Despite being a Star Wars fanatic as a kid, I really never got that into the expanded universe, which in the Disney era has been relabeled "Legends," as its own separate continuity (sorry Jacen, Jaina, and Anakin Solo. You've been replaced by Ben - ok, yes, I did read like one of the Jedi Academy books).
So, the "Ghorman Massacre" is something I'm only aware of thanks to the broad pulp culture discourse around this show. And evidently, Andor makes a bit of a tweak to it - the operatic and over-the-top version of said massacre, in which Grand Moff Tarkin landed his ship on a giant crowd of peaceful protestors, is referred to in Andor, but it's evident that as atrocious as that is, the real horror is what we're building up to.
I've managed to take a break in the middle of a story arc, but Ghorman remains relevant for multiple arcs this season.
One of the fun things the show did was create a language for Ghorman. If you weren't listening closely, or didn't know any French, you might assume that the Ghor are just speaking français, but it's actually a constructed language, one that the actors deliver with such natural confidence that it feels real.
Obviously, the French Resistance is one of the most storied movements during World War II, an underground resistance to the brutal Nazi occupiers, romanticized as a youthful and obviously righteous group fighting against really staggering odds. It's also something that needed outside help, with the D-Day Invasions really beginning the liberation of France in earnest. It was the Free French who liberated Paris, but they had the Allied Forces at their backs when they did so.
Andor is about, among other things, building a resistance from the ground up. There are many time-jumps throughout the series that help us get there, but it's sort of a remarkable thing that any revolution ever really gathers enough steam to overthrow the existing system. One of the biggest problems is when the vast majority of people are simply trying to get by, living their lives, avoiding the notice of the regime. In season one, we see these discrete missions that benefit scattered resistance cells, but the idea of actually opposing the Empire seems beyond anyone's capabilities.
And there's impatience with that. When Andor arrives on Ghorman under the identity of Varian Skye, fashion designer, he meets with the Ghorman Resistance and tells them, basically, that their timing is wrong and that they're going to all get themselves killed if they try moving. Now, I've been quite thoroughly spoiled on a lot of what happens in season two, but I also think that we all know where this is going: Andor is right, but at the same time, something has to happen.
Indeed, we know, given that the Death Star does get built, that the mineral the Empire wants to strip-mine Ghorman for is going to be extracted, which means that the planet is going to collapse (even in its construction, the Death Star is responsible for the ruin of another planet) and those who cannot evacuate (and the Empire is not making any effort to evacuate the populace even by force) are just going to freaking die. Bye bye, friendly silk-producing spiders.
The Rebel Alliance is pretty scrappy even in the original trilogy: they're frequently on the run, moving from remote bases like Yavin to Hoth and eventually just existing as a fleet out in deep space. It's a bit glossed over how the transition from the Empire to the New Republic goes down: with the decapitation of the Empire and the loss of its most fearsome warrior, perhaps there's such disarray that the Rebels are able to simply move their shadow-government into place and re-establish some pre-Imperial institutions like the Senate (Mon Mothma's status as a former senator gives her some credibility to become the first leader of the New Republic. Man, makes me really wonder what a sequel trilogy that didn't immediately destroy the New Republic would have been like.)
The incredibly dark detail about Ghorman is that both sides are hoping for a massacre. The Empire wants to cultivate a violent resistance in order to justify a violent crackdown, while Luthen wants to provoke the Empire into excessive use of force in order to shock the conscience of the Galaxy.
I was at the very beginning of my sophomore year of high school when 9/11 happened, and I remember at the time thinking that the attack surely had failed in its goals, especially ten years later when US forces killed Bin Laden. While there was a lot of rhetoric coming from the terrorists at the time about shocking the American public into converting to Al Qaeda's radically fundamentalist version of Islam - something that was never going to happen - I now think that the resultant two decades of quagmire wars we got stuck in sort of proved the strategy effective. I mean, when I was a kid in the 90s, American military and geopolitical mastery was kind of unquestioned after the end of the Cold War, but we burned a ton of our credibility both as a force for global peace and as an actual military threat by getting sucked into two incredibly long conflicts. (Though these look like strategic master strokes compared to what we're doing with Iran these days).
But there is this real question: all of this posturing, all of this preparation has to lead to something. At some point, the trigger needs to be pulled and a resistance needs to turn into a rebellion, and that rebellion needs to at some point become a viable replacement for the regime that is.
That's not something that the original movies really concern themselves with, of course: it's far more about Luke's personal hero's journey and how he becomes the opposite equivalent of his father: if Vader is the Empire's most powerful warrior, a one-man army, then Luke becomes the Alliance's version of that, able to blow up their Death Star. Also, someone pointed out at some point that Luke's the only witness to what happened in the Emperor's throne room on the Second Death Star, so you see Luke walk in there in handcuffs and then emerges as the only survivor, you must think he's the most incredibly badass warrior the Galaxy has ever seen. (Funnily enough, the three people there kind of rock-paper-scissors, with Luke besting Vader, the Emperor incapacitating Luke, and Vader/Anakin killing the Emperor).
We know Andor's fate, of course - it lends a certain level of plot armor to him throughout the series but also a tinge of tragedy on top of all of the victories he accrues. He never gets to see the Death Star blown up, much less the fall of the Empire. It a tragic sense, he's not built to be one of the people who carries that victory into a new and reformed age.
The one character we know for certain will make it into that era is Mon Mothma, who becomes the Chancellor or Prime Minister or President or whatever the title is of the New Republic. But while Andor ultimately sacrifices his life to help defeat the Empire, Mothma seems to be sacrificing her family.
It's kind of fascinating, actually: the Empire has injected itself into the structures of the Old Republic, and while the original film has a throwaway line of the Emperor having the Senate dissolved, he uses it for a couple decades to enforce a sense of legitimacy to his regime. That dissolution could potentially give the New Republic an avenue to gain legitimacy by reinstituting it, but one wonders to what degree the New Republic needed to really clean house and rip out the roots of the Empire.
Anyway, eager to see more, but sad to realize that I think I only have four episodes left.
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