Spoiler alert:: This article contains spoilers for episodes 7, 8 and 9 of season 2 “Andor”, streaming now on Disney +.
“Who are you?”
Despite all their years of cat and mouse player, the rebel cassian of Diego Luna, Cassian Andor and the agent of the Empire of Kyle Soller, Syril Karn has never had a lot of screen time together – so far. Unfortunately for Syril, their meeting is short -lived while he takes a blaster at the head in the middle of the tragic massacre of Ghorman.
Political tension and civil disorders on Ghorman finally reach a break in the last “Andor” episodes. The Empire goes ahead with its secret mining plot, and soon the whole planet of Ghorman will be made unstable. Despite the feeding of the information on the plans of the rebels to his imperial supervisors, Syril is caught off guard and feels betrayed by his partner Dedra (Denise Gough), who knew the truth. He briefly slams and suffocates Dedra, demanding that she tell him what the Empire is really up to the task. She promises to him that soon they will have a better life and underline that it did not disturb all the promotions while the Empire provided for the destruction of Ghorman. He leaves, not knowing what to do by himself, while chaos breaks out between the imperial and rebels forces.
In the middle of the massacre, Syril spots Cassian in the riot while he was aiming for Dedra. Syril attacks it before he could get a gunshot, and both have a total fight. They slam, and for a while, Syril has the upper hand by grabbing the Cassian pistol and preparing to shoot. Just like things seem dark for Cassian, he simply asks Syril, “Who are you?” The question freezes Syril on his traces. The moment of existential uncertainty is just enough time for the chief of Ghorman Carro Rylanz (Richard Sammel), who had previously welcomed Syril in the interior circles of the rebels, to shoot him. With this, Cassian escapes and the Syril becomes another victim in the massacre of Ghorman.
With Variety, Soller deeply takes the death of Syril, becoming a “wild cat” in his combat scene with Luna and how “the Ghorman” is “premonitory” in the world of today.
When did you discover that it would be the end of Syril’s story?
Tony Gilroy approached the entire project with such medico-legal intensity. He cartographed five years from the very beginning and knew the scope and scale of each character. He didn’t tell me before the seasons 1 and 2. I thought it was a perfect end to him. It was like just before something else could happen to Syril, he was removed. So many things had been removed from him in the last 10 minutes of his life, all these revelations and betrayals that were proved, the veil being withdrawn from all the truths he held about the Empire and the choices of his life collapsed completely. Instead of having a story of redemption, I think it was much stronger and much more real to life. For all vanity, romanticism and illusions of Syril’s greatness on himself, it is just another cog in the wheel. It’s just another victim of war.
He unleashes a fierce side of himself that we had never seen before when he fights Cassian. Where does it come from?
I had always seen Syril as someone with hidden depths, and I thought he was secretly incredibly angry. It is very clear that he grew up in an environment of control under constant surveillance, so it is not surprising that he has this unexploited anger in him. We thought it would be interesting to look at places where it could come out, with Rylanz confronted, the betrayal with Dedra then finally with Cassian. Syril has extended to Ghorman, he begins to unleash himself, get more power and connect to his petrol. Under all this, he knows that he is manipulated by Dedra, but he does not want to admit it. There is this stew of brewing in progress. In the end, it was someone who lied his whole life, who drank Kool-Aid from her child. He opened up to a new way of thinking with Rylanz and intimacy with Dedra. He betrayed, then to see this person, this totem, who represents all that he could not achieve on this path to Cassian, then to stick on the riot and massacre, he has a very personal explosion and an exorcism of all the bad things that the Empire has done to him. I saw these intense moments as strangely cathartic for him, because he finally has this release, and ultimately really tragic, he only releases the pain inflicted on him.
What were rehearsals like this combat scene between you and Diego Luna looked like?
We repeated a little. It was a longer combat scene that they reduced. We filmed it in three days, which, for such a crazy and ambitious combat scene at the end of a period of two weeks of Ghorman massacre, everyone was absolutely fucked. But it was a bit perfect, because they had to be in their end. We wanted it to look like Syril was this wild cat that you just couldn’t get off. In all this revelation that has happened to him, an unexpected and primitive thing is released. It was wild. We also turned it out at the end of January, so it was really cold and intense, but we were on. It’s a bit vague, but I remember having suffered a lot, but also very happy.
What was cut?
There were longer beats. There was a big question of whether, when the explosion occurs, Syril is still standing or may be dead or something that loops in the beat between the two. This fight is unexpectedly; Another day, Cassian beat Syril’s shit, without a doubt. But Syril has this superpower released by everything that happened to him. It was really delicate, trying to arrive at this moment who has the upper hand at the end and Syril coming unexpectedly with the Cassian pistol. Then the last question to Syril. There were three or four different things that Cassian was going to say, and they ended up on “who are you?” Which, I think, was perfect because it breaks Syril at that time. “Oh, my God. My obsession does not even know who I am.” How much is it eviscerated?
What other Cassian lines would she say to Syril at the end?
It was a short list: “You” and “it’s you” and “Who are you?” It cuts it completely at that time. If Cassian had said “it’s you”, would Syril have had more resolution to do something or would he still have lowered his weapon? I don’t know, but in terms of Syril’s Arc, he perfectly ends the journey used by powers that are bigger than you in this huge machine and chaos of life. You think you made a difference, but you didn’t do it.
What would have done for Syril if he had survived?
I don’t think he would have left and joined both sides in the fight. It’s like leaving a cult, or someone who tells you that we live in a hologram and that you are in the matrix, I think he would have just turned and wanted to leave alone somewhere. It is really difficult to imagine that everything you consider to be true is false, the people around you that you think you were your people struck you from the first day and you are just a pawn in this war machine. I think it would have avoided and open a blue milk stand somewhere on a distant mountain.
Here is another hypothetical for you: if Syril and Dedra had changed places and he knew the plan of the Empire, would he have spoken of Dedra?
I wonder if he would have cracked, because in the end, it looks like, although they are cut with similar tissues and have similar education, Dedra is a real hardcore believer. Syril is one of those “banality of evil”, a man who was caught in propaganda and drinking kool-aid when I was a child. In the end, we are talking about cardiac percentage and which has more. I think Syril has a little more. You see it with what is happening on Ghorman. I do not think it is only credulity and naivety. You see a crack opening in the armor he has placed around himself.
Ghorman’s massacre was filmed a long time ago, but looking at it in today’s political climate with the conflict of Israel-Palestine is so strangely relevant. What’s it to look at this scene now?
It’s heavy. It made me realize that a big writing is timeless. Really, writers will examine the past to explain the present, which ultimately predicts the future. This is what George Lucas did at the very beginning, and that’s all Tony did with that, looking at the period of the Second World War. In a way, there is nothing new under the sun. You could show “Andor” 50 years ago, and I bet, unfortunately, there would be a section of the earth where people would find it extremely relevant because we always have a bicycle through the same shit as we have a bike. No one could have predicted that it would be extremely premonitory, but it testifies to a real writing that excited our desires, faults and human emotions and questions how we are with each other on this planet.
This interview was published and condensed.
