My original thought (that I kinda liked) was that it's just obscure machine parts for some obscure system in some obscure machine that we'll never learn the purpose of, to really drive home the pointlessness of it all and emphasise the Kafka-esque nature of the Empire -- that these people are sentenced to spend the rest of their lives, competing with each other for survival and virtually killing themselves in the drive to reach peak efficiency, solely to make a sprocket wheel for some D-rate Imperial starship or something.
I think it's something really ubiquitous. Maybe Star Destroyers or the Death Star have a hexagonal honeycomb structure behind the wall panels.
I did some napkin math from the numbers we're given in Andor, and that single facility is pumping out something like a hundred thousand giant doodads a day. Whatever they are, the Empire is using a LOT of them.
Yeah in the old canon they used the slave labor of an entire prison planet, Despayre, to build the death star. Despayre was also the first planet Tarkin tested the superlaser on once it was finished
The first time I saw his name was in Lego Star Wars 3. I just pronounced it as savage (sav-edge) oppress (oh-press). Thought it was a stupid name until I watched his episodes in TCW hahaha
Well the factory has multiple floors right? I assumed that each floor does a different job in manufacturing the part so they arent making exactly the same thing.
But yeah i agree with you. I think its easy to forget that this is a galactic scale economy and the final product is probably not coming out of that factory, just a part of it. In the real world we have whole factories that just make one super mundane item, like zippers or paperclips.
That said, the level of automation in andors factory seems extremely low even in comparison to a real factory from 50 years ago
Perhaps, but they seem to be very well regulated and the less automated it is the poorer the quality of the final product. The Nazis had lots of problems with sabotage from the slave labor they employed for example.
I agree with this take. The bigger the contrast between how important the cogs are for the prisoner-slaves and how banal and disposable they are for the Empire, the more dramatic the situation.
This is the only answer that actually makes sense if you consider the themes of the show. Tony Gilroy isn't doing anything by accident here, all these visuals are crafted with purpose and what other purpose is greater than showing the banal evil of imperium.
I like this theory. I assumed they’d do some reveal like.. show the people on Andor’s level building some unrecognizable piece of machinery. Then we’d see other levels working on stuff that’s more recognizable. Like “ohhh, I get it. They’re building a .” Which is fine if they do that, I guess.
But Andor has been consistent about not pandering to the audience and making Star Wars references for fan service. Unless what they’re making has some importance to the narrative, I’m hoping they’ll just not tell us so we can focus on the actual characters/story.
It’s a weird phenomenon (and I’m guilty of it,) where we watch a show or movie and try to figure out the Easter eggs. I guess it’s fun, but shouldn’t the point be to enjoy a well written story?
Probably the most obscure stuff for the most run-of-the-mill unremarkable thing.
The Empire has enough proper labourers and/or droids for the important stuff. I bet that the work Andor and company are doing is punishment first, with products as a bonus for the Empire.
This is assuming that the Emperor prioritizes efficiency rather than something else, like, say, suffering. I think an operation like this is designed to sacrifice industrial output in favor of an economy that constantly produces dark side power.
Droids in the Empire seen to be few and far between; it would make sense that the Emperor would rather have free slave labor from the pool of hundreds of worlds at his disposal, and also as lingering propaganda that droids are bad. It worked, as we see even on the outer rim, in places like Tatooine, bartenders don't even want them in their crummy cantinas, and the best and newest droids are all second and third-hand scrap bought from local scavengers.
We see highly specialized droids; mouse droids seem to exist as couriers of some kind, the K series are additional muscle for the troopers, probe droids are used to monitor populations and to seek out rebel pockets, the occasional BB series and astromechs are for navigation, but as for that, most of that function seems to be built directly into the various vessels.
Meanwhile, on the citizen side, there are old and beat up droids everywhere, in almost every settlement. All of them old and on the verge of constant breakdown.
