Column SFF Bestiary Sentience, Sapience, and Animal Intelligence To what extent are animals aware of their existence? By Judith Tarr | Published on February 23, 2026 Photo by Michael Dziedzic [via Unsplash] Comment 1 Share New Share Photo by Michael Dziedzic [via Unsplash] Last week’s article on Flerkens spawned a discussion as they often do, correcting and expanding on a somewhat offhand comment about Flerken cognition. Specifically I asked, Are they sentient? That’s not what I should have asked, I was informed. The word I should have used was sapient. I was actually riffing off the article before that, about Star Trek and Data’s cat, Spot. In the Star Trek universe, sentience is used in the sense of sapience. It goes beyond the processing of sensory data to the capacity for intelligence and self-awareness. The essential episode in this context aired during Season 2, in 1989: “The Measure of a Man.” It was written by Melinda Snodgrass, and it’s considered to be one of the best episodes in the whole of the Trek Universe—some would say the best. It distills the philosophy of Trek into a single point: the nature of humanity, in the sense of both the human species and humane behavior. The question is whether Data is a person or a piece of property. Whether he belongs to himself or to Starfleet. It’s a powerful episode on a number of levels. It’s strikingly apposite to questions we’re asking now about what we’re calling Artificial Intelligence. But what’s relevant here, in this series, is how it defines sentience (or sapience). Dr. Maddox, the cyberneticist who wants to take Data apart and make a limitless number of copies, argues that Data is not a sentient being and is not entitled to the rights granted such a being in the Federation. The three criteria of sentence in this context are intelligence, self-awareness, and consciousness. Intelligence, says Maddox, is the ability to learn and understand and to cope with new situations. Self-awareness means that “you are conscious of your existence and actions. You’re aware of yourself and your own ego.” Consciousness is wrapped up in those two things. You know who you are, and that you are. You’re aware of your place in the universe. In the episode, Captain Picard is able to convince both Maddox and the judge in the hearing that Data meets all three criteria and is therefore a sentient being. (Or sapient if you will.) That’s the context in which Data composes the “Ode to Spot,” in which he says, And though you are not sentient, Spot, and do not comprehend,I nonetheless consider you a true and valued friend. Spot of course is a sentient being. Merriam-Webster defines the word as “capable of sensing or feeling : conscious of or responsive to the sensations of seeing, hearing, feeling, tasting, or smelling.” What she may not be is sapient: possessing or expressing great sagacity. That is, wise in the sense of homo sapiens. Capable of higher cognitive functions. In Dr. Maddox’s terms: intelligent, self-aware, and conscious. Spot, Data believes, is not any of those things. She’s a creature of instinct. She doesn’t think. She’s not aware of herself. That’s the traditional view of animals in Western culture. Man is unique among them all, raised up above them, ordained by heaven to rule over them by virtue of his superior intelligence. He is the only being with the ability to construct and use tools, and most of all, he is the only one who has developed language. The conception of animal cognition has changed considerably since Next Generation first aired. One of the main criteria of human intelligence, tool use, turns out not to be unique to humans. Primates, birds, insects, and sea creatures have been observed using tools. There’s even a cow in Austria, who may or may not be a genius of her species. Attempts to teach animals human language go back well before the original series. Increases in computing power and changes in how we perceive animals have given us the capacity to decode what may be language in sperm whales. It’s becoming clear that intelligence is not an on-off switch, or human-not human. Rather, it’s a spectrum, and many animals are a lot further along it than we used to think. That brings us to a social-media phenomenon that’s been growing exponentially: animals pushing buttons equipped with human words, to communicate with their humans. Author Mary Robinette Kowal is part of the movement with her calico cat Elsie. There is a huge study, thousands strong, of button-pushing dogs, coordinated by Federico Rossano of the Comparative Cognitive Lab at the University