A Far Time Ago in a Galaxy Long, Long Away: Andor and Orwell

Adam McLain

Since its publication in 1949, the spectre of George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four haunts many stories with themes of autocracy, fascism, and authoritarianism. Nineteen Eighty-Four is a dystopian novel set in a divided world where three seemingly omnipotent superpowers vie for power and control. The narrative depicts Winston Smith’s futile struggle against Oceania, a state that holds power over nearly all information, movement, and existence within its polity. Winston learns about a revolutionary group of people who hearken to the words of Emmanuel Goldstein, the leader of the Brotherhood, which opposes the regime of Big Brother. The tight control that Big Brother and Ingsoc, the leading party in control of Oceania’s government and a future version of “English socialism,” hold over the minds, hearts, and wills of the people makes it a terrifying monolith of the horrors of autocracy, the control of totalitarianism, and the relationship between revolution and authoritarianism. When assessing a creative work’s narrative and thematic approach to these ideas, then, it is crucial to consider how Orwell’s views affect and shape its strategy.

Disney+’s Star Wars: Andor does not escape Big Brother’s long shadow.[1] For example, Bix’s interrogation at the hands of Doctor Gorst is reminiscent of the terror-therapy created in Room 101, which is meant to lead people to loving Big Brother. The Empire’s Ministry of Enlightenment is titled in Orwellian doublespeak: even though it is called “Enlightenment,” the Ministry peddles more in propaganda than truth, rewriting history and perception like Oceania’s Ministry of Truth. And, the constant oppression with no seeming hope of escape in the Narkina 5 Imperial Prison Complex, where hope is ultimately cut short when it is revealed that Cassian Andor has been creating parts for the very machine that will ultimately be his end, is similar to the close of Orwell’s dystopian text, in which the main character accepts his place as part of the leviathan of totalitarianism.

Even as Andor portrays the Empire in a decidedly authoritarian manner, it is also a story about rebelling against that power. In Andor’s main storyline about the rise of the rebellion, the influence of Nineteen Eighty-Four recedes. Although Orwell’s novel ends with a coda of hope in an appendix that reveals to the reader that the authoritarian dystopia eventually falls, the novel’s main story emphasises how a single individual loses himself to the drive of the fascist machine. Unlike Nineteen Eighty-four, Andor’s audience can always cling to hope, knowing that one day, in the future, the Empire will fall, having seen it in A New Hope, a cultural touchstone for many in Andor’s audience. To better understand Andor, then, this essay examines one of Orwell’s earlier texts about the relationship of the government to its people. Nineteen Eighty-Four was not Orwell’s first foray into the fight against authoritarianism; years before his dystopian satire, as a young English socialist, he travelled to Spain, joining the rebel socialist forces against the fascists in the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939). After his time in the war (December 1936 to June 1937), he wrote a book about his experience, Homage to Catalonia (1938).

This essay connects Andor to Orwell’s earlier work opposing despotism, arguing that although Nineteen Eighty-Four aesthetically influences the fascism of Andor’s Empire, Orwell’s earlier experience of and writing on rebellion can provide a greater insight into the rebellious narrative within the Star Wars universe. As Orwell scholar Richard Bradford explains, ‘The terrifying atmosphere of Nineteen Eighty-four, in which facts and truth become the property of those who manipulate the official consensus, originated in Orwell’s experiences after Spain.’[2] A sentiment that Jeffrey Meyers agrees with: ‘If Homage portrays the revolution, Animal Farm describes the “revolution betrayed” and Nineteen Eighty-four the “triumph of reaction.”’[3] Thus, because Andor depicts the revolution before the climactic end in the original Star Wars trilogy, it is fitting to connect it to Homage to Catalonia, Orwell’s personal portrayal of revolution. Reading Orwell’s Homage to Catalonia, his meditation on his experiences in the war against fascism, in conversation with Andor reveals the complex approach the creators of Andor took to revolution. This chapter looks at, first, Andor and Orwell as similar revolutionary characters; second, the shared pastoral hopes of the two narratives; and, third, their different approaches to revolution to argue that Andor portrays not a Marxist response to revolution, like what Orwell saw in Spain, but an individualist, American-influenced response to authoritarian rule, one that privileges autonomy and freedom to class solidarity and an equal society.

