Andor definitely didn’t just pull from WWII, and the spy genre it’s playing with has most of its roots in Cold War era stuff if anything. Gilroy is very open about pulling from all over history for revolution either way: Luthen’s whole thing was bolshevism, and many of the moral quandaries presented to Mothma are pulled more from A Place of Greater Safety than Casablanca.

Obviously the Nazi stuff is there, but “pulling from history” is constantly being conflated with just doing the thing with SW paint and that’s never what that means. Something something ewoks as Viet Cong, something something Palpatine was Nixon – no. All beside the point, when we’re talking about the pastiche, Star Wars is all about mixing and matching. Andor is pulling from recurring themes and motifs throughout history, but “Fascism” as a theme reduces what Andor is doing to something didactic. Its real strength is in interpreting a lore book like history, not commenting on it. How do these big [fictional] events spring into motion? How would they, when the world is a real thing with tangible institutions, communities, cultures, and ideas interacting?

So I think you have to be thinking about history when you’re coming up with more. It’s all happened before, in different ways. And you can follow those patterns into interesting new combinations. And that feels like how you get to “new” Star Wars without devolving into brand. Emulate the approach, not the specific influences.

also if your espionage show isn’t a little paint drying you’re making a bad espionage show