of California in San Diego. Rossano’s study and others like it are featured in a brand-new Nova documentary, “Can Dogs Talk?” It’s well worth watching if you’re interested in animal intelligence. It addresses the nature of language and asks whether dogs are actually using it to communicate, or if they’re applying more or less random associations to specific buttons, words, or sounds. Do they understand what Play or Outside or Beach actually means, as a word, or would any sound (or gesture or signal) do just as well to get them what they want? Are we training them to push a button to get a set response, or are they applying some form of reasoning to their choice of buttons? Animal-communication studies prior to Rossano’s have tended toward very small samples, as small as one researcher focused on a single animal removed from its natural habitat. Under those conditions, it’s questionable as to whether the animal has learned language or if the researcher has trained them to respond in specific ways to specific stimuli. The Rossano study encompasses ten thousand dogs in fifty countries. In its most basic form, each owner records button pushes on a simple spreadsheet. A more sophisticated version uses an app that records when the dog pushes a button, which button it pushes, and whether the button has been pushed by the dog or a human. It’s the largest animal-cognition study that’s ever been done, and it’s ongoing. It’s meant to continue for years. The scale of it is immense. Rossano observes that in three months, the study records over a million button pushes. Most of the communications between dogs and humans are transactional. Dog wants something, dog asks for it. Outside, Play, Food. This isn’t random, says Rossano. Dogs are stating their preferences. They’re letting their humans know what they want. But are they “talking” through the buttons? That takes us into definitions of language, and the difference between action words and words for objects. A dog who can identify toys by name is rare compared to one who can tell their owner they need to go potty or they want to go to the beach. Even rarer is the dog who is capable of what’s called language productivity. Given a limited number of words or buttons, if the dog wants or needs to convey a concept that isn’t in the existing vocabulary, they will combine two or three words into a new super-word. Some 800 dogs in Rosano’s study have been doing this. One for example lost her button for Beach—it broke. On her own, without prompting, she pressed Water and Outside instead. One of the animal-cognition experts in the documentary warns that one has to be skeptical. The substitute buttons are close by the broken one, so maybe she just pressed the nearest ones. They can’t test it because once she’s used those buttons, they mean Beach. A test would mean moving the buttons and seeing if she still used the same ones. But there are other dogs who have combined other buttons into new configurations, and those don’t seem to be random. The one that convinced Rossano to do the study despite his reluctance to risk his career on it was a dog who went through a progression of buttons: Mad, Ouch, Stranger, Paw. The owner at first didn’t make sense of it, till she asked the dog for her paw—and found the “stranger,” a foxtail stuck in the tender web beween toes. That’s communication. It gets even more amazing in a smaller study based in Hungary, which looks at what canine cognition expert Claudia Fugazza calls gifted word-learner dogs. There are only about fifty in the world, that she has found so far. These dogs can learn multiple words for objects—as many as a thousand—and are also capable of sorting them into categories. Tug toy versus fetch toy, for example. Can these or any dogs compose complex sentences with correct grammar? As far as we know, no. But that they can learn and remember words, and acquire a considerable vocabulary, yes. And they can create new words by combining those they already know. Some appear not just to ask for things, or name things, but to narrate actions. One might press the button for Settle, without being asked or rewarded for it, then put herself to bed. She’s just talking to herself, apparently. Using her word. Is she intelligent? She seems to be. Is she self-aware? She may be. Is she conscious? It’s possible. The more we learn, the more data we gather, the more we’ll understand about how, and whether, and to what extent dogs think. Cats, too. Eventually. One hopes.[end-mark] The post Sentience, Sapience, and Animal Intelligence appeared first on Reactor.

