Andor, the upcoming Star Wars prequel to Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, will star a hero who served both the Rebels and Separatists, potentially changing how viewers will see both factions. The Rebel Alliance famous included the heroes of the original Star Wars trilogy, having been founded as a way to overthrow the Galactic Empire and end their galaxy-wide oppression. Before the Empire, however, the Galactic Republic, a democratic institution, fought against the Separatist Alliance in the Clone Wars. By the age of the Empire, propaganda would have citizens believe that the Rebels and Separatists were indistinguishable, despite their incompatible goals. How Cassian reconciles his former Separatist affiliation with his newfound loyalty to the Rebellion will make for a fascinating Star Wars story.
Count Dooku divided the Galactic Republic by forming the Separatist Alliance. Although the Separatist movement claimed to be a freer and less corrupt society than the Republic it broke away from, the corporate tycoons of the galaxy had a far stronger influence on the Separatists than the Republic. Ultimately, however, the Separatist Alliance was a manufactured enemy designed to force the Republic to continually give emergency powers to Palpatine—who led the Republic in public and the Separatists in secret—until it became the Empire in all but name. The plot, tragically, worked perfectly, and the Separatists “lost” the Clone Wars as planned, but the Republic became a tyrannical dictatorship with a genocidal hatred of Jedi in the process.
The Rebellion’s earliest incarnation existed before the Galactic Empire was established. Thanks to Padmé and future Rebellion leaders, the Delegation of 2000 protested the Republic’s free fall towards fascism. Throughout the reign of the Empire, the Delegation members who’d survived Imperial persecution and suspicion would go on to unite disparate Rebels cells across the galaxy, forming the Rebel Alliance. Cassian is implied to be an early member of the Rebellion, but his past as a Separatist makes this a fascinating contradiction, as the Rebels and Separatists each have incompatible visions for the galaxy, meaning that Cassian either becomes disillusioned with his former faction in Andor or sees the Rebellion as a necessary evil to overthrow the Empire, a far greater threat to Separatist ideology than the Republic.
Cassian Andor Was A Separatist Before Joining The Rebels
According to dialogue in Rogue One and the 2016 sourcebook Star Wars: Rogue One: The Ultimate Visual Guide, Cassian Andor became a soldier as a child, joining a Separatist insurrectionist cell towards the end of the Clone Wars and throwing debris at heavily armored clone troopers and Republic walkers, however ineffective it might be. For Cassian to have joined the Separatist Alliance at such a young age, he likely believed in Separatist propaganda, seeing the Republic as a corrupt and oppressive force. This would, tragically, be exacerbated when Cassian’s father died on Carida while protesting the Republic’s increased militarization.
How The Rebels Are Different From The Separatists
Given their origins and ideologies, the Rebels and the Separatists are fundamentally incompatible. The Separatists are a corporate oligarchy who are secretly controlled by the Sith, but even their façade demanded a different style of government from the Republic. The Separatist Parliament believed that it granted Separatist systems better representation and more freedom than the more uniform Galactic Republic, which had standard laws prohibiting local planetary practices if they were considered crimes against civilization, such as slavery. The Separatists had a much more laissez-faire system of government which additionally benefitted the galaxy’s corporate entities, who could operate with virtually no oversight.
The Rebellion, on the other hand, wished to simply restore the Republic, bringing back democracy and ideally avoiding the corruption and fascist leanings that allowed the Empire to fester in the prequel era. For these reasons, it’s difficult to imagine how former Separatists would willfully join the Rebellion. For the Separatists, the Rebellion is a movement seeking to restore the very government they broke away from while the Rebels would see the Separatists as the precise sort of corrupt government they wouldn’t want in their restored Republic. For the uninformed galactic citizens, however, the Rebels and Separatists might seem as indistinguishable from each other as the Empire does from the Clone Wars-era Republic, which the Empire used to its advantage.
How The Empire Blurred The Lines Between Rebels and Separatists
As shown in Star Wars: The Bad Batch and the Star Wars: TIE Fighter comics, the Galactic Empire—in typical authoritarian fashion—immediately began a campaign of historical revisionism and misinformation, labeling any early Rebel cells as Separatists, villainizing any who’d question or oppose the fledgling Empire from the get-go. This not only made citizens skeptical of Rebel movements, but it was pervasive enough to even affect the best and brightest military officers. Case in point, Colonel Shakara Nuress, a veteran naval officer who served the Republic in the Clone Wars, saw no difference between the Separatists and the Rebels, and she generally called the Rebels “Separatists” out of habit. Although their ideologies conflict, this Imperial propaganda might have forced some surviving Separatists to work alongside Rebels, which would only enforce the Empire’s false narrative.
Why Cassian Andor May Have Joined The Rebels
Cassian Andor may have joined a Rebel cell due to the Empire being a common enemy of the Rebels and surviving Separatists, but his reasons for joining the eventual Rebel Alliance might have also been less resigned. While Cassian could easily see the Rebellion as a necessary evil, since the Galactic Empire is a far worse system of government than even the Separatists’ depiction of the Republic, he might also simply adopt the Rebel ideology as he comes to understand his former faction better. Perhaps at some point, Cassian realizes the hypocrisy and corruption of the Separatist Alliance and sees the Rebellion as a means to not simply restore the old Galactic Republic, but establish a better version of it that wouldn’t be so fickle.
Cassian Andor Is One Of The Few Heroic Separatists
As alluded to in the opening crawl of Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith, not all Separatists were cold-blooded murderers like General Grievous and Asajj Ventress. Some Separatists were arguably heroic, with the Bonteri family, Avi Singh, and GS-8 being among the few notable members of the Separatist Alliance. In Cassian Andor’s case, he is a selfless soldier who, despite his dubious actions, believes that he’s fighting for a cause that will free the galaxy from oppression, which Andor is sure to show if it reconciles his Separatist past with his Rebel present.