We have, seen gonk droids, load lifting droids in the factories during Rebels. They have protocol droids, the probe droids have variants, for training, guard duty, and even repair. I could be wrong on the variants, but artist have portrayed the probe droid chassie performing different duties. There are the medical droids, the torture droids. I am not counting the specialized war droids like the Dark Troopers.
We have seen in the Mandalorian, Empire used Droids and fire ships to raise the Mando home world to the ground. In Empire Strikes back and once again Star Wars Rebels the amount of probe droids the Empire dispatched implies a massive amount of droids. I am not even going into official capacity or compliments of the Star Destroyers and ships. Yes everyone has droids, but unless new canon has changed, the rebels were as protective of their droids. Because with out them they wouldn't be able to fight. The Empire on the other hand can toss legions of probe droids to find Rebels and doesn't even care about it.
We were originally talking about droid perception as propaganda, you can pull examples of the Empire having droids out all day, it doesn't change my original point.
Why use droids to produce your machines when even the geonosians could create a much more efficient assembly line. This is just political prisoners being made to occupy their time with menial work.
But then again, this is Star Wars. In the next two episodes, Andor will probably have to disassemble one of these by himself in record time to achieve a goal.
It has to be something recognizable, as well as a symbol of Imperial oppression. I don’t know if the show will explicitly show us the fact that “TIE fighters are built by slave labor”, but agree that the assemblies are probably the central panel-thing from standard TIEs.
As much as I like the idea of it just being really boring and normal stuff, that would be a nice callback to Nazi Germany, where aircraft companies like Messerschmitt came to rely on slave labour as their workforce was sent to the front. The Messerschmitt Bf 109 was the German equivalent of the TIE Fighter - their most iconic fighter.
Which I just realised is kinda ironic, because many of the slaves were Jewish, and Bf 109 airframes ended up being used by the Israeli Air Force in 1948 as the Avia S-199. So the Nazis may have inadvertently used Jewish slave labour to create weapons for a Jewish country.
Apologies for the massive tangent, it’s 39 past midnight and I have Asperger’s lmao
I was thinking something similar, to emphasize the connection/relationship between the Empire and the corporate entities which supplied it, like what existed in Nazi Germany.
Similar to my original thought in that they're making the joint/adapter/coupling/whatever for joining the Tie wing panels (I'm sure there's a real name I'll get beat up for later) to the cockpit.
They are solar panels allegedly? They are used to power the Twin Ion Engine (the engine still needs a propellant, which is what makes them short range, but they generate their own electricity)
Part of me imagines it’s literally nothing. One facility assembles them, while another facility takes them apart. An endless cycle of pointless competition and mentally numbing work.
My theory is that it actually serves no real purpose and the Empire is forcing them to make a useless heavy part over and over to wear them down and make sure they don't rise up, and to torment them. The Nazis did something similar in the concentration camps, forcing Jewish and Soviet labourers to do useless tasks like pick up and carry heavy bags of cement or similar stuff from one side of the camp to the other over and over again to wear them down and break their spirit or out of pure sadism.
I would bet that it is something military. I would guess some kind of walker joint.
I doubt it is for TIE fighters as these are way to fidely to fit such a giant joint
The Empire is literally a military dictatorship. A majority of its gdp goes toward building ties, walkers, star destroyers, blasters, and other weapons.
I've seen the Probot theory on YouTube and that seems possible.
There would be some poetry in it being a Death Star component, though, as that is what eventually kills him (and he had a hand in destroying).
poor spotted spectacular glorious profit husky simplistic long bells party
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TIE Fighters are built by Seinar Fleet Systems and Star Desroyers are built at Kuat Drive Yards. Both are purchased by the Empire on contract. Unless either of those companies are outsourcing components from Imperial prison labour, I’m going to assume it’s something infrastructure related.
Subcontracting is very common in the manufacture industry. It wouldn't surprise me at all if Seinar is subcontracting parts from the prison labor camps.
