Brasso’s War
Alasdair Stuart
Andor is a series simultaneously steeped in Star Wars lore and relentlessly focused on rebelling against it. Andor himself is just one of a half dozen characters who would be straight-forward heroes in other shows but don’t have that kind of luck or moral certainty here. refutes the Light Side/Dark Side dichotomy the Jedi and Sith cling to. Exploring the early Rebels' willingness to compromise their personal morals for a wider cause makes the series thrum with constant, barely suppressed tension. That tension also functions as a lens, allowing the series to focus all the way down on individual rebellions. There is a meta-fictional joke to be acknowledged here too: the series most concerned with bucking expectations is also the most regimented in structure. Four arcs, each three episodes long and each featuring at least one character who directly alters Andor's life and worldview. In this essay, we will look at one of the quietest and arguably most important characters: Brasso. More specifically, on how his path mirrors Cassian Andor's and how his form of revolution is quieter, but at least as important.
Before starting the essay, I want to make a structural note and then a personal note. Each section of the essay is marked by a quote from the series. Only one is delivered by Brasso himself, but all of them speak to his path across the show and his evolution as a rebel.
And now the personal: representation for people of size is something I've become more and more passionate about over the last few years. Actors of any gender who are above a certain physical size, whether in weight, build, or height, seem perpetually faced with a choice between being thugs, comic relief, or if they're tremendously lucky: comic relief thugs. Joplin Sibtain, who plays Brasso, is a physically large man who the character seems to have been written for and it has paid dividends at every level. Sibtain, and Brasso, are as clever as they are large and the dichotomy between the two gives them their own shadows to move between, just like Andor's carefully cultivated anonymity.
“Make yourself useful!”
Brasso works as a shipbreaker, a man paid to tear apart and strip mine dead starships. The sociological implications of this are fascinating. In the real world, shipbreaking is viewed as an intensely dangerous form of work, predmoninantly carrier out in the global south. In reality there are two wildly different methodologies for the same job, depending on where you stand on the economic food chain. In the global north, shipbreaking is done in dry docks with tremendous care taken to inventory toxic materials and break ships down with care and precision. In the developing world, the job has traditionally been the best of a range of terrible economic prospects with horrific social and health consequences. That gap has closed somewhat in recent years but as Rousmaniere and Raj argue, there are still vast problems:
There are six workdays in the week. By 5:30 in the morning the men are up. They work from 7 AM until noon with a 15-minute break. There is a one-hour lunch period. Work runs again from 1 PM until about 7 PM with one 15-minute break.
Since about 2003, notably after the rise of international and domestic awareness of the OEH conditions in Alang, every worker in these yards has been required to enroll in a three-day safety and risk-management training course, conducted under the aegis of GMB and paid for either by the worker or by his employer. The course is officially mandatory but many workers appear not to have taken it.123
Brasso's work at the yard on Ferrix seems to fall somewhere between the two real world extremes - but even then that is thematically appropriate. The world he grew up on is at the bottom of the Imperial food pile and the wrecks he breaks are a stark demonstration of that. This is where the Old Republic goes to die, a trash heap for the Empire with Brasso, Cassian, Maarva and the rest picking over what is left. It is the ideal resource for Andor, a planet sized used car lot with the keys in every ignition. But it is also a job that renders down those who do it.124
Brasso's subsumption into the constant grind of work is embodied the first time we see him. The show cleverly sets up the “big hero” moment of the shift gates opening on Ferrix as the shipbreakers go off to work, expecting us to see Brasso front and centre. We don't. He is a face in the crowd, a man made unique only by the specific gloves he picks out and the fact he is expected to clean up Cassian Andor's mess again. This scene, Brasso's first in the show, tells us three vital things about the man. The first is that he is clearly respected but is not a leader. The second is that he is as both at home in the shadows as Andor and, in some ways, much better at basic deception. Brasso is far from happy about being asked to lie for Andor but he does it, building on the story he has been given. He makes himself useful, in the exact way a colleague yells at him to do. The third is the direction he is travelling. Andor is doing everything he can to get off Ferrix. Brasso is doing everything he can to protect Ferrix. A big man with a hard job, resilient, reliable, and invisible. There are countless billions of Brasso's under the boot of the Empire,, each one looking after themselves and their friends as best they can. They're the smallest cogs in the biggest of machines, the exact sort of rebellion Cassian would go on to ferment in the third episode of the show and its closing arc.
