From the second the phrases “Rebel spaceships, striking from a hidden base, have won their first victory against the evil Galactic Empire” appeared within the opening crawl of Star Wars, the minds of followers raced, imagining the circumstances surrounding that victory. While 2016’s Rogue One: A Star Wars story presents the canonical telling of these occasions, the intervening years are stuffed with totally different interpretations and tales of how the Rebel Alliance got here collectively right into a cohesive power with a purpose to attain that first victory.

Now, with the discharge of Andor on Disney Plus, a collection which guarantees to comply with the event of Rogue One protagonist Cassian Andor from his days as a budding insurgent to his loss of life on the sands of Scarif, it’s value trying again on a few of the earlier efforts to dramatize the phrases within the crawl and clarify how the Rebel Alliance got here to be, in addition to analyzing how Andor is uniquely positioned to sew a few of these totally different narratives right into a cohesive entire.

The Rebellion’s origins on radio

One of the primary makes an attempt to dramatize the opening crawl and supply extra particulars in regards to the nascent Rebel Alliance got here through a classic format. In 1981, NPR launched a Star Wars radio drama based mostly on A New Hope and produced with the blessing of George Lucas. It featured sounds and music from the flicks, together with Mark Hamill and Anthony Daniels reprising their cinematic roles. One of the enjoyable issues in regards to the radio drama is it dramatizes scenes left on the chopping room flooring (like Luke’s encounter along with his outdated good friend Biggs Darklighter on Tatooine) whereas additionally including scenes which didn’t seem within the film, notably in its second and third episodes, “Points of Origin” and “Black Knight, White Princess, and Pawns.”

In “Points of Origin,” Leia and her father (then referred to as Prestor Organa, reasonably than Bail) are entertaining the odious Imperial Lord Tion on Alderaan. Leia learns in regards to the existence of the Death Star and the plans acquired by Rebel brokers after an assault on an Imperial convoy. When she lets slip this information, Tion makes an attempt to arrest her however is in the end shot. This prompts Leia’s father to extra immediately assist the Rebellion, and Leia convinces her father to let her take their ship, the blockade runner Tantive IV, to the rebels on the planet Toprawa to retrieve the plans.

In “Black Knight, White Princess, and Pawns,” Leia receives the Rebel transmission from Toprawa, however is detected by Darth Vader. She is pursued by Vader’s Star Destroyer as she makes an attempt to achieve Obi-Wan Kenobi and recruit him to the reason for the Rebellion, thereby bringing the radio drama as much as the purpose the place the primary movie begins. Obviously, the ultimate act of Rogue One retcons away almost all of that story, however the radio drama nonetheless represents a enjoyable early tackle the origins of the Rebel Alliance in a really totally different format.

Books and video video games construct out extra of the Rebellion’s historical past

Image: Del Rey

1991 noticed a rebirth of kinds for Star Wars after a comparatively fallow interval following the discharge of Return of the Jedi in 1983. It started not within the type of new films, however through new novels; particularly, the Timothy Zahn-penned Thrawn trilogy, (consisting of Heir to the Empire, Dark Force Rising, and The Last Command and named after its central antagonist, the fascinating Grand Admiral Thrawn). The success of these novels would result in a burgeoning “Expanded Universe” of semi-canonical tales advised throughout a number of media, from books to comics to video video games, over the following 20 years.

While the Thrawn trilogy is ready 5 years after the tip of the Return of the Jedi, it does briefly mess around with the origins of the Rebellion through the introduction of a brand new character, the Corellian Garm Bel Iblis. Zahn reveals that within the early days of the Rebellion, Bel Iblis was one of many leaders of three totally different insurgent factions, with the opposite two being led by Leia’s father (now Bail Organa) and Mon Mothma (the political chief of the Rebel Alliance in Return of the Jedi). In the story, Bel Iblis is credited with bringing the three teams collectively to kind the nascent Alliance through the Corellian Treaty, although the extra aggressive Bel Iblis typically butted heads with the pacifistic Mothma and Organa (not in contrast to Saw Gerrera’s later relationship with the Rebellion). After the destruction of Alderaan and the lack of Organa’s mediating affect, Bel Iblis and forces loyal to him left the Rebellion to wage their very own non-public struggle on the Empire (earlier than returning within the Thrawn trilogy’s “present” day).

A.C. Crispin’s Han Solo trilogy, one other e book collection from later within the Expanded Universe period, revisits the occasions surrounding the seize of the Death Star plans. In the ultimate novel of the trilogy, Rebel Dawn, Han’s then-love curiosity Bria Tharen is revealed to have turn out to be a Rebel commando. She participates within the assault on Toprawa that ends with the Rebel brokers there beaming the plans to Leia aboard the Tantive IV, similar to within the radio drama. And in shades of Rogue One, all of the rebels on Toprawa, together with Bria, are killed within the technique of getting the plans out.

The groundbreaking online game Dark Forces affords one other spin on the acquisition of the Death Star plans, crediting their retrieval to its predominant character, Kyle Katarn, a former Imperial turned mercenary (and future Jedi Knight) employed by Mon Mothma to steal the plans for the rebels from an Imperial facility on Danuta. A later online game, The Force Unleashed, affords some of the vital and eyebrow-raising appears on the formation of the Rebel Alliance as much as that point, revealing that the sport’s protagonist, Darth Vader’s secret apprentice Starkiller, was chargeable for planting the seeds of what grew to become the Rebel Alliance on the path of Vader himself, who hoped to make use of the Alliance towards the Emperor to his personal ends.