Cassian Andor and George Orwell: Rebels of Similar Spirit in a Chaotic Rebellion

Two similarities bring Homage to Catalonia and Andor closely together: the chaotic rebellion and the similarities of the two main characters, Orwell and Andor. Andor depicts the rebellion as disparate factions frustratingly working against the Empire, sometimes in harmony, sometimes in dissonance, which echoes Orwell’s own analysis of the rebel groups in Spain. For the galaxy far, far away, rebellion comes in multiple flavours. Luthen Rael’s vast network works among and between the groups, whispering from the shadows and pulling various strings. Mon Mothma’s senatorial group attempts bureaucracy and statecraft to keep the Empire in check. Saw Guerrera’s guerrilla fighters chaotically insert themselves into small skirmishes. The Ghorman Front’s nascent opposition forms a patriotic, nationalistic defence against Imperial takeover. Yavin’s Rebel Alliance asserts control and dominance over the rest of the factions. Similarly, Homage to Catalonia depicts a chaotic and differentiated approach to the war against fascism among the disparate political ideologies guiding numerous factions with various acronyms: as Orwell describes it, ‘a kaleidoscope of political parties and trade unions.’[4] This chaos plays into the excitement of the television show and the novel, while also portraying the complex reactions to fascism: it is never just one unified movement against the oppressor.

Despite the chaos of rebellion and the seeming unification of the oppressor’s messages, Orwell and Andor do not join their rebellions for the same reasons, but their experiences in opposing fascism indelibly mark them and start them on their paths toward a more expansive revolutionary ideology. As protagonists, the two share similar spiritual approaches to their rebellions, meaning that the way they approach the rebellion – outsiders but proficient helpers, centring on their own lives but willing to help and support those that help and support them – exudes the same relationship to the rebellious ethos. Andor and Orwell share character arcs that ultimately connect them to the end goals of their respective rebellions, although slight differences lead to different, and for Andor, catastrophic, ends.

Andor’s character arc moves him from an individualist who acts in opposition to the Empire only because he does not like it breathing down his neck to being an intricate and pivotal part in the rebellion, who is important enough to throw off the rebellion’s authority to save his friends. Juxtaposing the opening scene of Season One with the final arc of Season Two illustrates this growth. In episode 1, “Kassa,” Andor seeks his sister at a brothel on an oligarchically controlled mining planet. After he fails to find her, two security officers follow him out of the brothel, hoping to rough him up and take some of his credits. Instead of giving up his credits, Andor accidentally kills one of the guards and then purposefully executes the other. Even though Andor seems to altruistically be searching for his missing sister, the scene depicts Andor as coldhearted and severe, an outcast who bites back when those in authority corner him. The Andor who kills those security officers is similar to the Andor who resists rebellion authority to lead a clandestine rescue mission to Coruscant in the final episodes of Season Two – except for the motivation behind the two actions. After the Empire captures rebel leader Luthen Rael and his devoted disciple Kleya ensures he cannot reveal information to them, Kleya sends out a distress signal for an immediate evacuation. Without notifying the Rebel Council (and thus side-stepping their authority), Andor goes to Coruscant to rescue them. While this treatment of authority is similar to how Andor interacted with the security officers in the first episode of the first season, the motivation changes. A personal vendetta, sense of shame, and desire for repentance drive his search for his lost sister: in his view, he abandoned her on the planet when Maarva took him from Kenari, thus he wants to find her to gain her forgiveness. Loyalty to and respect for Rael motivates his rescue attempt on Coruscant. “None of us would be here without Luthen,” Andor explains to rebel general Draven, “none of this,” meaning none of the rebellion would exist without Rael (S2E11). Thus, Andor’s character arc concludes with him no longer seeking personal vendettas (in the search for his sister) or in baulking against authority for baulking’s sake; instead, Andor’s approach to the rebellion morphs into a bond of loyalty and respect for those who spend their lives fighting the regime like Luthen (and, ultimately, himself).

Similar to Andor’s character arc, Orwell’s position on why he was fighting and what he was fighting for changed throughout his time in Spain. When Orwell first arrives in Spain, he joins the militia ‘to fight against Fascism,’ but he would have said he ‘was fight[ing] for … “Common decency.”’[5] Andor first joins the Rebellion because he has no other place to go: he is not driven by an ideology of freedom. His first foray into the cause in Aldhani is for monetary reward. After he experiences the true grip of fascism in Narkina 5, his sentiment toward the Empire changes, just as Orwell’s sentiment toward fascism and authoritarianism changed when he returned to England. After the rebellion, Orwell would always clarify his socialism by labelling himself a ‘democratic socialist,’ emphasising the ‘democratic’ part of the ideology.[6] Like Andor, this shift of approach toward despotism occurs through the relationships he builds with other rebels and with the rebellion itself.

