Andor. It Star Wars shit, but hear me out if you haven’t watched it.

Unlike many of the original movies and Disney movies, the show tackles more mature themes about resistance. It’s not just some fun adventure with your friends to kill the bad guy. It involves alliances with strange people, opportunists, revolutionaries. It involves characters reading and practicing theory (according to the more well versed, the fictional ideological theory espoused in the show is a direct combination of Lenin and Marx’s work). It involves class consciousness and class solidarity from the wretched of the galaxy. It’s very explicit.

The main character is also directly inspired by Stalin, albeit on some more sensationalized accounts of his robbery activities. But that’s the reality of revolution. You might be lucky enough to get some rich sponsors, but you can’t rely on them.

It depicts the brutality of it. History has shown that the ones resisting always suffer more casualties no matter how successful. Important people die with little warning and little fare because revolution isn’t just about the individual, it’s about the collective effort and sacrifices of those who join the movement even if they don’t necessarily care about the ideology. Even the IRA was used as an inspiration for the funeral inside the occupation zone.

And the evilness of the empire isn’t just some cartoon guy choking you with telekinesis. It shows the apparatus of it. From the mundane intelligence meetings to discuss the murder of people to the failsons ruining operations and even the subcontracting of oppression to imperialists who just see it as another payday.

It’s probably the only realistic depiction of revolution in not just mainstream media, but one of the most recognizable franchises on earth, and most of the inspiration is directly from leftist history. I have no idea how the writers got away with it. But apparently he won’t be involved in the second season, so we’ll see how liberal it becomes, if at all.