I gave up on STAR WARS years ago, but ANDOR accomplished something remarkable–it elevated the franchise and gave it a much-needed boost of gravitas. The second season tied off the story beautifully.
I was 12 when the first STAR WARS came out. My mind exploded. I went to see it nine times. When the franchise returned with the second trilogy, I slogged through them until eventually I gave up, just as I did with every other beloved franchise from ALIEN to INDIANA JONES to James Bond as they just got, well, dumber.
So, I had little interest when ANDOR appeared. I did catch ROGUE ONE, which everyone seemed to like, and I personally found it overbaked with an unlikable protagonist, so hearing Cassian Andor’s backstory carried little appeal. But everyone kept talking up how different and deep ANDOR was, so I checked it out and, benefited by low expectations, quite enjoyed it for its intelligent writing and fairly realistic depiction of how dissent becomes active resistance against tyranny. STAR WAS as gritty political thriller–I liked it.
The show is really about empire and rebellion, fascism and the the desire to resist it, and how resistance requires sacrifice and often resorting to tactics that mirror the evils of the oppressive regime. (Strangely, there are some people who watched the show and rooted for the fascists, go figure.) In the first season, we primarily follow Cassian Andor (Diega Luna), an orphan looking for a shortcut to a comfortable life who through circumstance winds up pushed to radicalism, one man’s journey to become a revolutionary. While he simply wants to be left alone, the police state will not allow it, pushing him and others until they put their lives on the line to resist. For them, there’s little inspirational talk about democracy and way more base resistance to being dominated, used, and destroyed. Simple justice, often taking the form of an eye for an eye.
In Season 2, Andor is now an agent working for Luthen Rael (the excellent Stellan Skarsgård). From what I understand, ANDOR was originally conceived as five seasons but cut off at two, and instead of phoning it in like the last season of GAME OF THRONES and THE EXPANSE, the writers went all out to condense the story into something powerful. Each episode takes place a year apart, providing a countdown to the commissioning and use of the planet-killing Death Star. This results in an episodic evolution of the Rebellion itself from an underground terrorist organization to an openly operating military force that rejects the ignoble tactics of its origin. We see a senator forced to accept a lethal decision to protect the Rebellion during a wedding scene (with a banger techno song) and then make a brave, high-risk stand against the Emperor, the provocation of a planet to rebel so it can be crushed, the portrayal of those who serve the Empire for personal gain as competent bureaucrats instead of cartoon villains, and more.
It all culminates in Andor accepting one more assignment, which results in him joining the adventure of ROGUE ONE, which I rewatched and liked so much more as a series finale of sorts.
My only criticism of this season and the show as a whole is despite a huge effort to make the worlds look lived in, they never really do. Sometimes, it’s like a weird space Middle Ages where a single city represents a whole planet, and again despite some good efforts, often a lot of willing suspension of disbelief is needed to go with the locations being real places. Contrast it with GAME OF THRONES, for example, which shows how to do world-building right (at least until characters started teleporting). This was largely a function of budget, of course.
Overall, ANDOR is a real standout show, so different from the rest of the STAR WARS franchise, challenging in its ideas of what real rebellion looks like, and the true cost of freedom.
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