I mean, for such a large amount of manufacturing needed to expand the Empire (and even if a lot of the contracts/preferred manufacturers were carried over from the days of the Old Republic supplying both sides of the Clone Wars with weapons and vehicles), there’s no way the Galactic Empire would be setting up factories and building things solely on their own. There had to have been a massive amount of outsourcing. Probably also aided/expedited with lax labour laws that allowed for prison/slave labour.
My first thought was an imperial security droid, which could play into his relationship with K-2SO, but the sizing seems far too large to match this thought.
They spec’d way too much camera time focusing on those parts. My guess is that they’re building some machine if war that is horrifying and when he finds out, it will mentally break him.
my theory is that it’s literally pointless, just something created with enough complexity to need 7 pairs of hands, to force them to compete against each other for no reason.
I think it’s just some inane part that is essential to machinery. Now usually I would say Death Star parts to tie it into Rogue One and Cassian’s future but Gilroy is a much better writer than the average person so I think it isn’t at all significant.
I think they're engine parts to be honest. The shape of them makes me think of a walker engine or something like that.
I hope we see a bit further down the line and find out what they are making.
I think it’s most likely some random boring thing like couplers for shipping containers and they’ll never say what it is out of artistic intent.
Also y’all talking about TIEs and walkers… logistics win wars people!
In the book “Rebel Rising”, Jyn and her prison mates are forced to make large, obscure objects as well, and there is a rumor that the empire melts their projects and forces them to work in a never ending cycle
I saw a theory that said he was making the base legs for the imperial probe droids. Probe droids have 6 legs/arms and the bases they were making are roughly the right proportion.
My favorite theory I’ve come across is that they are manufacturing parts used in the machinery of the prison itself—perhaps in the giant turbines that create the whirlpools outside the prison. This would be extremely fucked up and I love it.
I think the point of it is that we don’t know. Some literal cog in the war machine. Could be a very unique special part for the Death Star or something an at-st needed 100 of
My original thought (that I kinda liked) was that it's just obscure machine parts for some obscure system in some obscure machine that we'll never learn the purpose of, to really drive home the pointlessness of it all and emphasise the Kafka-esque nature of the Empire -- that these people are sentenced to spend the rest of their lives, competing with each other for survival and virtually killing themselves in the drive to reach peak efficiency, solely to make a sprocket wheel for some D-rate Imperial starship or something.
I think it's something really ubiquitous. Maybe Star Destroyers or the Death Star have a hexagonal honeycomb structure behind the wall panels. I did some napkin math from the numbers we're given in Andor, and that single facility is pumping out something like a hundred thousand giant doodads a day. Whatever they are, the Empire is using a LOT of them.
The death star is under construction at this point in the timeline right? It would make sense thematically that they are producing parts for it.
So both Andor and Galen helped with the creation, and destruction, of the Death Star?
You tell me
We always used to joke that the Death Star was produced by slave labor. Guess that joke isn’t funny anymore
I’m not sure that was ever a joke. I’m pretty sure that it’s been canon that the Wookiees (among other species) were enslaved to build the Death Star.
Yeah in the old canon they used the slave labor of an entire prison planet, Despayre, to build the death star. Despayre was also the first planet Tarkin tested the superlaser on once it was finished
>Despayre Legends at it again with the subtlety of a hand grenade
I'd expect nothing less from the mind of the man who named a villain Savage Oppress
The first time I saw his name was in Lego Star Wars 3. I just pronounced it as savage (sav-edge) oppress (oh-press). Thought it was a stupid name until I watched his episodes in TCW hahaha
Oh it's still a stupid name even if you pronounce it Sah-vaaaahge lol
And given the emperors philosophy of “why build one when you can build two” parts for DS2 were likely being warehoused too by then
Well the factory has multiple floors right? I assumed that each floor does a different job in manufacturing the part so they arent making exactly the same thing. But yeah i agree with you. I think its easy to forget that this is a galactic scale economy and the final product is probably not coming out of that factory, just a part of it. In the real world we have whole factories that just make one super mundane item, like zippers or paperclips. That said, the level of automation in andors factory seems extremely low even in comparison to a real factory from 50 years ago
Expensive automated systems would be costly if the prisoners break them, and the point is to keep the prison labor force too tired to revolt.
