One of the lessons that’s consistent across Star Wars is that the Force flows through everything, and can’t be the property of religious orders like the Jedi and Sith, despite their best efforts. This notion underpins much of the anti-imperial messaging of the universe and posits that any being can serve its will. Often this takes the form of uncanny luck, such as Han and Chewbacca getting to the Death Star trench just in time to save Luke from getting shot down by Darth Vader in A New Hope, or Chirrut Imwe dodging myriad blaster bolts to power up a communications tower and inform the Rebel Alliance of the Death Star plans in Rogue One.
However, neither of the above examples happens without one character, in particular: Saw Gerrera. His singular obsession with finding and destroying the Death Star is key to the success of the Alliance and its unlikely the Rebellion survives without Gerrera and his partisans.
Because of the crucial role Saw plays, one can argue that his actions, no matter the extremes, serve the will of the Force. Any time he’s depicted in the wrong, he’s still on the right track, often in contrast to many characters more prominent in a given story. In the first season of Andor, he berates other rebel cells for lacking a “clarity of purpose” and is proven correct across Andor, Rebels and Rogue One. The source of that clarity likely comes from his experiences leading a partisan resistance to the Separatist occupation of his homeworld, Onderon, alongside his sister, Steela.
General spoiler warning as Saw’s actions affect most major Star Wars films and shows from The Clone Wars Season 5 to The Empire Strikes Back.
Learning to Rebel on Onderon
Saw, Steela, and the rest of the Onderon partisans sought help from the Galactic Republic to overthrow a puppet king acting as a comprador for the Confederacy of Independent Systems, colloquially referred to as the Separatists. In prior episodes of The Clone Wars and Attack of the Clones, they’re depicted as arch-capitalists hailing from administrative entities like “The Corporate Alliance”, “InterGalactic Banking Clan”, “Commerce Guild” and “Techno-Union”, then a few monarchs like Count Dooku and Archduke Poggle the Lesser. Much like the historical Confederacy in the United States, they are very big fans of slavery and want more of it, utilizing technologically shackled droids as their primary military force and finding common cause with pro-slavery societies like the Zygerrian’s.
George Lucas has been consistent in stating that the Empire in Star Wars resembles the United States, leaning on his schooling in anthropology when building the socioeconomic systems of the Star Wars universe. The creative team behind The Clone Wars was very consistent in blending the aesthetics of both the Grand Army of the Republic and the Separatist military into what would later be the Imperial aesthetic. A reasonable analogue for the behavior of the Separatists would be IMF/World Bank loans, and how it shackles the countries receiving them to multiple generations of staggering national debt, and insufficient public infrastructure to support production demands. Should they fail to produce, or resist, the debtor country would then receive crippling sanctions that destroy their trade capacity or are invaded and destabilized. This colonial relationship is depicted in greater detail ~12 years prior to the events of the Onderon arc by the blockade and invasion of Naboo, at the hands of the Trade Federation, in The Phantom Menace.
As Saw would be explain to Wilmon in Season 2 of Andor, these methods of colonization still featured prison slavery. Saw and hundreds of Onderonians were forced to labor in conditions so brutally hot their clothes melted off, forcing them to work naked and hours so long older people would drop dead from exhaustion.
Separatist actions like that clearly position siblings Saw and Steela Gerrera on a righteous path to restore the original king of Onderon (depicted as ruling by popular consent) and overthrow the foreign occupation. This bears some resemblance to national liberation movements like the earlier days of the Cuban revolution, or Pan-African liberation movements such as Burkina Faso’s from 1983-1987 and 2022-present. However, they are fighting to restore a monarch, and once victorious join the Republic to ensure they’re well-supplied. Those aspects may fit better with a nation like Iran overthrowing the Western-backed Shah, and while the Ayatolla is not a king, joining BRICS does match the Republic metaphor better than Cuba with the Soviet Union.
