There are so many Star Wars quotes that echo through my brain — and not just "It's a trap!" or [groan] "This is the way." I'm talking about "Then I'll see you in hell!" and "My hands are dirty too, what are you afraid of?" Or "Hello, what have we here?" and alien nonsense like "utinni!" and "pay Jabba no badda" and "no wanna wonga." Star Wars is my vocabulary, and it's probably part of your vocabulary too. I mean, "May the Force be with you" is part of the American lexicon, even if America is probably a fictional place in a galaxy far, far away.
There is another quote that has rattled around in my brain since I first heard it on November 9, 2022: "I burn my life to make a sunrise that I know I'll never see."
Luthen Rael, in the Emmy-nominated Andor episode "One Way Out," just one sentence in a searing monologue delivered with pinpoint precision and ratcheting tension by the masterful Stellan Skarsgård. It's, uh, it's a far cry from "Away put your weapon! I mean you no harm!" or "Always let the Wookiee win."
But that line, and the entire speech, stands as quite possibly the most Star Wars-y line to ever be uttered by any character across any iteration of the franchise. That speech embodies what Star Wars is, once you strip away of the old timey action serial trappings and kooky alien costumes and swashbuckling derring do. This is a franchise about people — oftentimes ordinary, unremarkable people — banding together to topple tyranny, no matter the cost to themselves.
Yes, George Lucas's chosen delivery method for his very political message was that of a farmboy fighting space Nazis — or did you think that Lucas plucked the word "stormtrooper" out from nowhere? And this delivery method worked! Star Wars is Star Wars, and generations of fans have been able to use these stories of heroes coming-of-age, of underdogs fighting for what's right as touchstones.
And then there's Luthen Rael's speech.
With Andor Season 2 coming fast, we all need to remember what Andor Season 1 was: an unflinching look at a galaxy having its air cut off by the pressure from a jackboot. There was fun, there was adventure, because it's Star Wars — but mostly it was a radical, revolutionary political thriller so intense that I still can't believe it exists. And because Andor, more so than any other chapter in the Star Wars canon, addressed the grim reality of what a real rebellion really means, we got moments like Luthen Rael's speech.
The scene: Luthen meets with one of his many, many operatives, a twerpy looking gentleman named Lonni (Robert Emms). Lonni, y'see, is a high-ranking supervisor in the Imperial Security Bureau and has been responsible for delivering invaluable intel to Luthen for a while. Lonni lives a double life, putting himself and his family at risk. He's cracking under the pressure, and he wonders what the hell Luthen has sacrificed in this battle. While Lonni's out there playing spy amongst spies, what's this old man doing?
Luthen's response when asked what he's sacrificed:
Calm, kindness, kinship, love. I've given up all chance at inner peace. I made my mind a sunless place. I share my dreams with ghosts. I wake up every day to an equation I wrote 15 years ago for which there's only one conclusion: I'm damned for what I do. My anger, my ego, my unwillingness to yield, my my eagerness to fight — they set me on a path from which there's no escape. I yearned to be a savior against injustice without contemplating the cost, and by the time I look down, there was no longer any ground beneath my feet. What is my what is my sacrifice? I'm condemned to use the tools of my enemy to defeat them. I burn my decency for someone else's future. I burn my life to make a sunrise that I know I'll never see. Now, the ego that started this fight will never have a mirror or an audience or the light of gratitude. So what do I sacrifice? Everything!
Beau Willimon was nominated for an Emmy for writing this episode, and, damn, yeah. But that's it. That's Luthen. That's Andor. And that's Star Wars.
Star Wars is about people, small people, powerless people, banding together to do what they know is right — not for themselves, but for others, for the generations to come, knowing full well that any kind of reward is out of the question. Luthen practices what he preaches to a degree heretofore unseen in Star Wars. "I'm condemned to use the tools of my enemy to defeat them." There's no "they go low, we go high" here, and no interpretation of that phrase that registers with Luthen. It's "when they go low, I go lower — so that everyone else after me can stay above this." I realize that I'm no Beau Willimon.
I've run through this speech time and time again for years, for reasons that are very obvious to anyone reading this, watching as our world descends into the kind of fascism that I was taught in history class. And I keep looking at democrats, liberals, progressives, all people who continue to play by rules that the other side never abided by, and show decency to those who have none, thinking to myself, "Uh, so, none of y'all gonna burn your decency for someone else's future? No? ... Cool."
We all know "May the Force be with you," but that's a peacetime saying, still said by people during a period of Star Wars when the Force wasn't even a thing to be believed in. There's a time and place for that sentiment, but right now? We're living in an era of "I burn my life to make a sunrise that I know I'll never see." Star Wars knows that. Do we?
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