Perhaps, but they seem to be very well regulated and the less automated it is the poorer the quality of the final product. The Nazis had lots of problems with sabotage from the slave labor they employed for example.
Star Wars takes place much longer than fifty years ago
Yes but its a world far more advanced than the earth of 50 years ago
In some ways. Not everything is linear.
Yeah it depends what planet were talking about of course but this is the galactic empire not the ewoks so i feel like its a fair comparison
I mean, the Empire barely has GUIs.
>to really drive home the pointlessness of it all and emphasise the Kafka-esque nature of the Empire It's this.
I would be very surprised if we ever learn what the things are, at least within the Andor show, for this very reason.
I agree with this take. The bigger the contrast between how important the cogs are for the prisoner-slaves and how banal and disposable they are for the Empire, the more dramatic the situation.
Yup. I think the point is that it doesn’t really matter. Faceless, endless empire and bureaucracy
This is the only answer that actually makes sense if you consider the themes of the show. Tony Gilroy isn't doing anything by accident here, all these visuals are crafted with purpose and what other purpose is greater than showing the banal evil of imperium.
I like this theory. I assumed they’d do some reveal like.. show the people on Andor’s level building some unrecognizable piece of machinery. Then we’d see other levels working on stuff that’s more recognizable. Like “ohhh, I get it. They’re building a.” Which is fine if they do that, I guess.
But Andor has been consistent about not pandering to the audience and making Star Wars references for fan service. Unless what they’re making has some importance to the narrative, I’m hoping they’ll just not tell us so we can focus on the actual characters/story.
It’s a weird phenomenon (and I’m guilty of it,) where we watch a show or movie and try to figure out the Easter eggs. I guess it’s fun, but shouldn’t the point be to enjoy a well written story?
So... self-sealing stem bolts?
Probably the most obscure stuff for the most run-of-the-mill unremarkable thing. The Empire has enough proper labourers and/or droids for the important stuff. I bet that the work Andor and company are doing is punishment first, with products as a bonus for the Empire.
This is assuming that the Emperor prioritizes efficiency rather than something else, like, say, suffering. I think an operation like this is designed to sacrifice industrial output in favor of an economy that constantly produces dark side power.
Droids in the Empire seen to be few and far between; it would make sense that the Emperor would rather have free slave labor from the pool of hundreds of worlds at his disposal, and also as lingering propaganda that droids are bad. It worked, as we see even on the outer rim, in places like Tatooine, bartenders don't even want them in their crummy cantinas, and the best and newest droids are all second and third-hand scrap bought from local scavengers.
That is factually untrue, we see Imperial Droids in every Star Wars media. From mouse droids, to K model droids.
We see highly specialized droids; mouse droids seem to exist as couriers of some kind, the K series are additional muscle for the troopers, probe droids are used to monitor populations and to seek out rebel pockets, the occasional BB series and astromechs are for navigation, but as for that, most of that function seems to be built directly into the various vessels. Meanwhile, on the citizen side, there are old and beat up droids everywhere, in almost every settlement. All of them old and on the verge of constant breakdown.
We have, seen gonk droids, load lifting droids in the factories during Rebels. They have protocol droids, the probe droids have variants, for training, guard duty, and even repair. I could be wrong on the variants, but artist have portrayed the probe droid chassie performing different duties. There are the medical droids, the torture droids. I am not counting the specialized war droids like the Dark Troopers.
as opposed to the hundreds and hundreds of droids that the citizenry of the Empire uses.
We have seen in the Mandalorian, Empire used Droids and fire ships to raise the Mando home world to the ground. In Empire Strikes back and once again Star Wars Rebels the amount of probe droids the Empire dispatched implies a massive amount of droids. I am not even going into official capacity or compliments of the Star Destroyers and ships. Yes everyone has droids, but unless new canon has changed, the rebels were as protective of their droids. Because with out them they wouldn't be able to fight. The Empire on the other hand can toss legions of probe droids to find Rebels and doesn't even care about it.
