The death of Syril, Ghorman Massacre, explained by Kyle Soller
Spoiler alert: This article contains spoilers for episodes 7, 8 and 9 of “Andor” season 2, which now streams on Disney+.
“Who are you?”
Despite all their years of playing cat-and-mouse, Diego Luna’s Rebel Spy Cassian Andor and Kyle Soller’s Empire agent Syril Karn have never had much screen time together now. Unfortunately for Syril, their meeting is of short duration if he makes a blaster shot on the head in the midst of the tragic massacre of Ghorman.
The political tension and civil unrest on Ghorman finally touch a breaking point in the latest “Andor” episodes. The empire continues with its secret mining plot, and soon the entire planet Ghorman will be made unstable. Despite the feeding of information about the plans of the rebels on his imperial supervisors, Syril is caught watching and feels betrayed by his partner Dedra (Denise Gough), who knew the truth all the time. He understands and chokes Dedra briefly, demands that she tells him what the empire really is. She promises him that they will soon have a better life and points out that he did not find all the promotions very much, while the empire was planning the destruction of Ghorman. He leaves, uncertain about what to do with himself, while chaos bursts out between the imperial and rebels.
In the midst of the massacre, Syril Cassian sees in the riot while he focuses on Dedra. Syril tackles him before he can get a shot, and the two have a total fight. They go around each other, and for a moment Syril has the upper hand while he grabs the Cassian gun and prepares to shoot. Just as things look gloomy for Cassian, he just asks Syril: “Who are you?” The question freezes Syril in his tracks. The moment of existential uncertainty is just enough time for the Ghorman leader Carro Rylanz (Richard Sammel), who had previously welcomed Syril in the inner circles of the rebels to shoot him. With that, Cassian escapes and Syril becomes another victim in the Ghorman massacre.
Of Variety, Soller becomes deep in the death of Syril and becomes a ‘wild cat’ in his fighting scene with Luna and how ‘ahead’ is Ghorman’s massacre in today’s world.
When did you find out that this would be how the story of Syril ends?
Tony Gilroy approached the entire project with such a forensic intensity. He had been mapped from the beginning for five years and knew the scope and the scale of each character. He only told me between seasons 1 and 2. I thought it was a perfect end for him. It felt as if something else could happen to Syril, it was taken away. So much had been taken from him in the last 10 minutes of his life, all these revelations and betrayal, the veil was lifted from all the truths he was right about the empire and the choices in his life completely crumbling. Instead of having a redemption story, I think it was much stronger and much more realistic to life. For all vanity of Syril, romance and delusions of grandeur about himself, he is simply a gear in the handlebars. He is just another victim of war.
He unleashes a wild side of himself that we had never seen before when he fights against Cassian. Where did that come from?
I had always seen Syril as someone with hidden depths and thought he was secretly incredibly angry. It is very clear that he grew up in a controlling environment under constant supervision, so it was not surprising that he had this untouched anger in him. We thought it would be interesting to look at places where that could come out, where Rylanz confronted him, the betrayal with Dedra then finally with Cassian. Syril has expanded himself in Ghorman, he starts to let go, getting more strength and connecting with his essence. Under that he knows that he is being manipulated by Dedra, but he doesn’t want to admit it. There is a brewing anger going on. In the end it is someone who has lied to all their lives, who drank the cabbage aid since they were a child. He opened himself for a new way of thinking with Rylanz and intimacy with Dedra. He has betrayed that, and then to see this person, this totem, who represents everything he could not achieve on that path in Cassian, and then tackling 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 those intense moments as weird Cathartic for him, because he finally has this release, and ultimately really tragic, he only releases the pain that was inflicted to him.
What were the rehearsals for that fighting scene between you and Diego Luna?
We rehearsed quite a bit. It was a longer fighting scene that they could reduce. We filmed it in three days, who, for a fighting scene who was absolutely fucked on the tail end of a period of two weeks of doing the entire Massacre of Ghorman. But it was a bit perfect because they had to be at their end. We wanted it to look like Syril was this wild cat that you just couldn’t get off your back. In this entire revelation that happened to him, an unexpected, primary thing is released. It was wild. We were also filming it at the end of January, so it was really cold and intense, but we were illuminated. It is a kind of blur, but I remember that I have a lot of pain, but also very happy.
What has been cut?
There were some longer beats. There was a big question of whether, when the explosion happens, Syril is still going or he might be dead or something that runs between the two in the end of them. This fight is unexpectedly equal; On another day, Cassian would beat the Shit from Syril, no doubt. But Syril has released this super power through everything that happened to him. It was really delicate and tried to come to the end at the time and Syril came around unexpectedly with the Cassian gun. Then the last question to Syril. There were three or four different things that Cassian was going to say, and they finally came up with “Who are you?” What I think was perfect because it breaks Syril at the time. “Oh, my God. My obsession doesn’t even know who I am.” How do you step?
What other rules would Cassian say to Syril at the end?
It was a short list: “you” and “it’s you” and “Who are you?” It just cuts him at that moment. If Cassian had said, “It’s you,” would Syril decide to do something or would he still have lowered his gun? I don’t know, but in terms of Syril’s bow, it just perfectly completes the journey used by forces that are larger than you in this huge machine and chaos of life. You think you made a difference, but you didn’t do that.
What would Syril do if he had survived?
I don’t think he would have gone and have been fighting both sides. It is as if you leave a cult, or someone who tells you that we just live in a hologram and that you are in the matrix, I think he would be just spun and wanted to go somewhere alone. It is really hard to imagine that everything you were true is incorrect, the people around you that you thought it has sustained you from the first day and you are just a pawn in this war machine. I think he would have run away and would have opened a blue milk stall somewhere on a distant mountain.
Here is another hypothetical for you: if Syril and Dedra had changed place and he was aware of the government’s plan, would he have told Dedra about it?
I wonder if he would have squatted, because in the end it feels like, although they are cut from similar cloths and have similar upbringing, Dedra is a real, hardcore believer. Syril is one of that ‘banality of evil’, a man who became entangled in propaganda and drinks the cabbage Aid as a child. At the end of the day we are talking about heart percentage and who has more. I think Syril has a little more. You see it with what happens on Ghorman. I don’t think it’s just gullibility and naivety. You see a crack that opens in the armor that he has placed around himself.
The Ghorman massacre was filmed a long time ago, but viewing in contemporary political climate with the conflict of Israel-Palestine feels so creepy relevant. What is it like to look at that scene now?
It’s hard. It made me realize that really great writing is timeless. Really great writers will look at the past to explain the present, which ultimately predicts the future. That is what George Lucas did in the beginning, and it is all that Tony did with this, looking at the run -up to the Second World War. In a sense there is nothing new under the sun. You could show ‘Andor’ 50 years ago or 50 years, and I bet that unfortunately there would be part of the earth where people would find it extremely relevant because we still cycle through the same shit that we cycle through. Nobody could have predicted that it would feel extremely ahead, but that is proof of real true writing that our human desires, mistakes and emotions are driveway and wonder how we are on this planet.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
