Tony Gilroy on The 'Andor' “Genocide” Speech

The second season of Andor drops mostly weekly on Disney+, with a couple of episodes at a time, so the audience has a lot of time to steep in the show and the ramifications of each part of the story. And boy, have we needed to take a minute between them. This week, the ninth episode of the season brought forward Mon Mothma (Genevieve O’Reilly) to deliver a speech before the Galactic Senate, where she attacked Emperor Palpatine and his Imperial forces.In the scene, Mothma says, “I believe we are in crisis.” Mothma continues, “The distance between what is said today and what is known to be true has become an abyss. Of all the things at risk, the loss of an objective reality is perhaps the most dangerous. The death of truth is the ultimate victory of evil. When truth leaves us, when we let it slip away, when it is ripped from our hands, we become vulnerable to the appetite of whatever monster screams the loudest.”At the end of the speech, she refers to a massacre of protestors on the planet Ghorman. And Mothma punctuates her point with, “What took place yesterday… was unprovoked genocide.”“Yes, genocide!” she repeats. “And the monster screaming the loudest, that we helped create, the monster who will come for us all, soon enough, is Emperor Palpatine.”To my knowledge, this is the first time Star Wars has used that word, and it brought a much needed gravity to the season, which has already taken on big topics like prison, rape, and surveillance. A lot of what has occurred in the show has felt like it's on point with the problems we're seeing in the world today. When asked about this speech and the other moments, Andor creator Tony Gilroy told The Hollywood Reporter, “The really sorry truth about this question — and we get it a lot — is that peace and prosperity and calm are the rarities. Those are rarities throughout the last 6,000 years of recorded history. You could drop this show at any point in the last 6,000 years, and it would make sense to some people about what’s happening to them.”Gilroy continued, “I mean, the control of truth has always been a scabbard of power. Power dictates the narrative, and always has tried to always do that. Look at what the Empire does to Ghorman with their propaganda campaign. The very first scene [in the season] that Krennic has where he talks about Ghorman, that’s based on the Wannsee convention — the convention where the Nazis got together and planned the final solution over a business lunch. You could say all this about the Gulf of Tonkin — which got America into Vietnam — or you could say the burning of the Reichstag [which paved the way to the Nazi’s rise to power], or you could say the sinking of the Lusitania [which pushed America into World War I]. You go all the way through history, and power is the control of truth. So I think with that speech, we were looking to be timeless and classic.”When it comes to shows like this, you can see how Gilroy is using timeless themes that, unfortunately, have plagued humanity forever to bring forward something like Star Wars and make it a little more universal. This is a smart way to bring science fiction stakes to the forefront and to make them relatable. Let me know what you think in the comments.

May 7, 2025 - 21:37

Tony Gilroy on The 'Andor' “Genocide” Speech

The second season of Andor drops mostly weekly on Disney+, with a couple of episodes at a time, so the audience has a lot of time to steep in the show and the ramifications of each part of the story.

And boy, have we needed to take a minute between them.

This week, the ninth episode of the season brought forward Mon Mothma (Genevieve O’Reilly) to deliver a speech before the Galactic Senate, where she attacked Emperor Palpatine and his Imperial forces.

In the scene, Mothma says, “I believe we are in crisis.” Mothma continues, “The distance between what is said today and what is known to be true has become an abyss. Of all the things at risk, the loss of an objective reality is perhaps the most dangerous. The death of truth is the ultimate victory of evil. When truth leaves us, when we let it slip away, when it is ripped from our hands, we become vulnerable to the appetite of whatever monster screams the loudest.”

At the end of the speech, she refers to a massacre of protestors on the planet Ghorman.

And Mothma punctuates her point with, “What took place yesterday… was unprovoked genocide.”

“Yes, genocide!” she repeats. “And the monster screaming the loudest, that we helped create, the monster who will come for us all, soon enough, is Emperor Palpatine.”

To my knowledge, this is the first time Star Wars has used that word, and it brought a much needed gravity to the season, which has already taken on big topics like prison, rape, and surveillance.

A lot of what has occurred in the show has felt like it's on point with the problems we're seeing in the world today.

When asked about this speech and the other moments, Andor creator Tony Gilroy told The Hollywood Reporter, “The really sorry truth about this question — and we get it a lot — is that peace and prosperity and calm are the rarities. Those are rarities throughout the last 6,000 years of recorded history. You could drop this show at any point in the last 6,000 years, and it would make sense to some people about what’s happening to them.”

Gilroy continued, “I mean, the control of truth has always been a scabbard of power. Power dictates the narrative, and always has tried to always do that. Look at what the Empire does to Ghorman with their propaganda campaign. The very first scene [in the season] that Krennic has where he talks about Ghorman, that’s based on the Wannsee convention — the convention where the Nazis got together and planned the final solution over a business lunch. You could say all this about the Gulf of Tonkin — which got America into Vietnam — or you could say the burning of the Reichstag [which paved the way to the Nazi’s rise to power], or you could say the sinking of the Lusitania [which pushed America into World War I]. You go all the way through history, and power is the control of truth. So I think with that speech, we were looking to be timeless and classic.”

When it comes to shows like this, you can see how Gilroy is using timeless themes that, unfortunately, have plagued humanity forever to bring forward something like Star Wars and make it a little more universal.

This is a smart way to bring science fiction stakes to the forefront and to make them relatable.

Let me know what you think in the comments.