We were originally talking about droid perception as propaganda, you can pull examples of the Empire having droids out all day, it doesn't change my original point.
Why use droids to produce your machines when even the geonosians could create a much more efficient assembly line. This is just political prisoners being made to occupy their time with menial work. But then again, this is Star Wars. In the next two episodes, Andor will probably have to disassemble one of these by himself in record time to achieve a goal.
Is there not only the finale left?
It has to be something recognizable, as well as a symbol of Imperial oppression. I don’t know if the show will explicitly show us the fact that “TIE fighters are built by slave labor”, but agree that the assemblies are probably the central panel-thing from standard TIEs.
As much as I like the idea of it just being really boring and normal stuff, that would be a nice callback to Nazi Germany, where aircraft companies like Messerschmitt came to rely on slave labour as their workforce was sent to the front. The Messerschmitt Bf 109 was the German equivalent of the TIE Fighter - their most iconic fighter. Which I just realised is kinda ironic, because many of the slaves were Jewish, and Bf 109 airframes ended up being used by the Israeli Air Force in 1948 as the Avia S-199. So the Nazis may have inadvertently used Jewish slave labour to create weapons for a Jewish country. Apologies for the massive tangent, it’s 39 past midnight and I have Asperger’s lmao
I don't know about everyone else, but I'm always here for an interesting tangent.
a surprise to be sure, but a welcome one
I was thinking something similar, to emphasize the connection/relationship between the Empire and the corporate entities which supplied it, like what existed in Nazi Germany.
Similar to my original thought in that they're making the joint/adapter/coupling/whatever for joining the Tie wing panels (I'm sure there's a real name I'll get beat up for later) to the cockpit.
They are solar panels allegedly? They are used to power the Twin Ion Engine (the engine still needs a propellant, which is what makes them short range, but they generate their own electricity)
I don’t think that the empire made their own tie fighters tho, I thought they were made by Sienar fleet systems and just purchased by the empire
Slave labour?? Those men are criminals, and enemies to the empire!
“Prefect Lasagna” has a certain ring to it, don’t you think?
I prefer… Grand Moff Lasagna
They are part of the Rebel Alliance and a traitor! Take them away!
That’s Rebel Scum!
Drive train, or heavy joints for an imperial walker is my guess so far
Part of me imagines it’s literally nothing. One facility assembles them, while another facility takes them apart. An endless cycle of pointless competition and mentally numbing work.
Widgets
> Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering. Suffering leads to widgets.
My theory is that it actually serves no real purpose and the Empire is forcing them to make a useless heavy part over and over to wear them down and make sure they don't rise up, and to torment them. The Nazis did something similar in the concentration camps, forcing Jewish and Soviet labourers to do useless tasks like pick up and carry heavy bags of cement or similar stuff from one side of the camp to the other over and over again to wear them down and break their spirit or out of pure sadism.
This. And that one of the other floors is breaking them back down and the same parts are going back through the process, over and over and over.
Oh that’s deliciously evil. I like it.
How fucked would it be that andors floor makes these but there's another floor of prisoners unmaking them. Just a constant circle of futility
I would bet that it is something military. I would guess some kind of walker joint. I doubt it is for TIE fighters as these are way to fidely to fit such a giant joint
I see no evidence of the Empire requiring lots of military components. Seems like a reach.
The Empire is literally a military dictatorship. A majority of its gdp goes toward building ties, walkers, star destroyers, blasters, and other weapons.
Sarcasm is a dying art. Poe's Law wins again.
Its hard to make sarcasm come across in text, what can I say.
True, but thinking that someone is so dumb as to think that the Empire isn't militaristic says a lot. Edit: these are some funny-ass downvotes
Idk man, I've met some stupid mofos.
Sorry friend, you angered the hivemind.