Featured Essays Heated Rivalry Take the Fire Out From the Wire: Imagining a Future in Heated Rivalry How can we find a path forward after the cottage? By Rachel Kessler | Published on February 23, 2026 Credit: Sabrina Lantos / HBO Comment 0 Share New Share Credit: Sabrina Lantos / HBO “I’m coming to the cottage”  Five words that broke the internet when spoken by Connor Storrie’s Ilya Rosanov at the end of Heated Rivalry’s immaculate fifth episode. Spoilers for the first season follow: After years of fighting the deeper feelings underneath his sexual relationship with hockey arch-rival Shane Hollander, Ilya’s decision to accept Shane’s invitation to his cottage is a definitive moment of hope for what might be possible between them in the future.   Suffice it to say that since Canadian showrunner Jacob Tierney brought the characters from Rachel Reid’s Game Changers romance series to screen, the concept of the “the cottage” has sustained its fan base through the tumultuous weeks at the start of 2026. I can definitely confirm my mental health is hanging by the thin thread of a group chat named “Stupid Canadian Wolf Birds.” I will also confess I’ve taken no shortage of delight from scandalizing students at the college where I am chaplain when they hear that the priest is obsessed with the “gay hockey show.” Far from being a guilty pleasure, however, I honestly believe Heated Rivalry is a piece of media we desperately need right now, and one which resonates deeply with my own faith.  As an avid romance reader, one of the things I have appreciated about Tierney’s approach to the source material of Heated Rivalry is the respect shown to romance as a genre. Tierney understands romance as, essentially, a kind of fantasy. It is a credit to Tierney’s writing that he does not dismiss the female fans of romance (including of M/M romance, which is a larger and nuanced conversation). At its core, the idea of “the cottage” serves as a metaphor for that escapist fantasy. Such escapism has a place, certainly, within genre fiction. We might ask though, if such fantastical escapism is all the cottage has to offer us? What if we view “the cottage” not just as representing idealized escape from the world, but as defiant hope for what the world might become?  It is worth noting that the promise of escape and a fantasy where he and Shane can be hidden from the world is not initially enough to get Ilya to accept the temptation of “the cottage.” Shane in his delightfully drug-induced state (as we have no doubt seen enacted by stuffed animals and household objects thanks to the wonders of TikTok) tries to lure Ilya not to return to Russia for the summer but come to his secluded cottage: “We’ll have so much fun. It’s so private. No one will know … We could have a week or even two. Completely alone. Together!” While Storrie portrays Ilya’s hesitation quite clearly, the book is able to go deeper into Ilya’s fear of accepting Shane’s invitation. Up until this point, Ilya and Shane have stolen only moments together. Ilya has at long last accepted the depth of his feelings (even confessing them to Shane, albeit in his native Russian). Despite this, Ilya does not believe any real future with Shane is possible. He hesitates to accept the prospect of this extended time together because he does not know how to return to the scarcity of what they can have moving forward. Ilya is actually prepared to end his relationship with Shane altogether because the pain of a clean break feels more endurable to him than the pain of longing for an impossible future.  So what gets Ilya to the cottage? The original “Game Changer,” Scott Hunter. Without a doubt one of the best scenes in the show happens after Scott wins the 2017 Stanley Cup for the New York Admirals. At this point, Scott has been in a secret relationship with his boyfriend Kip for years (in the show’s timeline). After hoisting the long-desired cup over his head, Scott watches—alone—as his teammates’ wives and children pour onto the ice in celebration from the stands. Meanwhile, the love of Scott’s life sits far removed among the crowds. Scott realizes that hiding his love from the world is no longer enough for him. He calls Kip down onto the ice, where they share a kiss that can only be described as triumphant defiance. As Scott and Kip embrace, the camera circles them, cutting away to show Ilya and Shane each watching from their homes in wonder and confusion. Caught up in this moment, Ilya calls Shane with his declaration of coming to the cottage.  The background musical sections throughout Heated Rivalry are worth a whole separate series of reflections. Setting Wolf Parade’s “I’ll Believe in Anything” to underscore this moment, however, was a particularly inspired move by Teirney. Choosing to believe the world can be different than what it is in itself is often a leap of faith. Acting on that hope—and indeed believing we deserve that better world—is where change happens. Ilya’s decision to accept Shane’s invitation to the cottage is not about realizing he loves Shane or he is willing to risk two weeks of privacy. Accepting that invitation—declaring “I’m coming to the cottage”—means that Ilya is willing to risk that the world might be different than he has let himself believe.  The defiant hope that ends Heated Rivalry’s episode 5 is inarguably inspiring. Hope is not an abstract ideal, though. Living into hope does much more than giving us as individuals the courage to seize opportunities for ourselves we had not thought possible. Living into hope is transformational in a way that we might call contagious. Scott declares his love for Kip and kisses him in front of thousands of people because he has decided for himself that he is tired of living in the shadows and that he does, in fact, deserve sunshine. That choice, however, catches on. Unknown to himself, Scott inspires Ilya to hope for more in his own relationship and seize the opportunity before him. Book readers of the Game Changers series will know that Ilya goes on to become something of a Nick Fury for other queer players in the NHL. He makes appearances throughout the other books, encouraging others to pursue relationships and, eventually, recruiting other players to coach at the charity hockey camp he and Shane run in the summers. While Unrivaled, the final book of Rachel Reid’s series, is not yet out, the synopsis certainly suggests we will see this community come together to withstand the bigotry and homophobia of the hockey world. The series is called “Game Changers” for a reason.  