Ghorman’s Plight on ANDOR Shows the Depths of the Empire’s Evil

The first arc of Andor‘s second season included one of the most terrifying sequences in Star Wars history. It didn’t involve lightsabers or blasters. It involved truly normal people planning a truly heinous act in the way others discuss where to get lunch. Director Orson Krennic called a highly classified, unofficial meeting of Imperial officers to discuss a potential problem. He claimed it was about the Emperor’s “Energy Initiative,” but we know Krennic is building the Death Star. For that, we learn on Andor, he needs a mineral that only Ghorman possesses, Kalkite. The issue is taking the Kalkite out of the ground might result in the planet’s total collapse.

The proud and ancient Ghormans won’t just give over their planet quietly, so Krennic called the Andor meeting to come up with a strategy to silence all resistance. The other Imperial officers knew, without being told and without objection, what that means. Nine cities with a combined 800,000 Ghormans will have to be dealt with. And they’ll be dealt with violently and permanently.

Ghorman is no minor planet. It’s rich, powerful, and prestigious. If something happens to it, other worlds will notice and some will rise up against the Empire in response. So, on Andor, Krennic and his team of amoral lackeys began concocting a plan to make the potential genocide of Ghorman a positive. The Director has an outside PR firm ready to turn the rest of the galaxy against the smug Ghor. Meanwhile, Dedra Meero told Krennic they will need more than just marketing to make this work. They need to foster an incompetent rebellion on the planet so the Empire can then use rebel activity as justification for what the Empire is going to do anyway. They want to present tyranny as righteousness, all in the name of order.

It was a chilling sequence because of how easily a room full of people discussed annihilating an entire world. They schemed with the cold calculation of mechanics fixing a car. And in Andor season two’s second arc, we got to see how secret plans developed in shadowy rooms turn into the people of Ghorman’s actual oppression and real suffering.

It’s not bad enough that the Empire is using tactics everyone on the planet can see, like imposing draconian laws in the name of “safety” and building an illegal armory while claiming it’s just an office building. Dedra is even using her own boyfriend, Syril Karn, to help the Empire wipe out the Ghor. She has him intentionally tricking the underground resistance into believing Syril is sympathetic to their cause. He’s the plant in a plan whose ingenuity is only matched by its unimaginable evilness. The Empire is so vile that it uses the inevitable rebellion it knew it would cause on Ghorman against itself on Andor. It is turning the very fight for freedom into a tool of oppression.

The wannabe Imperialist bootlicker thinks he’s trying to help the the Empire root out rebel activity in the galaxy at large. Syril doesn’t know what we do, that Partagaz and his own girlfriend are secretly using him to help annihilate Ghorman. They will destroy it the same way the Death Star will one day soon destroy Alderaan. Only, what is happening to Ghorman on Andor might be even crueler. Tarkan will give those living on Alderaan the mercy of a quick death. Krennic, Partagaz, and Meero are slowly suffocating Ghorman. And it’s using Ghorman’s bravest to choke the planet and everyone on it to death.

Star Wars began its story by both telling and showing us what defined the Empire. But millions of voices suddenly crying out in terror is hard to process. Our brains are not built to understand tragedy of that magnitude. We didn’t know any of the people who died that day, either. Evil Emperors who rely on the Force are also not of this world, and that can make them feel distant.

But seeing a room full of evil people, nonchalantly and without an ounce of objection, plan a genocide? To then see their awful plan playing out in real time with real victims we get to meet and root for, people trying to do the right thing for the right reason? To see how terrible people will always begin with an advantage because good people can’t even comprehend the level of the wickedness they’re dealing with? That’s much easier to understand. That’s what makes the Andor Ghorman scenes harder to watch, because it’s all too human and true.

We know what awaits the Ghor. It doesn’t matter how hard they fight or who helps them. In a couple of years, the Death Star will become fully operational. The Empire is destined to get its Kalkite. But their sad story has great meaning beyond the galaxy far, far away. By showing us the exact ways that happened, by letting us see the execution of an awful crime that happened because so many worked to make it happen, Andor has shown something we’ve always known but never understood better. It is showing us not only the true depths of the Empire’s evil, but who made that possible.

Mikey Walsh is a staff writer at Nerdist who thinks Cassian was wrong to abandon Ghorman. You can follow him on Bluesky at @burgermike. And also anywhere someone is ranking the Targaryen kings.