Who Was Syril Karn?

“Who are you?” is the question that haunts Syril Karn for his entire life. From the moment we met him, prim and proper security uniform modified to be just so, a sense of purpose in a vast and uncaring universe has been at the core of understanding what makes Syril tick. The journey that took him across the galaxy reached a climactic moment in Andor‘s penultimate arc this week, and raised that haunting question once more. But the answer is more complicated than mere villain in Andor‘s narrative, doubting or otherwise. Because even as the hero of his own story, the man we know Syril to be, until the very end, is shaped less by himself and more by the systems and structures that made a tool of him. This doesn’t excuse Syril of being responsible for what he abets by the end of his story on Ghorman, of course. No matter how much he doubts by the time of the massacre unfolding around him what he’s helped bring about, he still made the choice to be an agent of Imperial interests, both willi ... Read full article.