Andor is able to break through the blockade and arrive. The tie fighter, the Tie Avenger, becomes the scythe in his hands reaping through the Imperial forces, making short work of them, but sadly not quickly enough, as his longtime friend Brasso has fallen to a bolt from a storm trooper's blaster. 

So the joy in the episode is tempered by sorrow and loss felt by Cassian, and shared by Mon Mothma, driving her dance. And throughout the ending of the episode, we'll see where this dance takes us as we look at future episodes of Andor season two next time on the Implausipod.

Once again, thank you for joining us on the ImplausiPod. I'm your host, Dr. Implausible. You can reach me at Dr implausible@implausipod.com, and you can also find the show archives and transcripts of all our previous shows@implausipod.com as well. I'm responsible for all elements of the show, including research, writing, mixing, mastering, and music, and the show is licensed under Creative Commons 4.0 ShareAlike license.

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