The newest live-action Star Wars television show finished its 12-episode first season right before Thanksgiving -- and it was outstanding. Much as Rogue One was the best Star Wars film to come along since the classic trilogy, so Andor has become the best Star Wars television series (including all the animated ones). In my mind, it's done more for Star Wars (the franchise) than anything since Star Wars (the film).
Sometimes Star Wars just feels like a toy factory, serving up characters and settings that'll make good action figures and LEGO sets. Sometimes it transcends that and tells an engaging story that makes you actually root for those characters. Andor has transcended that and injected meaningful social commentary at the same time.
The series takes everything that has ever been slightly abstract about Star Wars and made it crystal clear. There have always been "bad guys" in Star Wars, starting of course with the Empire. But not since they blew up an entire planet in the original film has it been so manifest why they are the villains. And Alderaan's destruction wasn't really all that significant; we'd never been there or seen it, Obi-Wan gets briefly wistful, and Leia gets over it immediately. But Andor shows us a fascist state committing atrocity after atrocity, depicting the daily evil that is the Empire as a whole (and not just the cackling figurehead who rules it).
That in turn makes the conflict with the Empire feel more important and real than it ever has in Star Wars. This is not a game; there are stakes here. We see people killed, and their crushed and lifeless bodies collapse to the ground rather than vanish into thin air. We see the horrifying effects of a most cruel torture -- and unlike Leia on the Death Star, the victim doesn't simply bound into action when her prison cell door is opened. And all this arrives at a timely moment when the world seems to need the reminder that fascism is evil.
The characters of Andor are wide-ranging and different. We see people like Cassian Andor who fight in the most literal sense. We see people like Mon Mothma who fight in a very different way. We see people oppose the Empire even though they have everything to lose, and we see people oppose them because they have nothing to lose. (And speaking of the efficacy of characters here: like Rogue One, Andor brought us one of the franchise's best droid characters ever, imbued with true personality. The sequel trilogy's BB-8 was a technical achievement, sure... but he can't hold a candle -- or thumbs-up lighter -- to B2EMO.)
I have heard some people call the first season of Andor absolutely "perfect," and there I will mute my praise ever so slightly. The first two episodes are a bit slow to get the whole thing off and running, with the real meat of the story kicking in around episode three. And I remain uncertain how I feel about the musical score composed by Nicholas Britell. I don't mind the departure from the style of John Williams. (With The Mandalorian, Ludwig Göransson certainly showed us that "this is the way.") But the music of Andor is often purposefully off-key and pitch bent; while clearly meant to unsettle, I find it sometimes distracting in this effort, pulling me out of the moment on occasion.
But aside from those small quibbles, I can only praise the writing, praise the cast, praise the production, praise the ambition... and sit back to impatiently await the second season. I give Star Wars: Andor an A-. Other series coming in 2023 have an incredibly tough act to follow.
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