I Cannot Stop Thinking About Syril Karn’s Final Act in Andor

 This punchable-lookingspoils major parts of Andor Season 1 and 2.

I have been thinking about Andor a lot. Several times a day, a scene or a moment will pop into my head, and I’ll just stew on it. 

It’s usually little details, like how the series’ showrunner, Tony Gilroy, pointedly cast two Hispanic actors as the lead couple in a plot about a fascist government trying to hunt them down. How Andor’s surrogate mother is played by an Irish actress who, until she adopts him, is a vagrant traveller with no real home, and how the planet she moves to warns its subjected populace of Imperial raids through metal rattling on the streets that mirrors Northern Irish women’s bin lid warnings during The Troubles. I think about the musical modifies that are combined and layered throughout the two seasons and 24 episodes, and how, if you just listen to the soundtrack, you can hear the story it tells. But most of all, I think about Syril.

I think about Syril a lot.

Everyone’s favourite Fascist Failboy, Syril, has become an unlikely fan-favourite of the series. A lot of that comes down to just how good Kyle Soller is in the role of a snivelling middle manager only too eager to judge those he deems below him, and some of that is down to the fact that he just has a very punchable-lookinghasn’t face. But most of it is how well-rounded the writing for this character is. Gilroy has talked publicly about his soft spot for this character as the nucleus of one of the show's most prevalent themes, that being the idea that anyone, any place, any country, or planet can slip into a fascist mindset.

The difference between someone like, let's say, Dedra Meero and Syril is small, but they’re very important. Dedra is born and bred for her role within the Empire; she’s a true-blue believer and was raised under this regime and groomed to be someone who would help guide its totalitarian fist in some way. Syril, very pointedly, is not. We meet him in Season 1 working a dead-end security job on a planet that doesn’t seem very well off or like anyone even really cares about. He is a disappointment to his mother, and his status in life as someone working a middle-class job is testament to that.

The character arc of Syril is so compelling because it's so real. Dedra is a character destined to become a cog in the fascist machine. Syril is one who hustles for work and tells himself he deserves to be a part of a system because, like so many in the real world, he’s been told that if he works hard enough, the system, the man, the world will recognise his effort and reward him. And in a world where fascism is the system, he has to believe that the system will reward him, too.

In believing in that way of the world, Syril adopts its beliefs, not for any grand personal reason, but because he was told to by a system he wants to endear himself to. For the entire show, it is really hard to tell if Syril actually hates rebels or if he just opposes the proposed chaos they might cause for the system he needs to stay in power if he is to become successful. We see this when he actually starts talking to real rebels in Season 2. For years at this point, his hate for Andor in particular has been based around the idea that this rebel is seeking to bend and break the system he needs to support. Syril puts his neck out numerous times so he can work his way up off the bottom rung of the Imperial ladder.

By the middle of Season 2, we see that he’s now worked his way up to being an insideman for Dedra (who is also his lover - there is soooo much you could unpack in that) on Ghorman. His dedication to tenants he’s been told he should believe in, really hasn’t gotten him that far, though. He’s now working to infiltrate Ghorman’s rebel movement, supposedly, in the name of stirring up trouble so that the Empire can clamp down on them harder and quell their potential chaos for good. However, he’s in the dark, a cog in an opaque machine that is grinding away on an unknowable task. That’s not really why he’s there. He’s there to make sure that things go wrong. The Empire doesn’t want the Ghorman Front to get lazy and crushed before it gets started; it wants it to rise up, to become a planet-wide movement and cause bloodshed, to give the Empire an excuse to commit a genocide. To not just be rid of the Ghorman Front, but to be rid of a culture it views as a long-term obstacle to Imperial rule.

Things get interesting when Syril actually begins to interact with the rebellion in Ghorman. Unlike Andor, whom he has never met, Syril seems to quite like these people. He’s been told that they are just as much an enemy of the Empire as Andor, however, as he gets closer to them, he clearly starts to worry for their safety and the health of the people of Ghorman, going so far as apologising to Enza Rylanz, the daughter of the leader of The Ghorman Front. He even starts dressing like them, learning to be a part of their culture, a stark contrast to Dedra.

This all comes to a head in Episode 8, when the strings have been pulled fully taught and Ghorman is ready to explode. After confronting Dedra in her office as a mass protest gathers outside the Imperial headquarters, Syril finally breaks. A moment of realisation and clarity. The system he’s given his life to isn’t one of order; it's one of absolute control. And he leaves, moving into the plaza square, disillusioned by the Empire.

Tony Gilroy brings up a crucial point when talking about Cyril (and in the episodes after this, it also becomes applicable to other characters) - at some point in the fascist state-building process, once it's amassed its power, the final part of institutionalising its regime is to consolidate that power. What this means in practice is that once the fascist systems have been put in place, the next step is eliminating anything that could oppose that. Syril was destined to die in Andor, he may not have made it far up the ladder, but the Empire taught him the basics of spycraft and subterfuge and ultimately that, along with having any bit of power as a middle manager at an information depot, would pose enough of a threat that he would need to be eliminated. All the small cogs in the machine need to be eliminated and replaced by new cogs that weren’t there in the building process, by cogs that don’t realise that the machine doesn’t run without them. Syril was always doomed.

But then it happens. The thing I haven’t been able to stop thinking about.

During this whole sequence, Cassian has also travelled to Ghorman after being tipped off that Dedra Meero is there and wants revenge for what she did on Ferrix. With Cassian and Syril both in the plaza, surrounded by peaceful protestors, Dedra gives the order. An Imperial sniper kills one of his own men to kick off a riot, a riot that will result in a slaughter. As Syril bears witness to this, everything slows down, we step into his shoes as we see the genocide before us. As he reckons with his role in causing. And then he notices Cassian.

Syril’s entire world view at this point has been deconstructed, he knows there is no place in the Empire for him. He’s watching a massacre in front of him that he knows will be twisted in the media as an unprovoked attack on the Empire that stoked this flame. And yet, despite all this, when he sees Cassian, he attacks him.

The real trick of fascism is knowing how powerful pettiness is as a fuelling emotion. It's so easy to make someone believe that a foreigner is taking their job, or a different way of life is trying to eradicate yours. We, as humans, like having people to blame, people other, people that we can lay all our problems at the feet of and say it is their fault. Just seconds after Syril has seemingly had his come to god moment, he seems someone he’s been told to hate. And unable to digest the truth he had accepted moments ago, he blames it on the other he’s been told is his enemy, he attacks, and he tries to kill someone that he should now know it isn’t a chaotic force threatening to overturn evil, but someone trying to break a system that would eradicate people for access their material goods. Because ultimately, Syril Karn and those who assist fascists aren’t evil or malicious; they are petty, sad, disposable.

And then he dies. All while the man he hated so much, the man he spent his final moments blaming for ruining his life instead of confronting his own role in a massacre, doesn’t even know who he is.

I’ve been thinking about Andor a lot. Because things are bad, and they are going to stay bad, and petty people are going to do petty things to people who don’t even know them.

I can’t stop thinking about the Syrils of the world.