In the same way Che Guevara helped African liberation movements get rolling in the 1960s, the Grand Army of the Republic sends their A-team of Obi-Wan Kenobi, Anakin Skywalker, Ahsoka Tano and Captain Rex to teach the most effective means of destroying the Separatist droid army with limited resources. Both Saw and Steela are naturals in courage, skill and leadership, and their conflicts in answering the primary question of any revolution, “What is to be done?”, actually serve to strengthen their movement. In this moment, Saw’s preternatural understanding is first displayed.
Steela hatches a plan to rescue the imprisoned king of Onderon, doing so right in the middle of his public execution by the comprador. Saw disagrees, and goes off on his own to break the king out of prison, unaware that Steela has him tailed. Saw’s plan fails, and he’s captured, but during his captivity he’s able to persuade the general of Onderon’s military to defect. The Onderon partisans are tipped off to the failed rescue, but go ahead with their plan anyways. The comprador’s forces are better prepared than Steela and Ahsoka (who remained behind as an advisor) anticipate, making the Onderonian military’s defection a key component of rescuing Onderon’s king, and thanks to the efforts of both Steela’s and Saw’s plans they’re able to galvanize and legitimize the resistance movement in the eyes of the people.
The good feelings of victory wouldn’t last for Saw. Following a timely, and illicit, transfer of rocket launchers from the Jedi to the partisans via pirates, the forces of Onderon turn the tide and defeat the Separatist forces in open combat. One of Saw’s rockets brings down a Separatist airship, and Steela dies in the ensuing chaos of the crash. Devastated, and holding himself at fault, Saw can’t properly celebrate the Separatist withdrawal, but his commitment to Onderon never wavers and they join the Republic to bolster their planetary defenses, successfully resisting a siege until the Clone Wars ended.
An intriguing twist of fate embeds itself in these events, with Anakin planting the seeds of the eventual Empire’s demise due to both him and, to a greater degree, Ahsoka, teaching Saw and Onderon’s partisans how to effectively wage guerrilla warfare. Gerrera was also an early adopter of the Fulcrum frequency, initially created by Anakin, and later used to much greater effect by Ahsoka during Rebels.
Once Palpatine crossed his Rubicon and turned Republic to Empire, Saw would turn from Onderon partisan to galactic revolutionary. Even official promotional spots dub him “The Original Rebel”.
Ahead of the Rebellion’s Curve
The second major conflict between Saw and other dissidents is during The Bad Batch, initially across episodes 1-3 of the first season and eventually coming to a head in the final two episodes of Season 2. While most of the Bad Batch fully defects from the Empire following Order 66, Crosshair chooses to return and serve it. After Saw and the Onderon rebels capture and release the Bad Batch in their initial encounter, Crosshair would later return with an elite imperial squad to slaughter all who remained, civilian or otherwise, this also included an elite trooper who objected to committing war crimes. Once again showing preternatural foresight, Saw was not there at the time.
Between enslavement, Steela’s death, the rise of Empire, and the cost of his mercy to the Bad Batch, its understandable why Saw turns to the means he does. In his second encounter with the Bad Batch, Saw shows a far greater clarity of purpose. While the Bad Batch is primarily interested in infiltrating an imperial summit featuring Tarkin and Hemlock (director of the Palpatine cloning program) to find information to rescue Crosshair, Saw is trying to blow the entire meeting up. While neither side of the dispute knows what will happen after that point, the math seems rather clear from a revolutionary context. Saw and the Partisans, if successful, eliminate at least five of the Emperor’s top officers. If only the Bad Batch are successful, they rescue one brother who chose to leave them and be a space Nazi. Tech’s argument for the Bad Batch’s plan is that simply killing top officers wouldn’t do much as they’re so easily replaceable. This makes sense from Tech’s perspective because they were all bred in tanks to be expendable, and he’s the tech expert, not the dialectical and historical materialism expert. Individualist governing styles like fascism are critically dependent on the people in governorships and program director positions, as those are who gets leaned on to keep the lower classes in line and on schedule. Less capable administrators means less results, and the Empire does not have gentle means for dealing with failure, which create exploitable negative feedback loops for revolutionary movements.