For Orwell, the end of the war was a time of persecution and fear. Even though Orwell had gone to Spain to fight in opposition to the fascists, the rebels soon turned on each other, with Communist-sided groups facing off against the socialist idealists. Orwell’s group, the socialist-sided POUM, was labeled an enemy of the state. As such, the government put out a mark on Orwell’s head, seeking to stop his escape from Spain. This betrayal of the ideologically-aligned groups he thought were united against fascism wounded Orwell: his youthful vigour around a militaristic opposition shattered, thus availing him toward a democratic approach to socialist aims to support a more equitable society. He leaves those who betray him and returns to pastoral England, in the hope that he can persuade those in the seemingly peaceful land toward socialism through persuasion rather than violence. In other words, his time in the Spanish Civil War encouraged him to accept an anti-authoritarian, pro-democratic socialist stance that centered on opposing the growing Stalinism sent forth from Russia and wannabe fascist ideologues. 

Although I argue Orwell and Andor are rebels with similar spirits – that is, both share a changing reason and drive toward the cause while sharing the same dedication – one difference between the two rebels remains poignant: their approach to others in their respective polities. Orwell begins his time in the revolution as an idealist who forms close bonds with those around him: ‘His conception of human decency is manifested in comradeship and solidarity,’ which ultimately makes him ‘a reluctant warrior.’[7] The betrayal at the hands of the Stalinists is a betrayal of those he had lived, fought, and survived with. Unlike Andor, this personal betrayal pushes Andor away from rebellion and toward political persuasion. It also marks him with a deep-seated loathing for authoritarianism in any form for any reason and a wariness toward political purity (hence, why Ingsoc, or English Socialism, is the party leader of Big Brother).

Andor’s narrative is torn between cause and close companionship. This is why Bix must leave him: he is too dedicated to the individuals closest to him. When she leaves, he becomes untethered from that relationship and is able to dedicate himself to the cause – a character trait that allows his arc to culminate in his death in gathering the information on the Death Star. Even though he shows dedication to the relationships he formed throughout his time in the revolution – rescuing Kleya, for example – he is morphed into a dedicated soldier for the rebellion cause, no matter who is in charge. While the betrayal at the hands of those he was close to leads Orwell toward political persuasion, Bix’s betrayal leads Andor into a greater commitment to the cause. With Bix gone, Andor becomes a leader in the Rebel Alliance, taking on the role of a captain and supporting the growing Yavin faction.

Mina-Rau and Aragón: Pastoral Hopes for the Revolution

Like the similar spirit between Orwell and Andor, and between Andor and Homage to Catalonia, their narratives offer a post-revolution pastoral hope in the middle, which pastoral spirit is then returned to in the conclusion: for Orwell, his time in Aragón and return to the English countryside; for Andor, the farming planet Mina-Rau, where Andor found safety for his friends and Bix returned to for refuge. In Orwell’s novel, this pastoral hope plays into Orwell as an author caught between two times, an Edwardian man living in modernist Britain, and is the place where he discovers an actualisation of a socialist vision. Andor’s pastoral, on the other hand, is a place of refuge, muted class resistance, and a canvas upon which the atrocities of the Empire become starker. In this section, I argue that these pastoral moments plant hope in the hearts of the audience while also imposing contrast that illustrates the different hopes at the centre of the two narratives: for Orwell, the realisation of socialist dreams; for Andor, a rebellion built upon the hope of peace.

At the end of Homage to Catalonia, Orwell paints a picturesque, pastoral scene of the English countryside. He and his wife participated in a chaotic revolution in Spain, escaped potential incarceration and assassination, and returned to a peaceful southern England. Concluding his depiction of the pastoral hills, Orwell writes, ‘All sleeping the deep, deep sleep of England, from which I sometimes fear that we shall never wake till we are jerked out of it by the roar of bombs.’[8] A tension exists in Orwell’s pastoral England: even in its beauty, it, too, may soon suffer the fate of Spain. This duality sheds light on Orwell’s own duality: a man who lives in the shadow of the rise of authoritarianism in the twentieth century but who longs deeply for the pastoral Edwardian England. The pastoral is at the heart of what he wants: peace for all classes within society, brought about not through authoritarian force but societal progression and democracy.