It is important to note that Jacob Tierney is a gay man who has adapted a work written about gay male characters originally written by a woman. Without doubt, his identity impacts the hopeful vision of what the world might look like in his TV adaptation. Speaking of triumphant and emotionally cathartic kiss between Scott and Kip, Tierney noted in a recent interview: “I mean, this was—you know—this was the point. This was to give people this moment that you don’t get when you’re a kid. You don’t get this.” Indeed, we might argue that far from simply being “smutty” the explicit content in Heated Rivalry serves as an unapologetic, defiant embrace of sexuality and intimacy on behalf of the queer community.   One of the most impactful added scenes in the series takes place between Shane and his mother after Shane’s parents discover his romantic relationship with Ilya. While Shane is racked with guilt over years of hiding and lies about his secret relationship, it is Shane’s mother who tearfully apologizes: “I’m sorry I didn’t make you feel like you could tell me.” Tierney’s vision of how a parent should react to discovering an adult child’s closeted sexuality may be idealized compared to how such a situation all too often plays out. At the same time, isn’t that idealized conversation what we want the world to be? Isn’t that how a parent should respond?  Similarly, we might look at how Tierney strengthens several of the side characters from the source material (notably the women). While Rose’s role in both the book and the series is largely responsible for Shane finally embracing and coming to terms with his sexuality, Tierney gives significantly more agency to Svetlana, who goes from being a semi-regular friend with benefits situationship with Ilya in Boston to a childhood friend from Russia. Svetlana perceptively notes Ilya’s long-term texting relationship with “Jane”, and she clearly indicates she is aware of “Jane’s” true gender. Svetlana pushes Ilya to take steps forward in emotional intimacy with “Jane”/Shane, first in the ill-fated tuna melt encounter, and later in nudging Ilya to acknowledge the depth of his feelings. In another critical moment, Scott Hunter finds himself challenged by Kip’s friend Elena who confronts him about hiding Kip away as a “dirty little secret.” There is a fair criticism to be made of Elena’s challenge to Scott on Kip’s behalf – no one should be pressured to come out before they are ready. No doubt, though, Teirney intended the words he wrote (which differ slightly from the book) to carry the very true, hopeful message that Kip “deserves sunshine … and so do you.”  Tierney is quite intentional in linking the sunshine we all deserve to the themes of hope and possibility of the cottage itself. Numerous commentators have rightly pointed out the contrast in lighting between the first episodes of the series and the finale at the cottage. Shane and Ilya share their first hook-up in a darkened hotel room. When they finally reunite in Shane’s cottage, Ilya makes a point of opening the blinds to Shane’s bedroom, allowing themselves to experience sexual intimacy in open daylight. The fact that Tierney so blocks both scenes almost identically allows the contrast in lighting to be even more apparent. While the cottage constitutes removal from the distractions and barriers to their relationship, the cottage is also where Shane and Ilya are able to embrace concrete possibilities for their future. Shane wakes Ilya up in the middle of the night with his ten-year plan for how they might one day be in a relationship. Ilya takes the risk of confessing his love for Shane—in English this time! Once Shane and Ilya have acknowledged their feelings, Tierney offers us the beautiful scene of the two of them by the lake as the sun rises in front of them. The light of the cottage is the light of one day no longer hiding but living in the sunshine.  Media like Heated Rivalry may be escapist fantasy at its core, but at its best it is a fantasy of the world that so many of us wish we were living in. Rather than lamenting the current state of the world, it’s worth asking: what is the world that we want to see? What is our role in bringing that world about—either by claiming defiant hope for ourselves or fighting for a better world for one another? We end season one of Heated Rivalry riding off into the future with Shane and Ilya, after they face the revelation of their relationship to Shane’s parents. The cottage has not magically solved their problems. They are still closeted publicly and their future will hold oncoming challenges. Nevertheless, the cottage has given them the courage of their love for one another—not to mention acceptance from Shane’s parents. The cottage has given them hope beyond the (perceived) security of secrecy.  As we move further into 2026 and away from the original air date of Heated Rivalry, a running joke among the fandom is how long we will stay in the collective Heated Rivalry psychosis. How long do we keep “re-heating” (a great term for just continuing to watch the series on repeat). When will it be time to leave the cottage and return to reality? Perhaps the answer is that we shouldn’t leave the cottage. Perhaps our job is actually to expand the cottage and work to make the world a place where the escape to the cottage is no longer necessary.[end-mark] The post Take the Fire Out From the Wire: Imagining a Future in <em>Heated Rivalry</em> appeared first on Reactor.

