Back when Rogue One first came out in 2016, it was touted as Star Wars’ take on an actual war movie rather than a swashbuckling fantasy that happens to include an insurgent fight against a dominant military. Similarly, “Narkina 5,†the eighth episode of Andor, is Star Wars remembering that it takes place in a dystopia. Sure, the specter of fascism looms over plenty of other Star Wars projects, but this episode really leans into the cosmic injustice, oppressive aesthetics, and generally nightmarish conditions of life under the Empire’s thumb instead of deftly evading capture or even dying at Imperial hands.
For the first 20 minutes or so, “Narkina 5†engages in tight crosscutting between just two of the show’s many story lines. The most striking instance follows Cassian’s vaguely Kafkaesque trip into the prison system. In a rich bit of irony, he’s been pinched for, essentially, loitering (“I’m a tourist!†he continues to protest at the episode’s opening) but slapped with a six-year sentence because of the heist he helped pull off, unbeknownst to anyone who has captured him. Meanwhile, Syril remains on Cassian’s tail (even though he has already been apprehended), and his dogged determination leads him to finally meet Dedra. At his new Empire desk-jockey job, he has entered six false inquiries about Cassian Andor, determined to flag him somehow, somewhere. This catches Dedra’s attention, and given their mutual love of well-pressed uniforms, tattling, and the belief that one can “never be too aggressive in preserving order,†you’d think that this might have the makings of a fascist meet-cute.
Alas, Dedra keeps it together. She has her sights set on rooting out and destroying the Rebel uprising, searching for the pivotal figure she has nicknamed “Axis†(doubtless everyone in the Empire considers themselves Allies). Syril would obviously relish this as well — he passionately makes a case that he can be of greater use to the Empire — though he’s clearly motivated in part by petty revenge against Cassian Andor and the search for personal vindication.
If only Syril knew that Cassian was already toiling away on Narkina 5, having been deemed “labor worthy†— able-bodied enough to join the Empire war machine. In this fresh hell, “productivity is encouraged†and “evaluation is constant,†meaning various teams within teams of prison labor are pitted against one another with hilariously meager rewards (flavored food!) and viciously swift consequences for anyone who steps out of line or even falls below exacting standards. Basically, Cassian now has a job at Amazon.
This is when Andor once again ventures into bold territory for Star Wars, observing deadening, anti-human rituals beyond the familiar iconography of stormtroopers. Some of the episode’s visual touches are familiar, too — the bright-white Imperial hallways have been a Star Wars hallmark since ’77 — but here they’re given a more stylized, foreboding look, with dots and dashes of gray and prison-marking orange somehow making everything look even more antiseptic and orderly, color without color. Later that episode, another Star Wars format-breaker appears: a chyron indicating the passage of time, which is now told in shifts. After a day observing the mechanics of his new position, we rejoin Cassian “30 shifts later,†when he has fully acclimated to his routine. (The chyron acclimates, too; “shifts†are really just full days.)
Throughout that introduction and beyond, the episode prompts us to search for signs that someone as resourceful and clever as Cassian will be able to work some angles and figure a way out, and there are some signs — he observes two men from different working pods communicating by sign from a great distance, across the facility — but nothing so overt as to cue a rush of giddy anticipation. We know, after all, that Cassian doesn’t stay in this prison for his full sentence (which would take him beyond the events of Rogue One) as surely as we know he’s also going to die young. For now, the show seems to be saying, Let’s really sink into the dystopian specifics.
The back half and change of “Narkina 5†is not quite as grabby as the dovetailing of Cassian’s horrifying new prison life with the machinations of Dedra and Syril (a different and more frivolous sort of gamified fascism in which Syril is bravely fighting against the tedium of an office job). The episode switches into piece-moving mode — and strangely, the plot-light scenes on Narkina 5 feel more urgent, in their way, than the business as usual of checking in with Mon Mothma (smiling politely through another poshly infuriating schmooze party), Vel and Cinta (still having terse, tense conversations about fitting bits of their relationship into their job as Rebel soldiers), the Ferrix crew (still oppressed by the Empire), and Rael (planning his next move).
There is some neat chain-linking of some of these subplots: Vel and Cinta are staking out Cassian’s old haunts on Ferrix, hoping to get lucky and catch him returning home; because Cassian isn’t around, Bix checks in on Maarva, who has sustained a serious injury attempting to aid a potential future Rebellion; Bix then reaches out to Rael, who is similarly wondering about Cassian’s whereabouts, and cuts off communication with Ferrix, where Bix is apprehended by Dedra, who is still on the trail of that Empire-equipment MacGuffin from way back in the first arc.
Compelling stuff, but by the time we’ve reached Rael, the episode has kicked into plot overdrive. Rael heads to Segra Milo to visit with Saw Gerrera (Forest Whitaker, a returning delight), the revolutionary from Rogue One who helped raise Jyn Erso. Rael offers Saw some Empire equipment in hopes of cajoling him into meeting with Anto Kreegyr, who has intel on another possible Empire-vexing job. Rael advocates coming together, though Saw holds distaste for separatists like the unseen Kreegyr and disdains Rael’s lack of a clear ideology. Without a unified Rebellion, the Empire will become unreachably, impossibly powerful.
It’s a strong scene, and one that might have made sense as the kickoff to another episode. Then again, maybe the earnest debate is meant to be undermined (or maybe stack the deck for Rael, at least). This episode’s final shot, returning to Cassian on the work floor of Narkina 5, the camera pulling back to take in the scope of this cruel operation, feels almost perfunctory. It’s a reminder of what earlier scenes evoked with such clarity, but maybe it has a little extra surge of power coming after a busier series of plot turns — while subplots keep moving, Cassian, like so many others, is stuck in a dystopian stasis.
Rebel Yells
• Andy Serkis is here, and he came to overact. (Doesn’t he always?) The character Kino Loy, an Empire-pilled prisoner who has realized the best (perhaps only?) way to get along is to go along, is an intriguing one. But Serkis always hits it a little too hard for my taste, at least in his non-mo-cap’d roles. Also, while there’s so much to savor about Tony Gilroy & Co.’s vision for Andor, there is something perverse about rehiring Serkis (who played the late, not-especially-lamented Supreme Leader Snoke, memorably dispatched in The Last Jedi) and denying him the opportunity to mo-cap a full-on Star Wars creature.
• Great little touch of cruelty on the prison transport: Cassian & Co. are forced to kick off their footwear and leave it all behind, presumably to enhance their reactions to the electrified floor.
• In the rich tradition of Revenge of the Sith making its Bush-era War on Terror parallels explicit (“If you’re not with me, you’re my enemyâ€), a bit of pithy political chatter at Mon Mothma’s party describes Emperor Palpatine in Trumpian terms: “He says what he means.â€
• So far, Andor is giving Vel and Cinta grace notes rather than big moments. Continuing in that vein: the dissolve between their faces after they’ve gone their separate ways.