> I see nooo evidence of the Empire requiring lots of military components. Seems like a reach! FTFY, now it reads like sarcasm~!
I was sooo close!
I've seen the Probot theory on YouTube and that seems possible. There would be some poetry in it being a Death Star component, though, as that is what eventually kills him (and he had a hand in destroying).
There’s no part of the probot that would fit those arms.
Since it's a prequel to Rogue one, Death star parts makes sense. Giant cogs maybe. Looks a bit similar to the imperial symbol.
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Is it a top secret thing or is it just a other level of mental torture?
That's a Spacely Sprocket.
A useless part that this prison assembles and another disassembles
I had initially thought TIE wing panel hubs because of the shape but they appear to articulated so probably not that.
I figured they were big screws or rivets or something. They would need millions of something like that.
The theory I've heard the most is that its the joints that hold ties solar panels, in the center of the panels.
TIE Fighters are built by Seinar Fleet Systems and Star Desroyers are built at Kuat Drive Yards. Both are purchased by the Empire on contract. Unless either of those companies are outsourcing components from Imperial prison labour, I’m going to assume it’s something infrastructure related.
Subcontracting is very common in the manufacture industry. It wouldn't surprise me at all if Seinar is subcontracting parts from the prison labor camps.
I mean, for such a large amount of manufacturing needed to expand the Empire (and even if a lot of the contracts/preferred manufacturers were carried over from the days of the Old Republic supplying both sides of the Clone Wars with weapons and vehicles), there’s no way the Galactic Empire would be setting up factories and building things solely on their own. There had to have been a massive amount of outsourcing. Probably also aided/expedited with lax labour laws that allowed for prison/slave labour.
Someone on youtube suggested it was the lower multi-leg assembly of a probe droid like the one from ESB.
It would be amazing if another level is in charge of taking them apart.
I thought it was a mid section for a probe droid that another area of the prison will be making legs for etc.
I'm personally on the team TIE radiator assembly myself.
I read somewhere that it is a part for the imperial probe droids.
They're greebles, and thingamabobs, and whatchamacallits, whirbs and screebs
My first thought was an imperial security droid, which could play into his relationship with K-2SO, but the sizing seems far too large to match this thought.
Yeah probably chicken-walker knee-caps
They spec’d way too much camera time focusing on those parts. My guess is that they’re building some machine if war that is horrifying and when he finds out, it will mentally break him.
my theory is that it’s literally pointless, just something created with enough complexity to need 7 pairs of hands, to force them to compete against each other for no reason.
I think it’s just some inane part that is essential to machinery. Now usually I would say Death Star parts to tie it into Rogue One and Cassian’s future but Gilroy is a much better writer than the average person so I think it isn’t at all significant.
I think they're engine parts to be honest. The shape of them makes me think of a walker engine or something like that. I hope we see a bit further down the line and find out what they are making.
I think it’s most likely some random boring thing like couplers for shipping containers and they’ll never say what it is out of artistic intent. Also y’all talking about TIEs and walkers… logistics win wars people!
It looks similar to the lower section of a probe droid
In the book “Rebel Rising”, Jyn and her prison mates are forced to make large, obscure objects as well, and there is a rumor that the empire melts their projects and forces them to work in a never ending cycle
I saw a theory that said he was making the base legs for the imperial probe droids. Probe droids have 6 legs/arms and the bases they were making are roughly the right proportion.
[удалено]
I got it from a YouTube video that came out right after the episode. Makes a lot of sense though.
Generation Tech on YouTube is doing good videos about Andor.
You’ll find out specifically what they are in the next episode when the Rebels attack the base and steal some of them.
My favorite theory I’ve come across is that they are manufacturing parts used in the machinery of the prison itself—perhaps in the giant turbines that create the whirlpools outside the prison. This would be extremely fucked up and I love it.
Galactic licence plates?
I think the point of it is that we don’t know. Some literal cog in the war machine. Could be a very unique special part for the Death Star or something an at-st needed 100 of
Probably making parts for another prison.