News Wednesday Wednesday Season 3 Cast Adds Frequent Tim Burton Collaborator Winona Ryder Beetlejuice! Beetleju—sorry, wrong collaboration By Molly Templeton | Published on February 23, 2026 Screenshot: Netflix Comment 0 Share New Share Screenshot: Netflix It makes so much sense, it’s almost surprising it hadn’t happened already. The latest addition to the ever-expanding cast of Wednesday season 3 is Winona Ryder. Heading to the haunted halls of Nevermore Academy means she’s reuniting with her Beetlejuice Beetlejuice costar Jenna Ortega and her frequent director Tim Burton (the original Beetlejuice, Edward Scissorhands). Netflix isn’t saying much about who Ryder is playing, other than that her character’s name is Tabitha. And while she’s (understandably) getting most of the attention, several other names in Netflix’s latest cast announcement are quite intriguing on their own—including Chris Sarandon (yes, Prince Humperdinck himself) and Noah Taylor (character actor genius in everything from Vanilla Sky to Paddington 2 to Peaky Blinders). Sarandon is playing Balthazar, and Taylor is playing Cyrus. They are also joined by Oscar Morgan (Gotham Knights) as Atticus, and Kennedy Moyer (Task) as Daisy; these folks all join the previously announced Eva Green (Casino Royale, The Golden Compass) as Ophelia Frump, the “long-lost sister” of Morticia Addams. I put that part in quotes both because it’s Netflix’s exact phrase, and because I am somewhat suspicious of long-lost relations. Production has begun on season three, about which showrunners Alfred Gough and Miles Millar have this to say: It’s our dark delight to fling open Nevermore Academy’s gates once more as we begin production on Season 3. We thank our invincible cast and crew for their continued commitment to doom and gloom. To the fans, we appreciate your patience and ravenous online commentary — your twisted theories have inspired nightmares. This season, we welcome new students, new teachers, and excavate some long-rotting Addams Family secrets. Don’t say you weren’t warned. In other words, they’re not tellin’ you nothin’. The first two seasons of Wednesday are available on Netflix.[end-mark] The post <i>Wednesday</i> Season 3 Cast Adds Frequent Tim Burton Collaborator Winona Ryder appeared first on Reactor.

