When Kate said it, I shuddered. The hair on the back of my neck reared—equal parts provoked and terrified. The reaction was spurred not by the words alone, but by their speaker. In this nearly all white room of Christian intellectuals and academics, here stood someone willing to say the thing. My friend, our fearless leader, acknowledged in a room of her peers that there was something existentially worth resisting. Before hellos, before introductions and on-stage pleasantries, the first words spoken were:

“Welcome to the resistance.”

Days prior, I, along with millions of other nerds around the world, had watched Mon Mothma deliver her canonical address to the Galactic Senate on season two episode nine of Disney and Lucasfilm’s Andor:

"I stand this morning with a difficult message. I believe we are in crisis. The distance between what is said and what is known to be true has become an abyss. Of all the things at risk, the loss of an objective reality is perhaps the most dangerous.

The death of truth is the ultimate victory of evil. When truth leaves us, when we let it slip away, when it is ripped from our hands, we become vulnerable to the appetite of whatever monster screams the loudest…”

Sound familiar?

Andor, a prequel to the events of Rogue One—the prequel to the 1996 genesis of the Star Wars cinematic universe, A New Hope—tells in brilliantly slow exposition the story of the formation of The Rebellion. A movement that in a galaxy far far away would have us meet the titular Jedi Order and its component parts—culture shaping characters like Luke Skywalker, Princess Leia, Han Solo, Yoda, as well as the Sith’s infamous General Tarkin, Emperor Palpatine, and of course everyone’s daddy issue-afflicted big bad, Darth Vader.

While many of us watched Mothma’s address—all but confirming the innate prophetic quality of art and expression—the world was simultaneously feeling the pressure of empire at work in more ways than any one person can hope to wrap their minds around. That night after Kate’s welcome, I found myself awake with questions:

What lessons have we missed about resistance from the stories we’ve heard and watched time and time again? How is resistance born, sustained, and does it end? And who belongs?

I love a good prequel. Stories are subject to the perception of time, like everything else on this side of eternity. We’re dropped at the “start” of something and led to an “end.” But neither bench mark is true, because where there is a start there must be a before, and where there is an end there must be an after. Prequels at their best aim to answer the complicated and uncontainable question: How did we get here? And in the pursuit of that answer we can find the fuel to help us begin well.

The Lord of the Rings is another ubiquitous saga of resistance, one that would ultimately inspire George Lucas to pen the screenplay for Star Wars. That galaxy far, far away was born of a time before the dominion of man. And like Lucas, Tolkien (or the other way around I suppose) shaped his contained trilogy with a sprawling tale of “before” called The Silmarillion where we’ll find our first lesson of resistance. 

[Sauron] chanted a song of wizardry,
Of piercing, opening, of treachery,
Revealing, uncovering, betraying.
Then suddenly Felagund there swaying
Sang in answer a song of staying,
Resisting, battling against power,
Of secrets kept, strength like a tower…

This hotly debated passage illustrates what seems to be a cosmic sing-off between good and evil. What’s important about this “battle” is that it appears to take place long before evil has taken full physical form, as to be labeled the antagonist in the story. The Silmarillion is an epic of good and evil outside of form—two forces looking for a willing host. Forces that, 63 years later, George Lucas would call (ironically) The Force.

Andor shares the same narrative DNA, depicting a world where two songs of opposing forces are sung in time, searching for a host to carry out their will. We meet characters like Cassian Andor (who would ultimately become a leader of The Rebel Forces) and Syril Karn (an Imperial grunt searching for identity and purpose within the system) at pivotal moments of decision, tuned into both frequencies and having to choose which song to settle into. If we allow ourselves to come to these tales uncompromised by spoilers and pop-culture ubiquity, it can be quite difficult to make an objective account of who is meant to “be good” and who is meant to “be evil.” But there does seem to be one self-evident symptom of the evil song in both fiction and non.

