How Andor’s Biggest Change to The Ghorman Massacre Alters Star Wars Canon
This version of history goes a little differently.
As soon as details surrounding Andor Season 2 started to emerge, it became very clear the season was going to focus on one major event in the Star Wars timeline: the Ghorman Massacre, the tragedy that resulted in the loss of hundreds of civilians, prompting Mon Mothma to speak out against the Empire — an event that unofficially kickstarted the beginning of the Rebel Alliance becoming an acknowledged faction in the galaxy.
Now, in the latest batch of Andor episodes, we finally see what everything has been building up to, but it’s very different from what we thought it would be before the season. In fact, it’s different from what even the previous episodes were suggesting.
Warning! Spoilers for Andor Season 2, Episode 7-9 follow.
The Tarkin Massacre devastated the planet of Ghorman more than a decade before Andor.
In the non-canon Legends timeline, the Ghorman Massacre occurred when Grand Moff Tarkin landed a transport on the planet of Ghorman despite a peaceful protest happening below. The tragedy sparked the secret planning of the Rebellion, and a Rebel ship was later named the Ghorman’s Honor in homage to the lives lost. It seemed like a great basis for Andor Season 2, but there was one problem: the event happened 16 years before the series.
In Andor, we learned this event did in fact happen 16 years ago, but it’s not known as the Ghorman Massacre. Instead, it’s the Tarkin Massacre. Andor’s version of the Ghorman Massacre was similar to the previous event that so many of the citizens remember, but with a few key differences.
The citizens of Ghorman don’t incite a riot with the Empire — the Empire has to take matters into its own hands.
The major change that Andor introduces is the fact that this entire conflict was encouraged by the Empire. The Tarkin Massacre was deadly, but it wasn’t the Empire’s plan from the get-go: Tarkin needed to land his ship on Ghorman and didn’t care about the collateral damage in the process. Meanwhile, in canon, Dedra Meero has been actively observing and inciting unrest on Ghorman, in order to set the stage for the Empire to take total control of the planet’s unique, suspiciously valuable, resources.
But once everything goes down, the false-flag operation reaches a new level: the Ghorman citizens, despite everything, are peaceful — just singing their anthem in the plaza. It takes a shot from an Empire sniper for everything to escalate. It’s something far more brutal than the Legends version of the event ever hinted at, but that’s what Andor has been about this whole time: the Empire playing dirty, finding ways to blame disgruntled citizens, and doing whatever it can to discredit the Rebellion.