Orwell does not want this ‘roar of bombs’ to jerk awake his fellow citizens; instead, he prefers England to easily make its way to the utopia within the war that he discovered in Aragón, when he stationed there in the middle of the revolution:

Up here in Aragón one was among tens of thousands of people, mainly though not entirely of working-class origin, all living at the same level and mingling on terms of equality. In theory it was perfect equality, and even in practice it was not far from it. There is a sense in which it would be true to say that one was experiencing a foretaste of Socialism, by which I mean that the prevailing mental atmosphere was that of Socialism. Many of the normal motives of civilized life—snobbishness, money-grubbing, fear of the boss, etc.—had simply ceased to exist. The ordinary class-division of society had disappeared to an extent that is almost unthinkable in the money-tainted air of England.[9]

Orwell depicts Aragón as a place that had made the revolution’s dreams a reality, and he returns to that dream of socialism, which powers his hope for society. His emphasis is on a classless utopian society, in which the ‘normal motives of civilized life . . . simply cease[] to exist.’[10] For Orwell, the realisation of the revolution is a place where ‘the ordinary class-division of society [has] disappeared,’ replaced by ‘all living at the same level and mingling on terms of equality’ even ‘perfect equality.’ The pastoral nature of Aragón evokes the ultimate goal of the revolution – one he completely wishes England, sleeping in pastoral beauty, can wake to.

Mina-Rau serves a similar narrative purpose in Andor. The planet is where Andor’s compatriots and friends (ultimately, his family) escape at the end of Season One being hunted by the Empire. In the pastoral fields of grain, they find love, peace, and a future. Andor still fights for the rebellion, travelling on missions at Rael’s behest, but the peace of the pastoral and communal is a setting to which the second season returns again and again through the sweeping mountains and lofty peaks of Chandrila, the crowded and communal trees of Yavin: nature is the contrast of the Empire. It is even where Bix goes when she rejects Andor in order to set him free for the rebellion. The season structures itself around this peaceful, pastoral planet.

Comparing the two pastoral scenes reveals a tension between class solidarity within the Spanish and Star Wars rebellions. On Mina-Rau, the rebel farmers who house Andor, Bix, Brasso, Wilmon, and B2EMO form society through their care for each other. Although the Empire holds an iron grip over their agricultural production, inspecting their labour force and production as a means of asserting control, the farmers still have harvest time, gathering without the watchful eye of the Empire on them (S2E1). The people on Mina-Rau rebel against the Empire when they take in political refugees like Andor’s group, trying to support those hunted by the Empire.

The gathered people, sharing in the food they have produced (and not giving it up only to the Empire), is similar to the social life Orwell found in Aragón. Even though socialist rebels fought against fascism across the region, they sought to establish a society free of class in this Spanish city. The difference, though, is that the people on Mina-Rau do not completely throw off the chains of the Empire; instead, the Imperial machine still churns like the giant grain harvesters. This difference shows Aragón’s and Mina-Rau’s narrative significance within their individual stories. Mina-Rau is meant for contrast and hope – the place where Andor finds fleeting peace but also where Bix flees to raise Andor’s son – while Aragón creates a solid foundation upon which Orwell builds his changed approach to revolution. The pastoral drives the theme of the narratives: for Andor, hope within fascism; for Orwell, the realisation of socialist desires.

A Socialist Revolution and a Senatorial Rebellion

Although both Aragón’s classless society and Mina-Rau’s comely fields present hope and are a feature to which each narrative returns, the difference of Orwell’s and Andor’s approaches to the pastoral drives a reconsideration of the ideological difference between the Spanish Civil War and the Imperial rebellion. Aragón is a city that takes seriously the ideas of socialism, while Mina-Rau exists under the thumb of the Empire. Mina-Rau exudes some forms of socialist, pastoral hope, but at the end of the day, it still provides wheat and foodstuffs for the rest of the Imperial machine. Aragón, in Orwell’s depiction of it, rejects the fascist control and realises a pseudo-socialist existence. In this section, I focus on this difference to argue that Orwell’s Homage to Catalonia provides hope for a Marxist socialist revolution tempered through political instead of violent discourse, while parts of Andor inflect its rebellion with the Americanized ideals of individualism, autonomy, and democratic representation as the presumptive end goals of the Star Wars rebellion.

The political context in the United States plays a pivotal role in the impact Andor has had on at least its American audience, just as the mid-twentieth-century British audience understood Orwell’s novel in light of the growth of authoritarian Europe. Series showrunner Tony Gilroy even comments about the eerie similarity of the current rise of a fascist-like government in the Trump Administration and the anti-fascist message of Andor.[11] That being said, Andor as a series would still make a mark as a dramatic and invested narrative within the Star Wars universe and within science fiction as a genre, even without its political context. But because it reaches beyond its message toward an audience that is currently experiencing, at the very least, the exponential growth of the power of an executive branch of democratic government, the audience matters to the show. Without it, the show might not have grown as popular or as timely as it has. As such, Andor’s message of rebellion trends toward an Americanized approach to rebellion. This Americanized approach, I argue, centres on the emphasis of autonomous and individualised selfhood depicted as a contrast to the authoritarian and controlling regime of the Empire.

