‘Andor’: Kyle Soller Takes Us Inside the Mind of Syril Karn and His Obsession With Cassian and the Empire
Kyle Soller takes us inside the mind of his Andor character Syril Karn in a new brief interview.
Talking to SlashFilm, he touched on Syril’s goals and personality. The video alternates between Soller’s insight and lines from the series, so he doesn’t speak much, but what insight the actor does provide is quite incisive. Watch the video below:
Throughout the Andor series, it is clear Syril is a great believer in order by any means necessary, including strict punishment for any level of crime. Naturally, his beliefs line up very nicely with those of the Empire. Soller confirms as much in the interview:
Syril wants to be of great service to the Empire. And he thinks that there is no aggression too extreme.
Syril’s journey has stalled since the initial three-episode arc that culminated in an explosive pursuit of Cassian Andor on Ferrix. We’ve seen the character return to Coruscant to live with his mother, unemployed, and with his tail between his legs. Where most probably expected him to embark on a season-long hunt for Cassian, Syril found himself with a low-ranking desk job inside the Empire. Soller admits that the character had to do a bit of self-reflection by returning to his roots:
He had to kind of go home in order to figure out who he really is.
The downtime has let Syril indulge in the more obsessive part of his intense personality. His hatred for Cassian only deepens as he attempts to get his foot in the door at the ISB. It’s a higher-level version of his previous job with the corpos, but working for a government whose beliefs completely align with his own. His determination has made the ISB another obsession, a goal to reach after finding his other obsession, Cassian Andor.
Cassian just becomes a complete obsession. The ISB represents just this pinnacle of everything that he’s striving for.
It’s this strength of his commitment and his vision. That is a really powerful mix. It’s dangerous.
Syril looks to be a bit of a wildcard heading into the season finale of Andor. It’ll be interesting to see what happens if he finds Cassian after all this time. If he survives the encounter, it’s difficult to predict his character arc in the second and final season, but it’s likely he’ll be just as obsessive and creepy as he was before.
Josh is a huge Star Wars fan, who has spent far too much time wondering if any Star Wars character could defeat Thanos with all the Infinity Stones.