Those who give themselves to Evil's song seem to first, as a matter of existence, cover their faces. Storm troopers wear helmets, robbing them of their human accountability. Darth Vader and Sauron both wear face-obscuring crowns that literally keep them alive. The Evil song can consume its host wholly, such that the survival of one is dependent on the survival of the other. The murmur of the darkness is the great thief of faces because, and perhaps I’m naive in believing this, it’s impossible to look deeply into the face of your neighbor and hate them. It steals faces, hiding them behind masks, so that the officer is no longer a neighbor, or mother, or brother, but a caricature absolved of an ethical mandate.

The first lesson of resistance answers the question of who we’re resisting and simultaneously exposes the fundamental flaw in the question. Because evil—empire—isn’t one person or perhaps even a group of people. It is a force, like Good, both cosmic and ancient. All are as capable of falling prey to its alluring song as we are to the warm, peaceful embrace of Good.

It’s a hard lesson to apply because we are of course beings of form. We look at our neighbors, fellow form bearers, and act on them as they act on us, then ascribe good or evil to those acts—calling one another, one or the other. But the stories we all know show a more complex truth: that we are all not only capable of immense good and immense evil, but often host to both simultaneously.

As people of the resistance, it’s important that we keep in mind, and bear in heart, what we are resisting. To look in the face of a neighbor and ascribe either good or evil seems the quickest way to ensure we all end up on the wrong side of flourishing. For we wrestle not against flesh and blood…

Lesson two is about who: Who belongs in the resistance? As a generally progressive author, I must admit my own bias. In our effort to find community in a broken world, we often make caricatures of others. These caricatures make it impossible to build the types of fellowship and coalition required to resist Evil’s song.

I was struck while watching Andor that the two characters given manifesto-like monologues are the previously mentioned Mon Mothma, a generationally wealthy Senator of the Republic, and a young rebel fighter named Karis Nemik. Mothma is of a ruling wealthy class, but becomes the first critical source of literal funding for The Rebellion. Without going down the rabbit hole of lore, we know that as a child Mothma was prone to wander and wonder outside the bounds of her privileged life. (Perhaps led by the song of Good?) Eventually pressured into the family business, she becomes the youngest member of the Galactic Senate. She witnessed the rise of the Empire from within the system and, still tuned in to the light, purposed at great risk to herself and her family to act as a double agent for a rebellion that didn’t quite yet exist.

Little is known of Nemik. Unlike Mothma, his character doesn’t show up anywhere else in the Star Wars narrative universe. We’re introduced to him as a runty part of a ragtag force. He’s a poor, working class citizen of a never-named planet, by all accounts, a nobody. Nevertheless, his character does as much as anyone to establish the resistance that would ultimately bring down the Deathstar and set in motion the formation of a highly unlikely coalition for good. But perhaps no act was more formative than his penning the unfinished manifesto that would become the battle cry of the rebellion:

There will be times when the struggle seems impossible. I know this already. Alone, unsure, dwarfed by the scale of the enemy.

Remember this, Freedom is a pure idea. It occurs spontaneously and without instruction. Random acts of insurrection are occurring constantly throughout the galaxy. There are whole armies, battalions that have no idea that they’ve already enlisted in the cause.

Remember that the frontier of the Rebellion is everywhere. And even the smallest act of insurrection pushes our lines forward.

And remember this: the Imperial need for control is so desperate because it is so unnatural. Tyranny requires constant effort. It breaks, it leaks. Authority is brittle. Oppression is the mask of fear.

Remember that. And know this, the day will come when all these skirmishes and battles, these moments of defiance, will have flooded the banks of the Empire’s authority and then there will be one too many. One single thing will break the siege.

Remember this: Try.

Nemik’s manifesto, like Mothma’s speech in the Senate, would be adopted and embodied by mystical healers, bankers, criminals, children, soldiers, farmers, radicals, reluctant leaders, and battle tested generals.