Saw retorts that sacrifices such as forgetting about Crosshair, and instead supporting his plan, serve the greater good. Aspiring revolutionaries should take note the Bad Batch is in the wrong, one relative who chose to serve an empire should never take precedence over eliminating that empire’s most effective butchers and splicers, thereby saving far more lives in the long term.
To drive the point home across other shows and movies, Tarkin would go on to massacre peaceful protesters on Gorman by crushing them with a Star Destroyer, and blow up Alderaan while making its Senator, Leia Organa, watch. On a meta level, eliminating Hemlock spares audiences the obscene and thematically untenable revelations of Rise of Skywalker. Saw wasn’t just trying to save other characters in the story, he’s trying to save real life audiences from one of the biggest let-downs in cinema history.
The Force seems to agree, as the Bad Batch choosing not to support Saw’s mission means that the assassination attempt fails, Tech is killed by Imperials and Omega is captured by Hemlock. Arguable billions could have been saved if it went differently.
Between fighting for Wookiee sovereignty on Kashyyk in Jedi Survivor and raising Jyn Erso following the death of Lyra Erso and capture of Galen Erso in flashbacks during Rogue One, the interceding years between Bad Batch and Rebels are largely a tale of surviving Imperial consolidation and expansion. Still, Saw consistently places himself on the correct side of the battle line, as the Death Star is not getting destroyed without the efforts of both Ersos.
There is some criticism of Saw’s actions during this period, due to the torture he inflicted on other partisans to protect Jyn’s identity, and his abandonment of Jyn leaving her to fall out of the rebellion for a time. However, the Force works in interesting ways to ameliorate some of the worst effects of his actions.
One such action comes on the heels of his “Clarity of Purpose” monologue in Andor, where he berates other, less effective movements and is proven correct. Anto Kreegyr being a Separatist is a rather damning affiliation, given their role in galactic slavery (Saw’s specifically), to say nothing of all the war crimes. He berates the Maya Pei Brigade for being Neo-Republicans, proven by the New Republic’s failure to eliminate Imperial remnants, and the lethal in-fighting from Andor‘s first arc of Season 2, where the rapidly dwindling Brigade is promptly eaten by a dinosaur. The monologue also calls out the Gorman Front and Partisan Alliance as “sectorists” and “human cultists”. Much like Marxist-Leninist revolutionaries in real life, Saw recognizes its a full galaxy struggle and no one species has any more right to said galaxy than another, hence his activity on Kashyyk.
He also states he’s “not for hire” in this conversation with Luthen, and a genuine, successful revolutionary cannot be bought. Whether or not it was the intention of the showrunners, one can read a bit of a shot at the “career activist” scene that is effectively being paid to lose via government grants and tax-exempt donations anytime their collective material accomplishments don’t match the radical rhetoric they use for advertising. The only deal to be made with a true revolutionary is one that furthers the cause of revolution, and eventually Saw and Luthen find common ground in protecting the Axis network and duping the Imperial Security Bureau at the expense of Kreegyr. In this galaxy, Fanon also describes the phenomenon of revolutionary incorruptibility in The Wretched of the Earth.
The starving peasant, outside the class system is the first among the exploited to discover that only violence pays. For him there is no compromise, no possible coming to terms; colonization and decolonization is simply a question of relative strength.
Later, in Andor Season 2, Episode 6, Saw delivers what is likely his most famous monologue to Wilmon Paak while setting up a rhydonium fuel line. Its worth watching in full, to understand the tragedy of his circumstances after nearly two decades of guerrilla warfare, but this is the part really worth taking home:
“You think I’m crazy? Yes, I am. Revolution is not for the sane. Look at us! Unloved, hunted, cannon fodder, we’ll all be dead before the Republic is back, and yet, here we are…”
That’s the mark of true hero of the people. Fighting for a better world that they won’t even see, just like a similar speech Luthen made to Lonni Jung in Andor‘s first season. That’s the kind of selfless commitment that the Soviets needed to win Stalingrad, or the Communist Party of China to survive the Long March. It’s precisely why Saw Gerrera cannot be bought, the only price he accepts is victory.
