Thoughts on Andor
My wife and I just finished watching Andor. I'm mildly annoyed that it is, in fact, the One Good Star Wars Product my friends have been touting it as. Here are some semi-sorted thoughts and feelings about the show.
Spoilers ahead, obviously, but I think you'll probably still enjoy Andor even if you're spoiled on it. My general philosophy on spoilers is that good storytelling doesn't lean on the element of surprise to be enjoyable, and this is, despite a few reservations, very good storytelling indeed.
Coruscant
Pretty much every planet looks great, from the peak Used Future of Ferrix to the uneasy hedonism of Niamos, but Coruscant takes the crown for me. The vibes are impeccable. I love the harsh contrast of too-shiny, too-smooth, Star Trek villain high architecture against greige brutalist residential complexes. The lighting deserves special praise; everything is unified by this cool, sterile brightness which makes even quiet moments (and this show makes quiet into an art form) subtly off.
The ISB
Everyone is paranoid and anxious all the time, which rings very true considering how fascist governments and intelligence agencies tend to operate. Every ISB agent seems to think they're the only competent person in a world of myopic, panicky improvisers, and so many critical decisions seem to come down to office politics over operational wisdom. From a certain angle and over the full arc of the series, Partigaz starts to look like a tragic hero, trying to squeeze some success out of such a deeply rotten and dysfunctional institution.
As an aside, Dedra's stolen password apparently remained usable for a whole year. My office has better cybersecurity than the ISB. I don't think this is a plothole because I find it depressingly plausible, but it did make me chuckle.
Dedra
Denise Gough as Dedra Meero gives my favourite performance in Andor. Getting to see her actively practicing her poise and Standard-Issue Imperial Sneer is just superb. I love how she's clearly badly misunderstood what genre she's living in; arguably, she, not Syril, is the true Imperial foil to Cassian, a loose cannon who sees her refusal to follow the party line as necessary and useful, but much more misguidedly optimistic about the payoff. Her "triumphant" monologue to Luthen is so chuuni that it hurts.
Ignorance
Everyone is constantly working off vague, incomplete, unreliable information, and I especially like the exploration of how that ignorance is controlled and utilised, both as a tool to manipulate people and as a shield to insulate oneself. You can make an argument that Luthen's competitive advantage over his enemies comes from how deliberately he controls information, keeping his agents locked out of the loop on key issues for their own protection and motivation. Compare this to the ISB, where information is withheld based on institutional friction and personal ambition or animosity, with far less direction.
Luthen
More than enough ink has already been spilled on how much Luthen fucking whips as a character and the depth and power of Stellan Skarsgård's performance, but I've been stuck on one particular detail. His tragic backstory felt a little thrown-in - I think his arc maybe works better if we don't know what his deal was, if we're left just as ignorant as the Alliance that wouldn't exist without him. But his original name is just... oh, shit. Lear. A king driven to madness and misery by his kingdom, abandoned by what he's built, so embittered and twisted that even his few remaining friends can't really like or trust him any more. Chef's kiss. No notes.
There's a beautiful irony throughout the Ghorman arc where you realise that Luthen and Partigaz basically want the same thing, and differ only in how they plan to spin it in their favour. No wonder people like to draw parallels between Luthen and Lenin. (I now realise that "Galactic Leftist Infighting Simulator" is not even slightly a joke.)
The Kuleshov Effect
It took me a moment, but the interweaving of Leida Mothma's arranged wedding with the Imperial officer assaulting Bix was a very effective gut punch.
Syril
The saddest, wettest animal in Star Wars. He is, as many fans have noticed, basically Inspector Javert without the introspection, but the cruellest twist of the knife is that, by the time of the Ghorman Massacre, Syril seems to be getting over Cassian! Sure, he's being used by his girlfriend as a catspaw in a scheme he doesn't understand which ends up shattering his faith in himself and the causes he's wasted his life on, but at least that smuggler who cost him his old job isn't living rent-free in his - wait, shit, that's him, are you fucking kidding me?
Syril's Mother
One of the most genuinely uncomfortable portrayals of parental abuse I've seen in media. This is a compliment.
The Rebel Alliance
I appreciate that the original plan for Andor was five seasons and a lot had to be condensed or skimmed over, but probably the most frustrating cuts are the details of how the Rebel Alliance becomes a functional, self-sustaining entity. All the infrastructure on Yavin 4 feels like it just kind of pops into existence halfway through Season 2, which sticks out given how preoccupied the show has been with the nitty-gritty of logistics, organisation, and coalition-building. Sure, realistically, I probably don't need several episodes of hardware being smuggled into the jungle... but maybe I do?
I do like that we see the Alliance starting to grow the same bureaucratic and political tumours that have been strangling the Imperial side all series long, even if they're ostensibly there for justifiable reasons. On reflection, Alistair Petrie's pissy, cat-herding commander is pretty much a softer version of his character from Sex Education.
Cinta
Very cold take, but killing off Cinta was a bad move. Not just because of the bury-your-gays angle, but because I think that plot beat is more effective if the trigger-happy Ghorman rebel kills someone he gives a shit about. I get that the intent is to demonstrate that the coalitions the Axis network builds are inherently fragile and risky, and even experienced operatives are painfully mortal, but I feel like we've already been sold on that pretty effectively by the Aldhani heist, Luthen's negotiations with Saw, Cassian's run-ins with the Maya Pei Brigade, etcetera.
Rogue One
It was loud and kind of stupid.
We watched it immediately after finishing season 2, which I'll admit may have coloured our perception. Jyn's arc felt like such a nothingburger compared to any random Andor supporting character, which especially hurt given that she's basically the only significant woman in the movie (in 2016!). Her romantic tease with Cassian is fucking weird after everything we saw between him and Bix, though I get that that's a natural consequence of being written out of order; you can read it as a more fraternal bond, I guess, but I think you have to work quite hard for that read. The flashes of archive footage and Uncanny Valley CGI Tarkin were more distracting than resonant. The cast was good, and I liked a couple of the set pieces, but it did feel like an anticlimax overall.
Cassian
I saw a shitpost suggesting that Cassian should get his own spinoff show on the strength of his appearance in Andor. It's a goof, obviously, but it does hit on something real: for a show named after him, this does not feel like it's primarily Cassian's story. I'm fine with that, to be clear - if hooking into a well-liked existing character was what it took to get this thing made, then that's a fair price. Star Wars: Luthen or Star Wars: Dedra would absolutely not have been greenlit.
He's a good lead, though. Maybe Jyn's progression of cynical drifter to committed revolutionary rang hollow partly because Cassian's felt so believable. It's hard to identify a specific moment of "alright, I'm a rebel now, put me in, coach" - it's a series of small steps, many of which he didn't take by choice. His story is a microcosm of the galaxy's. It works. It resonates.
Besides, the characters who actually deserve a spinoff series are the two alien fishermen who give Cassian and Melshi a lift off Narkina 5. I'm planning a separate post that's just about them. That's not a joke.
(EDIT: It's here.)