The first arc culminates in the show’s introduction of crowd-pleasing explosions and cathartic rage. It contains a pair of shots I have not been able to stop thinking about. The first closes episode 2, 'That Would Be Me'. Cassian Andor striding down one of the shipbreaking yards towards the camera, full of purpose and leaving his world behind. The second is roughly halfway through episode 3 'Reckoning'. It is almost exactly the same shot, only this time it is Brasso walking away from the Pre-Mor corporate shuttle. At the time we do not register it in any way other than the emotional. This stoic, pragmatic big man is the last one off the line because someone has make sure everyone else gets off the line. But a few moments later when the shuttle takes off the pilot discovers it has been tethered to a nearby crane. Brasso is at war too, it is just no one has noticed him yet and that is exactly how he wants it. Just like Andor, and like Luthen Rael, Brasso knows exactly who he is and what he is prepared to sacrifice. He just chooses not to do that with an audience. It is a quiet rebellion to be sure, the exact sort of small rebellion Jennifer Roy describes:
Ferrix's smaller rebellious acts illustrate Andor's focus on the everyday individuals affected by the Empire and their corporate extensions.125
But, it is also a deeply effective one.
It also speaks to Brasso's emotional and social intelligence. When Bix Caleen is wanted for questioning by the Empire and spotted in the crowd, Brasso literally puts his body between his friend and harm. More importantly, he puts the perception the Empire have of him between his friend and harm, weaponising assumptions and perceptions in a non-violent way. He also does this without any knowledge of whether it will work. It is the only thing he can do in the moment. Singular action in the protection of a community that subtly echoes the closing moments of Rogue One where each soldier lives just long enough to get the information they are dying for to the next one in line.
Remember that the frontier of the Rebellions is everywhere. And even the smallest act of insurrection pushes our lines forward.
Brasso has a clear sense of community. He also demonstrates a fundamental kindness that transcends species barriers too. There is a lot to be written about the fascinating relationship the Star Wars universe has with the concept of digital sentience. Much of that relationship is intensely troubling, with droids somewhere between indentured slaves and second-class citizens. That discrimination is not a universal constant, and in ‘Daughter of Ferrix’, the eleventh episode of the season, we see that through Brasso's interactions with B2-EMO. We learn of Maarva Andor's death through the little droid's shaking lens and it’s clear he can barely process his grief. It’s also clear that no one seems to particular care about B and their need for care. Except Brasso. As the episode progresses, he is the one who gives B2 something to do, processing his own grief by helping someone else. My favourite moment in the show comes later that episode as Brasso tries to get B2 to leave home for the last time. He fails, and ultimately agrees to stay with B2 for the night. It is a lovely scene, and one that speaks to, as much of this does, the fundamental kindness and community-facing nature of Brasso. He helps. Whether it is a biological or digital creature is irrelevant.
Tell him none of this was his fault. It was already burning, he was just the first spark of the fire. Tell him, he knows everything he needs to know and feels everything he needs to feel. And when the day comes and those two pull together, he will be an unstoppable force for good. Tell him I love him more than anything he could ever do wrong.
Brasso embodies, for me, the ideal best expressed by American novelist Cormac McCarthy of ‘Carrying the fire.’126 McCarthy's staggering post-apocalyptic novel, The Road, has one character repeatedly use this phrase. It reads a few ways but fundamentally is about the idea of inherent goodness, and kindness. A flame to be kindled and a torch to be navigated by, regardless of how hard the journey is. Especially if the journey is arduous. There’s one quote in particular that could be applicable to Andor and Brasso both:
“You have to carry the fire."
“I don't know how to."
“Yes, you do."
In this moment, Brasso is carrying the fire, embodying Maarva but also much more. He is a leader whose authority is gained through persistence and consistency. He is a surrogate parent, a sibling. The embodiment of a community he leads by his presence within it, not at its head. A rebel, covering the one direction Cassian cannot look, even as Cassian does the same for him. They even close the series doing each other's work. Cassian ensures that Bix, Brasso, Jezz and B2 can escape. Brasso leads the charge in Ferrix's rebellion, as Maarva's funeral becomes the birth of rebellion in the community. The image of the big man wielding the brick made of Maarva's remains as a weapon of liberation is one of the most powerful in a series thick with metaphor. Maarva is no longer just a brick in the wall, but a weapon to empower her community. Ferrix is no longer a place built on the bones of its predecessors, but a forge where rebels are made, a community standing up as one to push back against the Empire. Cassian lights the fire, and carries the flame but it is Brasso, and the people he unites, that keep it burning.
123. Peter Rousmaniere and Nikil Raj, “Shipbreaking in the developing world: problems and Prospects”, International Journal of Occupational Environmental Health, 2007: shipbreakingplatform.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/IJOEHRousmaniere.pdf.
124. While not applicable here, it’s worth noting that Blackbird Interactive’s excellent Shipbreaker takes this intensely dangerous profession as a starting point for another deeply anti-capitalist story.
125. Jennifer Roy, “Andor Shows That Smaller Rebellions Were the Empire’s Downfall”, CBR, 2022: cbr.com/andor-smaller-rebellions-empire-downfall-disney-plus.
126. Cormac McCarthy, The Road (New York, NY: Alfred A Knopf, 2006).