Books reading recommendations A Brief Survey of Canadian Political Thrillers You may be surprised to learn that “Canadian thriller” is not an oxymoron. By James Davis Nicoll | Published on February 23, 2026 Photo by Rose Butler [via Unsplash] Comment 0 Share New Share Photo by Rose Butler [via Unsplash] Any natural-born American can grow up to be president (as long as they’re at least 35 years old and have been a resident of the country for at least 14 years). Canadians prefer the head of government to have expertise and the acumen to apply it1. Furthermore, they’re expected to speak both official languages fluently, rather than half of one, poorly. This greatly reduces the field. Flamboyance is often deprecated in favour of sober conventionality2. Even Justin Trudeau was convinced to wear shirts. (Eventually.) However, this does raise the question “Is it possible to write a Canadian political thriller?” Canadians being thoughtful, rational, good-looking, and modest to a fault, would authors be better off chucking the whole idea of a Canadian political thriller in favour of, oh, gloomy CanLit, quirky detective stories, wry slice-of-life comedy, and that old Canadian standby, passionate homoerotic sports fiction? As unlikely as it sounds, there is potential even in Canada for political thrillers. Don’t believe me? First, there’s always the potential for an external threat to upend the otherwise stable order. For example, in Arthur Hailey’s 1962 In High Places, that comes from a territorially aggressive US. In stark contrast, the plot of Richard Rohmer’s 1973’s Ultimatum was powered by the menace of an imperialist POTUS; the sequel Exxoneration studied the consequences of the inevitable failure of the invasion that followed. Determined to break new ground, Ian Adams’ The Trudeau Papers had Canada invaded by the nation to the immediate north of Mexico. From Americans to Yanks, from the US to the United States of America3, there is a bewilderingly long list of possible versions of external threat to choose from. Those who prefer their thrillers historical could consider the classic Canadian radio thriller Nazi Eyes on Canada. Nazi Eyes starred luminaries such as Orson Welles, Vincent Price, Helen Hayes, Judith Evelyn, war correspondent Quentin Reynolds, House Jameson, Katharine Raht of The Aldrich Family, and the Voice of Doom himself, Lorne Greene. For reasons I cannot now recall, I was inspired to re-listen to Nazi Eyes in late November 2024. It’s skillfully done but depressing. In a twist that may astonish many, it turns out that Nazis are bad and being occupied by them would be worse. As unlikely as this may sound, Canada also abounds in internal divisions that are the stuff of plot. No sooner did the various Canadian provinces unite to deter another American invasion than separatist movements sprung up. In fact, about the only province that does not have a vocal faction agitating to exit Canada is Ontario… which has an internal separatist movement that wants thinly populated Northern Ontario to break away from Ontario, thus to better enjoy the unchecked growth that inevitably follows severing oneself from a supporting tax base. Perhaps the most famous such movement is Quebec’s occasional flirtations with the exit door. Given that the province contains a large fraction of Canada’s population and economy, and is between the Atlantic provinces and Ontario and everything to the west, an independent Quebec would have profound effects on the rest of Canada. Thus, Bruce Powe’s 1972 Killing Ground: The Canadian Civil War, in which political differences spiral into open war… until Francophones and Anglophones unite when United States invades. Quebec nationalism also features in the plot of Harry Turtledove’s Southern Victory series, beginning with How Few Remain, in which Quebec is carved off of Canada… following an American invasion. Finally, even perfectly mundane, low-stakes politics can, properly presented, be enticing. It doesn’t matter if the stakes are global or very local, as long as they matter to the characters. In Terry Fallis’ hilarious 2008 novel The Best Laid Plans, for example, engineering professor Angus McLintock eludes the grim task of teaching bonehead English to engineers with a foray into a political race McLintock is certain to lose… only to win. Can Canadian federal politics survive a principled—or at least formidably irritable—MP who honestly doesn’t care about re-election? “Canadian thriller” is not an oxymoron. In fact, it’s a healthy genre that readers might want to seek out. The above is only a very small sample. Canadians (and other fans of the genre), feel free to mention other examples.[end-mark] The ability to defend oneself with skillfully-wielded soapstone statues or to lift critics by their necks are optional. After all, PMs can count on MPs to make their own spears from available materials before demonstrating that they paid close attention when their high school history teacher covered phalanxes. ︎Or its appearance. Some PMs have been neither sober nor conventional. There aren’t many nations whose leaders have taken advice from a dog, but Canada is one of them. Mind you, that PM was in power for years and years; clearly, that dog knew its stuff. Too bad the dog was such a massive antisemite. ︎Thriller potential aside, Canadians do value the US. Without the Abolitionist example, would the Canadians have thought to voluntarily free their slaves decades before the US fought a bloody war to the same end or to offer haven to American slaves fleeing prior to the 13th Amendment? Without that bastion of freedom to inspire us, would we have joined the struggle against fascism three years before America was reluctantly dragged into the war by Japan? And that’s not even getting into all the top-drawer talent that fled from the US to Canada during the McCarthy years and during the Vietnam War. Thanks, America! ︎The post A Brief Survey of Canadian Political Thrillers appeared first on Reactor.