Of course, as the blueprint for much of this, Tolkien had already written a tale of this universal truth in his trilogy. The first book of the series, The Fellowship of the Ring, introduced us to the same “unlikely” cast of characters that would be burdened with the fate of the world: four hobbits, a wizard, a dwarf, two men, and an elf. None inherently good, or inherently evil. Frodo Baggins, the least of the seven on paper, was tasked with carrying the ring of power to its destruction primarily due to his complete lack of desire for power. But even Frodo falls prey to Evil’s song on the road to Mordor. Without the whole of the fellowship the entire endeavor fails. Every member brings with them a unique and irreplaceable ability that the others need. The cast of characters would expand even further in later books to include other elven tribes, kingdoms of men, clans of dwarves, ancient tree-beings called Ents, and moths, making Middle-Earth an active participant in its own liberation.

The second lesson should be clear by now, but to state it plainly:

If there’s any hope for resistance, there must be space for all willing to hear the song of Good. We have to see the forces as they are, so we can identify Good in character, not caricature, as we look at others and in the mirror at ourselves.

Armed with the knowledge of what we’re resisting and a better picture of who belongs to the resistance, we’re left with the question of how. How do we amplify the Good song and resist the dark murmur? Again, we can turn to narrative.

“Rebellions are built on hope” is the common refrain among the assembling rebels in Andor. Hope is the spark, the foundation that everything else rests on—the fuel. Hope is the tiny acts of defiance and resilience, the skirmishes Nemik talks about. But hope alone doesn’t sustain resistance. Hope is the combustible thing that generates energy. Which often begets more hope, which generates more energy. The piston of resistance. The internal combustion analogy is apt, because the whole thing is quite kinetic. And without release, without direction, is prone to explosive catastrophe. That’s where the final piece is needed: wisdom. Wisdom (a sense of context, strategy, and foresight gained from living) is the guide that channels energy and a witness to what came before that can orient anyone willing to sit at its feet to hope. Wisdom is the elder that holds us when our impulse is to react, and lends us their battle tested courage when we’re overcome by fear.

The great wizard Gandalf provides the ancient wisdom for The Fellowship of the Ring. A kooky old man who speaks in riddles and non-absolutes, it would seem wisdom is less concerned with binary answers and more concerned with asking the right questions. In Andor, a character named Luthen Rael most clearly models the role of wisdom in the resistance. Equal parts conviction and restraint, his way often frustrates his team, eager to slash and run their way to liberation. *SPOILERS* Rael would ultimately give his life to the cause of the rebellion, and Gandalf the Grey is killed at the end of The Fellowship of the Ring. In both cases their true value, the value of wisdom, the value of the elder, isn’t fully acknowledged until their death, losses which quickly become more fuel for each resistance.

The final lesson is a simple formula. The resistance, a sustainable resistance, is:

Fueled by Hope

Driven by Energy

Guided by Wisdom

Hope is all around for anyone willing to see. And energy is the stuff of youth, ever-present and eager to be harnessed. But wisdom is our most precious and critically scarce resource. This lesson also invites us to understand our place in time. We are all just voices in an ancient battle of song. None of this is new and in many ways the only playbook we have is the past. Our contemporary bias for the contemporary has birthed a resistance without direction.

Like the previous rule, no one part of this alchemy can go missing if this is going to work.

Energy and wisdom, without hope, breeds cynicism.

Wisdom and hope, without energy is a type of geriatric apathy.

Hope and energy, without wisdom, breed a juvenile anarchy.

So much of this—embodying a resistance for our time—will require a new, perhaps renewed, moral imagination. We didn’t ask for this. We millennials often meme about how we long for “precedented times.” As if we’re the first to suffer. Nevertheless, it is all so hard. We don’t know what the end looks like. If the songs cease, so does everything.

^{*Images for this article were created using MidJourney, based on the following prompt: ‘A stunning analog-style collage blending galactic textures (nebulae, star clusters, swirling galaxies) with terrestrial textures (mountain ranges, ocean waves, dense forests, cracked desert earth), designed with torn paper edges and a tactile, vintage feel, as if cut from National Geographic and NASA magazines. The composition evokes a cosmic battle between good and evil, with contrasting light and dark elements—vivid, glowing celestial forms clashing against shadowy, ominous voids. The image is rich in detail, with layered textures and multiple focal points, creating a dynamic, largescale artwork that reveals new stories in every cropped section. Paper grain and imperfections add authenticity.’}