A (Very Belated) Review of ANDOR: Season 1

or: This show is a new hope — perhaps the only hope — for the future of Star Wars.

“What is my sacrifice? I’m condemned to use the tools of my enemy to defeat them. I burn my decency for someone else’s future. I burn my life to make a sunrise that I know I’ll never see. And the ego that started this fight will never have a mirror, or an audience, or the light of gratitude. So what do I sacrifice? Everything!”

It took me waaaaay too long to get around to seeing it for myself, but it was worth the wait for me to determine firsthand that yes, Andor is indeed the best of the best of the Star Wars live-action TV shows (possibly even the best Star Wars show, PERIOD… although seeing as I never watched the Dave Filoni animated shows, I can’t say that with any true authority, so I’ll stick with “best Star Wars show I have ever watched personally “).

It is also the most explicitly anti-fascist, and unashamedly political that Star Wars has been since The Last Jedi and Revenge of the Sith, with Andor creating a shared trifecta between them, of stories in this fantastical universe that delve daringly deep into the nuts and bolts of how fascism and the eternal war machine is created, upkept, and allowed to thrive off the enslavement, labour, and silence of people the fascists deem beneath them, alongside the financial and political complicity of the rich and powerful keeping the tyranny afloat. Andor is the grittiest of the lot, masterfully crafting a living, breathing galaxy of differing cultures, a rich tapestry of mostly new characters who aren’t in need of lightsabers or Force powers or famous lineages to make them interesting, and an incredibly nuanced, mature exploration of the moral complexities and sacrifices people make in the name of rebellion against the powers that be. The ethical ambiguities of wartime touched on in Rogue One were merely an appetiser for the main course Andor plentifully provides across its first 12 episodes. And unlike the brazen, empty nostalgia-fests wrought by the likes of J.J. Abrams, Jon Favreau, Dave Filoni, and whoever else at Disney/Lucasfilm making movies and shows in this franchise that have been the equivalent of them banging their massive collection of action figures together, Tony Gilroy and his assortment of writers ACTUALLY HAD SOMETHING MEANINGFUL TO SAY, like George Lucas and Rian Johnson and Gilroy himself did before, while also using the framework and iconography of Star Wars to Trojan Horse in those somewhat radical themes and ideas about fascism and rebellion. (“Radical” for a Disney-owned project, at least.)

Plus, Andor actually looks like a show where you can see all the money up on the screen — (massive sets! real locations! shooting outdoors! tons of extras! practical prosthetic and puppet effects! enough that’s real to make the computer-generated components acceptable!) — as opposed to the embarrassingly cheap-looking Obi-Wan Kenobi and The Book of Boba Fett and Ahsoka and the third season of The Mandalorian, where so much is claustrophobically shot on the damn Volume, and everything looks stilted and flat, and you ask yourself where the hell all the money went to make something look so small and unimaginative, all the while Andor looks and feels as monumental and tactile and immersively limitless as a Star Wars story should.

The writing is exemplary. The acting is incredible. Nicholas Britell’s score is as spine-tinglingly amazing as you’d expect from the man who brought us the soundtrack to all four seasons of Succession. The story is as engaging and incisively detailed in its depiction of political and bureaucratic skullduggery maintaining forces of authoritarian rule as the best seasons of Game of Thrones were, while never stooping to Glup Shitto keys-rattling fan-service bollocks to try to cheaply keep your attention, as one of the other Disney+ Star Wars shows would. Andor doesn’t insult your intelligence, and trusts that you can keep up with it as well as you would any other prestige drama out there, among which this comfortably ranks.

The first two seasons of The Mandalorian were pretty great, even as the second season marked the beginning of the series’ decline into a quagmire of cameos and callbacks in place of a story.

But in terms of genuine quality, artistic purpose, and enduring longevity of storytelling satisfaction, Andor thoroughly wipes the floor with The Mandalorian, while utterly vanquishing all the other, much lazier live-action shows off the face of the map, and even a few of the feature films in the Disney era. The Force Awakens, Solo, and UNQUESTIONABLY the humiliatingly embarrassing shambles that was The Rise of Skywalker, are all effortlessly cleared by Andor by a canyon-wide margin.

“The axe forgets, but the tree remembers.”

Originally published January 18th 2024, at https://jackandersonkeane.substack.com.