This approach is seen most starkly when the leaders of the Rebel Alliance are revealed to be mostly former senators who seek a return to the pre-Empire rather than a move toward a post-Empire world. After Andor returns from Coruscant and the rescue of Kleya, he reports to the leaders of the Rebel Alliance. Members of the council dither over bureaucratic niceties (“we don’t have a quorum,” one of the members complains), and then Andor alerts the council of leaders to Rael’s demise at the hands of the Empire and of the information he died to send to the Yavin forces. The members of this council are important to pay attention to: most of them are former senators in rebellion against the Empire, but still in power as members of the council. Indeed, there is a separation of the rebel leadership and the common forces of the rebellion, seen most poignantly in this report when Andor must bow to the leaders of the Rebel Alliance, former senators who have risen up in rebellion against the Empire, even as he is fighting on the ground for the rebellion. Instead of a rebellion led by the working class, many in the rebellion are continuing the Republic-Separatist Clone War: a fight for authority and power between those in authority and power.[12]

Pointing this difference out is not to say it is the only way that the rebellion is presented in Andor. One of the beautiful complexities of the show is its different factions revealing the multitude of aims a single rebellion can unearth. Seeing the Star Wars rebellion in its longer trajectory, however, makes the Senator-leaders of the Rebel Alliance even more important: their faction is the one that claims victory in the original trilogy and who lead the New Republic after the destruction of the Death Star and fall of the Empire. Although Andor shows the complexities and factional infighting of a revolutionary moment, the canonized culmination of that rebellion is, in many ways, a return to the status quo rather than an overhaul of an oppressive system.

The second key to this Americanized approach is the ideology outlined in the final conversation between Dedra Meero and Rael, during which she arrests him at his shop. Meero paints the picture of order and control that the Empire provides, while Rael responds with the rebellion as providing freedom. “Freedom scares you,” Rael states, while Mero responds, “You don’t want freedom. Chaos for everyone but you” (S2E10). The rebellion fights for freedom and the ability to choose without the Empire’s controlling, authoritarian touch. For Meero, that’s a scary prospect because her entire life has been structured around the order of the Empire: it’s chaos incarnate for people to have the freedom to choose, move, and live without the bureaucratic influence of the Empire. For Rael, that’s what the rebellion is about: the ability to choose as an individual what one wants to do with their life.

This approach is a stark difference from Orwell’s socialist dream of the future. The people of Arágon have realised a social future in which everyone in society cares for society. Rael’s future is one of freedom of movement without the oppressive thumb of the state bearing down. The difference here is an individualised, singular freedom and a collective, working-class society. When read against Orwell’s reporting, Andor’s depiction of rebellion becomes one centred on individual freedom that leads to a nostalgic past connected to the senatorial dreams: a democratic rebellion instead of a socialist rebellion. In separating out these two dreams, Andor then reveals some of the shortcomings of democracy – if everyone has this ethereal freedom, then the dreams of Orwell’s Arágon, seen as a response to the fascist government of Spain, perhaps will never be realised because the turn to a socialist future needs a tempering event, like war, to lead people to it. If left to the individualised rebellion for freedom that the Star Wars rebellion fought for, then the rise of future fascist states, like the First Order, may always be around the corner.

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[1] For example, Jon Stewart, host of The Weekly Show, points to this connection in an interview with Tony Gilroy and Mike Duncan, when he connects the fascist overtones of Andor to Orwell’s dystopia. “History Meets Galaxy with Tony Gilroy and Mike Duncan,” The Weekly Show, July 10, 2025.

[2] Richard Bradford, Orwell: A Man of Our Times (Bloomsbury, 2020), p. 160.

[3] Jeffrey Meyers, Orwell: Life and Art (University of Illinois Press, 2010), p. 63.

[4] George Orwell. Homage to Catalonia. p. 197

[5] Homage to Catalonia, p. 197.

[6] John Rodden, Becoming George Orwell: Life and Letters, Legend and Legacy (Princeton University Press, 2020), p. 40.

[7] Meyers, Orwell: Life and Art, pp. 69–70.

[8] Homage to Catalonia, p. 196.

[9] Homage to Catalonia, p. 87.

[10] Homage to Catalonia, p. 87.

[11] “Tony Gilroy on What Andor Says About Trump’s Fragile Authoritarian Regime,” Lovett of Leave It, August 24, 2025, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pWjbFeHkgoc.

[12] Compare, for example, season 4, episode 14, “A Friend In Need,” in Star Wars: The Clone Wars, in which Ahsoka befriends a Separatist.