Much is made of Saw’s penchant for caring little about civilian casualties. It’s a valid criticism, proven on screen in Rogue One. Further, Leia, Princess of Alderaan by Claudia Gray says in attempting to assassinate the Imperial Governor of Naboo, the blast almost hits Leia Organa in the process. If one believes, like Obi-Wan, there’s no such thing as luck, then its fortunate that Saw remains aligned with the Force’s will.
What’s more interesting is who tends to levy that criticism. Often its rebellious Senators like Mon Mothma or Jedi like Kanan Jarrus. If its appropriate to recognize that failing to prevent civilian casualties is wrong, what can be said of the violence of maintaining the Empire? For any good legislation the Rebel Senators managed to pass, or bad legislation blocked, they’re still culpable for policies like the “Public Order Resentencing Directive” (PORD) featured in Andor Season 1. That lead to Cassian Andor being sentenced to six years in prison for effectively a disorderly conduct charge. Once imprisoned on Narkina 5, the Empire’s captives slaved in conditions so harsh that whichever work team wasn’t productive enough that day would be electrocuted, while the other teams were made to watch.
As an aside, Gray’s novel includes that Naboo’s Governor was set to inform the Emperor of Leia’s true identity before Saw and the Partisans killed him.
On the Trail of the Death Star
In the 12th and 13th episodes of Rebels’ third season, the Spectres and Rex convince Saw to stop torturing a defenseless Geonosian named Klik-Klak for information on why the Empire attacked the planet. Upon discovering evidence the Empire committed a near-total genocide of the Geonosian people, he expressed regret at his actions and allowed Klik-Klak to take the Queen egg to a safe location, believing every species has a right to rebuild. Given Geonosian rulers like Poggle the Lesser’s role in creating the Separatist army that would enslave him, it shows the strength of Saw’s principles that he could be talked out of setting aside revenge for the greater good.
Rebels’ third episode of its fourth season begins with a conversation on acceptable tactics between Ezra and Kanan, with Ezra considering Saw’s extreme methods potentially more viable. Kanan admonishes this view, believing that how they fight matters a lot. It should be noted the Jedi were recently duped into a galactic war and almost completely eliminated by Order 66, despite some of them possessing precognition. Following that dialogue, the point is raised to the entire rebellion, as Saw and Mon Mothma had a public argument with each other on Yavin IV:
Saw: Your losses today stem from your leaders’ cowardice, their unwillingness to take decisive action against the Empire. All across the galaxy, your people suffer because this “Rebellion” refuses to act…
Mon: What is your business here?
Saw: You ignored my warning about the Jalindi relay and paid the price. Now you have confirmation, yet still, you refuse to destroy it.
Mon: As long as our allies in the Senate have hope for a peaceful resolution to this conflict, I will not risk-
Saw: As long as you continue to allow this war to be fought on the Empire’s terms, not yours, you are going to lose.
Mon: I will not be lectured on military strategy by a man who has proven himself a criminal.
Saw: The Empire considers both of us criminals, at least I act like one.
Mon: You target civilians! Kill those who surrender! Break every rule of engagement. If we degrade ourselves to the Empire’s level what will we become?
Saw: There she is! That’s the leader the Rebellion needs! Where is that fire, that passion, when people need it most? I hope, Senator, when you’ve lost and the Empire reigns over the galaxy unopposed, you take comfort in the fact that you played by the rules.
