SPOILERS: The trigger warning and the post below contain spoilers for Andor. If you haven’t seen the first three episodes of Season 2 and plan on doing so, come back later.
TRIGGER WARNING: This post contains discussion of sexual assault. Discretion is advised.
Alright, now that we’ve gotten that out of the way, let’s talk about Star Wars.
Yeah, that trigger warning, if you haven’t seen Andor, was probably a big shock. Sexual assault in Star Wars? Since when?
Well, since now, and I have mixed feelings on the matter.
For context, here’s how it plays out. Bix, Cassian Andor’s former (current again?) lover, is seeking refuge on a farm planet. In the last season, she was tortured by an Imperial (male) scientist and is now experiencing PTSD from it. Now, the Empire has come to this planet for inspections, and she’s trying to fly under the radar until she can skedaddle.
Unfortunately, one particularly slimy Imperial officer is able to sus out that Bix is undocumented. He comes to her home when she’s alone, sees that she’s been packing her things to escape, and reveals that her knows her “illegal” status. He gets closer to her, says his shoulders hurt, and says Bix must have strong hands. Then he backs her into a wall. Just as he’s about to force himself on her, Bix slaps him across the face, saying, “I said no!”
They go back and forth for a while in a pretty rough fight before Bix grabs a wrench and hits him in the head with it, hard. She hits him hard enough and enough times that he dies.
Another Imperial officer who’s been waiting outside hears the commotion, sees the first officer collapse dead in the front yard, and draws his gun. He orders Bix to come out. She responds.
“He tried to rape me,” she says.
To be clear, I think that for a show like Andor, this was the natural next step. The show is about how an oppressive fascist regime harms us until we are radicalized into fighting it. The Galactic Empire has been shown getting away with mass genocide since the very first movie came out. If the Empire was pillaging, they were probably raping, too.
But Star Wars doesn’t exactly have a great track record with women and consent. Leia tells Han “stop” and he kisses her anyway, and a movie later she’s enslaved by a giant slug who forces her to wear a metal bikini in the desert heat. Padmé also tells creepo Anakin to back off but ends up falling in love with him anyway, and a movie later he nearly suffocates her to death before she dies in childbirth from sadness.
Rey actually has a lot of respect from her romantic partner, and he’s the villain of the trilogy. Even in the middle of a lightsaber fight, he never physically touches her. When he carries her into his evil lair, he peacefully subdues her and delicately carries her away. But then he turns good and dies saving her, leaving her completely alone.
And those are just the main women from the three movie trilogies.
So does this new scene improve upon this trend or fall in line with it?
Well, I think it’s a step in the right direction. She fights back. And she kills him. Any ambiguity about Han and Anakin’s behavior is thrown out the window. If you force yourself upon a woman who says no, prepare to die.
And she even said the word. That was actually more shocking than the events themselves unfolding. There’s no subtext, no room for interpretation. It is rape. And if you try to rape someone, they can fight like hell to get you to stop. And that could result in your death, and it might just be deserved.
Honestly, as much as I like Han and Leia, and even Anakin and Padmé, their stories are very much hindered by the fact that the men almost strongarm the women into entering a relationship with them. Here, when a man tries to do that, he just dies. A breath of fresh air, truly. Gone are the days of “Stop that, I happen to like nice men” and “Anakin, you’re breaking my heart!” It’s a relief to know we’ve moved beyond losing the will to live after your husband becomes a genocidal maniac while you go into childbirth.
My main issue with this scene is that it’s happening to this specific character.
Like I mentioned earlier, Bix was tortured, by a man, no less, in the last season. She’s already carrying trauma from being abused by a man with power over her. Why give her more?
Furthermore, Bix is probably the closest thing Star Wars has to a sexually liberated character. She’s not a sex worker or slave like many of the sexualized Star Wars women, and she has (offscreen, implied) consensual sex with her boyfriend that she initiates in the first episode of the show. It almost feels like she’s punished for it since that guy sells out Cassian and ends up dying, and now she’s almost getting raped.
That said, I don’t expect perfection from Star Wars. In my opinion, Star Wars is at its best when it’s beautifully flawed. The original trilogy, though many look at it with rose-colored glasses, is far from perfect. The same can be said about every other Star Wars movie. All of them, from Rogue One to Revenge of the Sith, and yes, even The Rise of Skywalker, have issues that add to the viewing experience. To me, they are not a bug, but a feature.
But this feels different. Andor isn’t like most Star Warses. It’s trying to tell a grounded, mature story about overcoming a dictatorship. And it’s succeeded at that in a really groundbreaking way. Telling a story like this almost required an eventual attempted rape; I just wish it didn’t happen to this character, and under these circumstances.
But she killed the guy, so I guess that makes it better? Maybe?
It’s also notable that while there are many other female characters in this show, none of them are happy with their romantic lives, if they have one. Mon Mothma is in a loveless marriage. She marries off her daughter, now a child bride, who cries the day before her wedding that her husband-to-be acts like a child (For context, they are 14 or 15). Mon Mothma’s cousin appears to be subtextually gay for fellow rebel Cinta, who is ghosting her.
It will probably take years for me to make my peace with this. I want to like this creative choice, but I just can’t bring myself to do it because of who it happened to. I don’t like the implications there. And I don’t like that women being slighted by men is such a huge theme, not just in this show but in all of Star Wars.
There are still nine more episodes of the show to go before it ends. They might take this story element in a really unique direction that wins me over, or they might not. I’m open to seeing how Bix continues her story after a moment like this. And the show is otherwise very good.
I mostly just want more for my female Star Wars characters. I want more depth. I want them to fall in love and be in happy, fulfilling relationships. That’s part of the reason why I like Rey and Kylo Ren so much. Sure, they were enemies, but they had an organic intrigue in each other and had respect for each other too. They both had depth and baggage. I don’t like how their story ended, but that’s a topic for another day.
The point is, I’m sick of seeing women in Star Wars portrayed as prey, whether or not they fight back. Fighting back and pointing out that predatory behavior is wrong is a step in the right direction, but Star Wars still has work to do in its portrayal of women. Progress isn’t always linear, and I respect the storytellers behind Andor for going in this direction, flawed as I think it is.