News Andor Disney Asked Andor Team to Avoid Using the Word “Fascism,” Says Creator Tony Gilroy Now that Andor is over, Tony Gilroy is going gloves off regarding the show’s political parallels By Matthew Byrd | Published on February 20, 2026 Photo: Disney+ Comment 0 Share New Share Photo: Disney+ In a sweeping interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Andor creator Tony Gilroy directly discusses the show’s parallels to current U.S. politics under the Trump administration and confirms that Disney discouraged the Andor team from using the word “fascism” during the series’ 2025 promotional campaign. “Diego [Luna] and I had some early, super long-lead press, and we tiptoed out. We were like, ‘Oh my God, this is really electric,'” Gilroy says regarding how the team navigated that time with the restrictions that were suggested. “The actors have a broad spectrum of political ideas, and we didn’t want anybody to perjure themselves or violate their conscience. So we came up with a legit historical model, and it’s a version of what I’m telling you now.” That historical model Gilroy refers to involved studying the patterns in the rise of authoritarian regimes throughout history and identifying the common tactics that even an empire in a galaxy far, far away may also employ. “We were pretty much doing a story about authoritarianism and fascism, and the Empire is very clearly a great example of that,” Gilroy says. “So you get out your Fascism for Dummies book for the 15 things you do, and we tried to include as many of them as we could in the most artful way possible.” Despite the Andor team’s research and their efforts to express that research as artfully as possible via the show, the team was still discouraged from using the word fascism (and, reportedly, genocide) during the 2025 promotional campaign for Andor‘s second season. It is certainly no coincidence that said campaign coincided with the inauguration of Donald Trump and the start of his second term as President of the United States (as well as other global political events occurring at that time). So, even though Donald Trump had said “sometimes you need a dictator” in regard to his current administration, has threatened to imprison journalists, publicly attempted to discredit various intellectual institutions, has continuously spread false and disputed narratives regarding subjects like fair and free elections, and generally exhibited many of the traits historians commonly associate with fascist regimes, the Andor team was discouraged from using the word fascism during the early days of Trump’s second term. Mind you, many of those events occurred before Andor‘s season 2 premiere (and related press tour), so they do not account for actions such as the DHS occupation of the city of Minneapolis which has resulted in multiple civilian deaths or the imprisonment and deportation of children and U.S. citizens. And while it’s true that some scholars dispute the precise validity of the word fascism in regards to the specifics of the Trump administration’s broad political policies, Disney’s publicity fears concerning the use of that word are more likely related to the concerns regarding that administration’s possible political and legal retaliations. ABC and Disney controversially settled a defamation lawsuit with Trump in 2024 that resulted in a $15 million payout and have approved actions (including the brief suspension of Late Night host Jimmy Kimmel) that have left some Disney employees concerned about the company’s desire to appease the president. Now that Gilroy is finished with Andor, though, he’s allowed to be much more open regarding his thoughts on such matters. “How were we supposed to know that this clown car in Washington was going to basically use the same book that we used?” Gilroy says. “I don’t think it’s prescience so much as the sad familiarity of fascism and the karaoke menu of things that you go through to do it. You could list them from the show, or you could list them from the newspaper. In the beginning, it was very confusing. People were like, “Oh, you’re psychic,” or, “The show is prescient.” But in the rear-view mirror, it’s really a much sadder explanation than that.” As far as what may come next, Glory once again looks to history to make what feels like less of a prediction and more of an observation. “We were stunned [about the prescience] for a while, but we’ve really gotten to the point where it’s really sad. It’s just sad how predictable and lame and obvious and wrong it all is,” Gilroy proclaims. “Fascism is just a total fail in the end. It eats itself up in the end. So this will have been an incredible waste of time, an incredibly wasted opportunity and an incredibly dark period in America’s history that it may never recover from.” [end-mark] The post Disney Asked <i>Andor</i> Team to Avoid Using the Word “Fascism,” Says Creator Tony Gilroy appeared first on Reactor.