Andor Season 2 Makes One Of The Darkest Star Wars Legends Into Brutal Canon

"Andor" builds up the horrors of the Galactic Empire like no other part of "Star Wars," focusing on the atrocities they commit — but not the obvious ones, like blowing up planets. Instead, the show is all about the quieter atrocities, the smaller instances of villainy that slowly made people used to the oppression of the Empire. It's like Alex Lawther's Nemik once said, "The pace of oppression outstrips our ability to understand it, and that is the real trick of the Imperial Thought Machine. It's easier to hide behind 40 atrocities than a single incident." We don't need to see stormtroopers annihilating an entire people or Wookiees being enslaved en masse when things like increasing prison sentences for no reason already show the way the Empire oppresses people day-to-day.

Season 2, however, seems to be building up to more explicit atrocities. The first episode of the season already introduced us to the most evil office meeting in recent TV history with Ben Mendelsohn's Orson Krennic calmly and rationally planning the extermination of an entire planet's populace right before lunch. That is the Ghorman plotline this season, without a doubt the darkest, timeliest, most poignant plotline in "Star Wars," and one that fans of "Star Wars Rebels" are familiar with.

In the second batch of "Andor" season 2 episodes, we learn about the Ghorman massacre — and it's not what you'd expect. Turns out, "Andor" is making Ghorman a pivotal piece of the history of the "Star Wars" galaxy, and to do so, Tony Gilroy and his team are making a huge event from the abandoned Expanded Universe into the ongoing canon.

In episode 4, we hear about a monument in the middle of the main square in Ghorman's capital city of Palmo that commemorates a massacre, but it isn't until episode 5 that we learn of the true lengths of the Empire's evil. It turns out, 16 years earlier, Grand Moff Tarkin was prevented from landing on the city by peaceful protesters against the Empire. Tarkin being Tarkin, he decided to do away with decorum or decency and landed his starship on top of the Ghormans, killing hundreds.

In the Expanded Universe, now known as Legends, the Ghorman Massacre took place just a few years after the start of the Imperial Era. The event was first introduced in "The Rebel Alliance Sourcebook" for the "Star Wars" roleplaying game in 1990. It's so important that it directly led to the formation of the Rebel Alliance. In Legends, the former Delegation of 2000 members like Senator Bail Organa and Mon Mothma were inspired by the horrific massacre to begin plotting an open rebellion against the Empire. The massacre on Ghorman became the single biggest encapsulation of the Empire's cruelty and evil, and the single biggest inspiration to fight against it until the destruction of Princess Leia's home planet of Alderaan nearly 20 years later.

That Tony Gilroy is incorporating the Legends version of the Ghorman massacre into "Andor" season 2 as well as building up to the version of the events from "Star Wars Rebels" speaks to the brilliant genius of "Andor" and how it connects different sides of "Star Wars" together, seamlessly incorporating canonical events and Legends material.

To quote Nemik's manifesto, "The day will come when all these skirmishes and battles, these moments of defiance, will have flooded the banks of the Empire's authority and then there will be one too many. One single thing will break the siege." That single thing is the Ghorman Massacre, taking place on a planet that has already suffered greatly under the boot of the Empire and will inspire a whole galaxy to rise up and fight evil.

New episodes of "Andor" drop on Tuesday nights on Disney+.