by Chris Bakker, Contributing Writer
Of all the aspects of Star Wars that have captivated those who watched it over the last 50 or years, it’s safe to say that the quality of its writing rarely did. Long are the lists of things from which the original trilogy took inspiration, from Japanese samurai cinema, to American Westerns, to old space fantasy serials and science fiction novels. Star Wars became a blend of all of those, and bolted onto that was George Lucas’ none-too-subtle allegory for World War II, and later the Vietnam War. It made for a setting that was wholly its own, but evidently a mash-up of all of the above. It presented a complex political stage and celebrated the nature of rebellion against an oppressor, but it left the true nature of both largely unexamined.
Andor fits into the legacy of Star Wars in a way few of its sequels and supplemental materials do. Where Star Wars played out as a great adventure for many decades, Andor points the camera at a galaxy that will not be saved by the mythical Jedi, or at least should not assume that it will be. Andor is the story of the people who make these larger forces what they are. Whether they be the people that represent an oppressive force across the galaxy, or people that increasingly find themselves unable to keep living under that oppressive force. Where Season One showed how someone trying to make his own way eventually gets wrapped up in a fight for something much bigger than just himself, Season Two shows how individuals within that fight do what they can to create a movement too big to ignore.
As the titular Cassian Andor, Diego Luna is an excellent lead for this show, and Cassian’s wavering commitment to the cause helps keep the stakes high. At several turns, he’s looking to get out of the Rebellion he so reluctantly joined in Season One, only to be pushed back into action through the influence of the people in his life who remind him why he joined it in the first place. It is these human connections that propel the real themes of the show — Cassian’s connections within the Rebellion that keep people fighting for each other, as opposed to the Empire’s strict hierarchies that try to keep people working for the machine. The way a person’s efforts to give others a better life, or to simply enrich themselves, shape who they are within the world they exist in.
Over the course of the season, we see the slow boiling over of tensions within the galaxy, with the Empire maneuvering a large-scale plot to create their infamous super weapon by way of propaganda and civic suppression, while the Rebellion takes increasingly large risks to appeal to the galaxy’s citizenry. Once the show has set its pieces and brought everyone to where they need to be, the latter half of Season Two becomes some of the greatest television I’ve ever seen, courtesy of some of the finest writing I’ve ever seen, and backed up by a cast of stellar performers.
Alongside Luna giving this story a strong central character, the absolute standouts for me are Denise Gough as Dedra Meero and Kyle Soller as Syril Karn. We’ve seen Imperial characters before, and we may even have sympathized with a few, but Dedra and Syril give us something new in the sense that somehow these actors find a way to make us root for them in small ways. Syril specifically has a lot going for him in that vein of tragic characters that we wish to see redeemed, if only they could see what’s happening around them, and their actors have such strong chemistry that it seems like there can be hope for them after all, despite the side of the conflict they’ve cemented themselves on.
On the other side of the aisle, Stellan Skarsgård gives a reliably rock solid performance as Luthen Rael, the silent orchestrator behind much of the Rebellion. He’s joined by Genevieve O’Reilly as Mon Mothma showing that it’s not simply subterfuge and sabotage that’ll win the day. The third act of Season Two focuses on Mon in a major way, and her performance is as strong as any you’ll see on television.
It’s this combination of talent in front of the camera and the masterful maneuvering of these characters in the writing behind the scenes that make Andor as a whole great television. But Season Two’s structure of four arcs spanning three episodes each makes it feel like four films in rapid succession which ramp up the tension until there’s nowhere else to go but the Star Wars we’re all so familiar with.
With Andor, Tony Gilroy has achieved something I personally never thought possible: He’s taken the setting George Lucas gifted to the world, and given us a better story than even Lucas could have ever given us within that setting. Season Two of Andor is not only some of the best TV ever written, it is also the best all of Star Wars has ever been.
Rating: Loved It
Andor is currently streaming on Disney+
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