Andor is a present concerning the messy facet of the galaxy far, far-off and the even messier individuals who inhabit it. Angry individuals, disagreeable individuals, liars and killers on the lookout for any method to focus their frustrations at a universe within the grip of totalitarianism. But it’s additionally concerning the bell man.

The bell man in Andor doesn’t even actually have a bell. It’s extra of a large steel slab. He will get up on the morning time on the planet Ferrix day by day—perhaps he has the one functioning Star Wars equal of an alarm clock on the town—and climbs his tower. He selects his two hammers off the wall, from their well-worn holders. He prepares, adjusting his ear guards—or perhaps they’re headphones, perhaps he’s a fan of classical jizz—so he’s not about to be deafened by his work. His ritual. He locations the hammers down on his slab to do that, then picks them again up. He assumes his pose, the pose he assumes each morning, in preparation for this second.

And he hammers. Bong-bong, one after the opposite. He permits the sound to reverberate. Bong, this time each directly. He goes once more, Bong-bong, bong. There’s individuals right here and there lurking on the market within the early daybreak, but it surely’s when the bell man that’s probably not a bell man—he’s the bell, I assume, spiritually talking—rings his hammers that life begins on Ferrix, the bustle of the city beneath starting to blossom as his hammers ring out, again and again. The sound fades, the day begins, and bell man presumably goes on together with his life, his job achieved till the morrow.

These chimes and ringing drones are clearly considerably necessary to Ferrixian tradition, so far as we will inform after the bell man’s day by day ritual opens Andor’s second episode. When the Morlana corp-sec forces arrive on the town, it’s a system of chimes and bells, relatively than yelling individuals, that alerts the residents of the city to close up store and scarper. There’s this ritual of this man and his hammers, up on the morning time day by day, to ring the streets awake. No one ever clunkily states this in dialogue, we don’t be taught that in 527 BBY somebody rang a victory bell with their warhammers in some legendary Ferrix civil battle. We don’t know the bell man’s title, we don’t know his deal apart from the truth that he will get up and hammers that slab each morning.

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We don’t have to, and hell, Andor didn’t want set the scene for its sophomore episode by following this character. But it does, and it’s necessary that it chooses to take action, each drawing our consideration to it however not but drawing it sufficient that we all know the ins and outs of this particular person’s life. They’re largely unimportant to the grand scheme of issues, and but they’re additionally extremely necessary. Bell man most likely has a Wookieepedia web page already. It’s most likely two sentences lengthy. He deserves it. I don’t understand how I’d discover it, as a result of it most likely received’t assist if I pull the location up and put “bell guy” within the search window.

The bell man represents one of the crucial fantastic issues about Star Wars worldbuilding at its greatest: seeing, and never telling. The bell man will get us to ask questions. What’s his deal, how did this city determine that is what they wanted to get individuals within the mornings? Why isn’t it a droid? Was it a droid after which it stopped being one as a result of it was awkward in the course of the Clone Wars? How do you apply for the bell man job? Do the individuals in a galaxy the place Faster-Than-Light succesful starships are commonplace actually not have that many alarm clocks? They’re questions we must always most likely by no means get the solutions to, though we will perpetually stay in worry that up to date Star Wars would possibly finally give him a comic book e-book one-shot or a chapter in a novel, as a result of that’s simply how it’s typically. But it’s sufficient that we’re compelled by this tiny little bit of element, this little thread within the bigger tapestry Andor weaves, to ask the questions anyway.

Andor’s view of the Star Wars galaxy is peppered with these little particulars in the best way that the franchise’s capability to overexplain itself at instances hardly ever is currently—the payphones Timm makes use of to narc on Cassian, that little step-droid on the spaceport Luthen arrives on Ferrix at that exists actually for individuals to step throughout it. The bell man and his hammers, hammering away each morning. None of them are actually necessary to the plot, they usually don’t should be: they make Andor’s slice of the galaxy far, far-off really feel lived in and textured past its main narrative thrust, and make it really feel like we’re being guided right into a world that exists past the metanarrative fringe of its scripting.

Hammer away, bell man. You’re what makes Star Wars’ worlds go spherical, and never simply since you get everybody up day by day.

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