The contrast in priorities between establishment and non-establishment rebels could not have greater clarity. Saw concerns himself with the loss of fellow insurgents and destroying the mechanisms of oppression. Mon holds out on negotiating with the Empire due to relationships within the establishment, and while she raises valid points about Saw’s tactics, the same regard is not shown to the people enslaved and murdered by that empire, or the dead rebels. Understanding the role and scale of systemic violence is one of the greatest hurdles in revolutionary organizing in the US Empire of this galaxy, as its largely designed to be hidden from view to citizens of the Imperial core. Because of this, people without a firm education in revolutionary principles will focus more on individual acts of violence of the insurgent population among the oppressed and weigh it more heavily than the systemic violence, occurring at a far greater scale, committed by the oppressor. There is far more blood on the hands of every Rebel Senator, due to the PORD alone, than all of Saw’s war crimes put together. Even if the Rebel Senators didn’t vote in favor of it, they enjoy incredibly lavish lifestyles off the proceeds from the prison slave labor, due to their position. Saw’s Partisans live in a series of caves.
Despite their differences, Saw actually approves of Mon taking a firm, principled stance in how the Alliance should fight. As we’ve seen from the Zionist genocide of Palestine, the fact that Palestinian Resistance factions such as Hamas use far more humane tactics has swayed global public opinion entirely in their favor. However, the oppressor is unmoved, and now 85% of Gaza’s population faces irreversible malnutrition due to the US Empire engaging in a forced starvation campaign via mercenary aid groups. While both sides of the debate have valid points, Star Wars at its best directly translates the material conditions of this galaxy onto its own, and destroying the apparatus of oppression takes precedence over public opinion in both galaxies.
To that point, the mission Saw embarks on following this conflict with Mon, with not entirely willing assistance from Spectres Ezra Bridger and Sabine Wren, is the one where the Partisans finally get a firm lead on the Death Star construction. Despite Saw’s alienating behavior, the arc ends with Ezra coming around to Saw’s viewpoint on how dire circumstances are for the Rebellion.
By the time of Rogue One, Saw’s rhydonium addiction had advanced to such severe levels he required a cyborg breathing apparatus that shares Darth Vader’s breathing sound effect. In one sense, it does lend credence to the criticisms Mon Mothma and Ezra Bridger lob at him, for being no better than the Empire. In others, that can’t be true because Saw is never depicted profiting from slavery or committing genocide. Ironically, Mon does sell her daughter off in an arranged marriage to secure discrete funding for the Alliance. As a result, she understands the sacrifices required, as she then breaks from the more liberal elements of the Alliance to back the frontliners following this discourse.
The Force also seems to do a lot of work to prevent the full effect of Saw’s worst impulses within the narrative, as his request for Bor Gullet to psychically interrogate Bodhi does not drive the latter insane, unlike previous victims, and Bodhi plays a critical role in contacting the Rebel fleet over Scarif. His partisan activity on Jedha, despite the civilian casualties, buys critical time in delaying the Death Star’s construction, enough for Luthen, Kleya, Cassian and the Axis Network to get on the case. Saw’s relationship to Galen, Lyra and Jyn Erso is what allows the latter to escape the destruction of Jedha in time, with knowledge of where to find the Death Star’s schematics and weaknesses on Scarif, following Tarkin testing the superweapon on Jedha City. Its thanks to Jyn, Cassian, a ground team of the less savory Rebels (including K2-SO, Chirrut, and Baze Malbus) and the appropriately bellicose Mon Calamari fleet that the Death Star plans can be transmitted to Senator Leia Organa’s blockade runner. Without that, the Alliance is annihilated on Yavin IV during A New Hope. Instead, Luke Skywalker makes an impossible shot to destroy the Death Star with mere seconds to spare. There isn’t an Alliance to Restore the Republic for Luke to join without Saw Gerrera.
For his part, Saw’s last words reveal that for all his faults, he never lost his clarity of purpose and saved the galaxy in the process. When offering his ship to Jyn, he asks her to “Save the Rebellion! Save the dream!”, as the wave of destruction reaches him, he removes his mask and (in the Rogue One Adaption) whispers “Steela…”