The Revenge of the Sith’s deleted scene

Image: Lucasfilm/Disney

Originally, Genevieve O’Reilly’s Rebel chief Mon Mothma (launched in Revenge of the Sith earlier than making reprise appearances in Rogue One, the animated Rebels, and the upcoming Andor) had a a lot bigger position within the closing prequel film (one which additionally would have given Padmé Amidala way more to do within the movie other than fret and die of a “broken heart”). That position lives on largely within the type of the “Seeds of Rebellion” deleted scene (accessible as a part of the Revenge of the Sith extras on Disney Plus) and the Revenge of the Sith novelization (which is predicated on an earlier draft of the film’s script).

In “Seeds of Rebellion,” Mon Mothma is current for a gathering of senators, together with Padmé and Bail Organa, wherein they talk about the formation of a senate bloc against Chancellor Palpatine’s ongoing manipulation of the structure to his personal ends. That scene represents a bigger subplot Lucas had initially weaved into the movie, which will get some play within the novelization. It entails the Loyalist Committee, a much bigger group of Senators devoted to preserving the Republic and limiting Palpatine’s energy. One of their signature actions is the creation of the Petition of two,000, a doc urging Palpatine to surrender the emergency powers he assumed at first of the Clone Wars, signed by 2,000 senators. Many of these senators, like Bail Organa and Mon Mothma, would go on to help or be a part of the Rebel Alliance.

The canonicity of those occasions stays questionable, current as they do in a bizarre type of limbo — they’re a part of an official movie, but in addition not. Yet given the continuity Genevieve O’Reilly brings to the position and the timeframe of Andor, it’s totally doable the collection might reference them immediately because it develops Mothma into the chief of the Alliance we see in Rogue One.

Expanding the Rebellion’s story in tv and up to date Star Wars films

Image: Lucasfilm

Since the acquisition of Lucasfilm by Disney in 2012 and the relaunching of Star Wars canon, there have been quite a few parts of a nascent Rebel Alliance launched in varied tales. This places Andor, set in the identical timeline as these tales and that includes the journey of a personality from earlier than he joined the Rebels to when he performed a vital position in that crawl-teased “first victory,” within the distinctive place of with the ability to sew all these items collectively.

The animated Clone Wars and Bad Batch collection, for instance, function, to various levels, Saw Gerrera’s Partisans, certainly one of many disparate insurgent factions functioning within the time between the prequel and authentic trilogies. Solo: A Star Wars Story introduces Enfys Nest and her group of pirates/rebels as a method to tease Han’s future involvement with the extra formally organized Rebel Alliance of the unique trilogy. Obi-Wan Kenobi just lately launched “The Path,” a type of proto-Rebel Alliance/underground railroad that gives protected passage to Jedi and Force-sensitive survivors of the Emperor’s Jedi Purge. Rebels, one other animated collection set earlier than A New Hope, depicts the adventures of 1 very small insurgent cell on the world of Lothal that slowly will get absorbed into the bigger galactic insurgent effort. It additionally introduces the idea of “Fulcrum,” a coded identification for a undercover agent working to tell and coordinate totally different insurgent cells (an identification as soon as utilized by Cassian Andor), whereas later tales confirmed characters from that collection would go on to serve within the bigger alliance.

What it means for Andor

Stories set in the identical “between trilogies” period as Andor usually are not unusual. But given the vital position Cassian Andor performs within the climax of Rogue One, Andor is the primary of those collection to star a personality who’s there in the mean time when the Rebel Alliance turns into what we all know it to be within the authentic trilogy. Furthermore, the inventive workforce of Andor has mentioned the collection will carry the character proper as much as the occasions of Rogue One, successfully placing his character improvement and the event of the Rebel Alliance in parallel.

In addition to the deal with Cassian, the confirmed presence in Andor of characters like Mon Mothma and Saw Gerrera (with Forest Whitaker reprising the position) present additional alternatives for the collection to outline the Rebel Alliance. Mon Mothma brings continuity between the early days of the scattered Rebellion slowly evolving from her group of loyal-to-the-Republic senators in Revenge of the Sith and the formalized Alliance of the unique trilogy, whereas Gerrera’s Partisans can present a take a look at what traces the Alliance gained’t cross in its combat with the Empire, defining what it’s by making a degree about what it isn’t.

To be clear, there may be little expectation that Andor will endeavor to attach all of the disparate insurgent factions hanging round on this period; it’s at the beginning involved with telling an entertaining story and never serving as a cinematic Wookieepedia entry. But by chronicling the event of Cassian Andor’s relationship with the Rebellion alongside notable guiding arms, it should hopefully be capable to present a framework that enables followers to attach the dots and see how the opposite totally different factions might match collectively. Andor has its personal story to inform, and it’s one with the potential to piece collectively a bigger narrative, because the Rebel Alliance grows from scattered teams with their very own agendas doing their greatest to strike small blows towards the Empire right into a cohesive entire that may coordinate their actions to realize a collective victory towards the evil Galactic Empire, fanning the flames of hope all through the galaxy.