2 weeks Ago By Jesse Hassenger
When Andor premiered in the fall of 2022, it was the third live-action Star Wars series to air new episodes that year and something of an undercard attraction compared to that summer’s return of Ewan McGregor as Obi-Wan Kenobi. But a justly acclaimed run followed by a real-life time jump to match Andor ’s season opening “one year later” — those words are the first thing onscreen after the logo and series title, Ghostbusters II style — has left the show in a very different position: the consensus choice for the best live-action Star Wars TV series , and also, maybe, the last stand for quality in that particular area. Yes, there will be other shows — and, in fact, Star Wars is coming off its most successful year in producing TV shows with less explicit, fan-service-y connection to the movies, though The Acolyte was canceled and the future of Skeleton Crew remains in doubt.
Regardless, it’s hard to imagine something else like Andor making it to air. Andor itself sometimes seems like it barely made it. Hence, this second season , which will essentially compress a four-year outline into 12 episodes with an unusual release plan, even by streaming standards: Three-episode arcs, each separated by a one-year time jump, will premiere together over the course of four weeks.
As adept as Andor has been at leveraging its TV-series status to tell stories of a different scope and shape than a feature film (and as much as last season’s similarly arc-segmented story line paid off), these drops mean that a lot of dedicated viewers will experience the season as, essentially, four feature films. (The episodes are longer on average this season than last, so each arc, minus credits and stuff, will run roughly the length of a typical 140-minute blockbuster.) We’ll be recapping the episodes individually, however, because this is still a TV show, after all.
With that housekeeping out of the way, let’s get to BBY 4. Ah, contemporary Star Wars , where even a simple onscreen clarification may require a footnote. BBY is the somewhat goofy if admittedly handy designation of “Before the Battle of Yavin,” which is how nerds in and out of Lucasfilm refer to that time the Death Star got blown up at the end of the original Star Wars .
Basically, Star Wars is year zero, and everything else is measured based on that. The first season of Andor covered pieces of BBY 5 in the life of Cassian and various other characters . The first three-episode arc takes place in BBY 4; the second takes place in BBY 3; and so on, counting down to Rogue One , which takes place at essentially BBY 30 seconds (as referenced in the popular Naboo rock band 30 Seconds to Yavin).
Now, with that housekeeping out of the way, the first episode of Andor season two kicks off with an instant highlight of a sequence. Cassian Andor, thief turned rebel spy, has turned up at a Sienar test facility disguised as a test pilot. (Sienar Fleet Systems is, canonically, a company that manufactures ships and weapons for the Empire; the onscreen text makes it seem as if Sienar is also the name of a planet where they’re headquartered, though it’s not entirely clear.
I’m sure someone will run to the comments and clarify this point.) The building is unnervingly quiet as an employee goes through routine checks of a TIE fighter scheduled for testing the next day; we quickly learn that she is assisting Cassian with his plans to steal it. She’s nervous.
She’s not supposed to look at him. Cassian looks her straight in the eyes and gives her an encouraging speech. You wonder how many other rebel recruits have been steadied by looking into Diego Luna’s eyes.
Cassian seems less experienced in the matter of actually flying a TIE fighter. In a moment that almost feels like something out of a Galaxy’s Edge ride (complimentary), he makes an extremely sloppy getaway, sliding around the bay as stormtroopers descend. Eventually, he makes it out of the building and through a chase across Sienar’s snowy peaks, and he steadies his piloting enough to leave the planet entirely.
It’s nearly a quarter of the episode’s run time and it’s a whole lot of what Andor does well in a self-contained, suspenseful little adventure. The episode continues the momentum with an extended stalker-vision first-person shot, as an unseen person creeps inexorably into an unidentified home at night, eventually revealing the Empire ghoul who tortured our gal Bix Caleen (Adria Arjona) last season. Bix awakens with a start and a scream; it’s a nightmare, and almost certainly not a one-off.
But she’s safe for now, living alongside fellow ex-Ferrix residents Wilmon Paak (Muhannad Bhaier) and Brasso (Joplin Sibtain), fixing irrigation systems on Mina-Rau, in the Outer Rim. Pointedly, they’re essentially living as undocumented workers and are quietly in a panic over what is likely an Imperial “audit” that could endanger their low profile. Likely safe from immigration paperwork is the droid B2EMO, underlining his tattletale bona fides with a desire to immediately log Bix’s sleep distress for Cassian.
Cass has his own problems to deal with, though: He’s supposed to rendezvous on a forested planet with someone named Porco, but his disguise as an Imperial pilot works too well, and a group of squabbling sorta-rebels mistake him for the real thing. There’s rare (if still somewhat dark) levity to their inter-gang arguments, which repeatedly drown out Cassian’s attempts to reason with them and find out what happened to Porco, who was supposed to take the stolen TIE fighter. The infighting and backbiting of the unidentified rebels (rebels mainly in the sense that they’re armed and hostile toward the Empire) is cross-cut with the clean organizational clarity of a secret Empire meeting presided over by none other than director Orson Krennic (Ben Mendelsohn), the overseer of the Death Star project as introduced in Rogue One , the movie for which all of this is the prequel.
He’s invited some select individuals to strategize the Empire’s desired takeover of the planet Ghorman, which is known for its silk-spinning spiders (sadly, vexingly only seen via newsreel) but actually houses a trove of underground calcite, a mineral needed to coat reactor lenses on the Empire’s pet project . Krennic explains to his most trusted counsel that they must begin a whisper campaign, propagandizing Ghorman as difficult and arrogant so fewer will bat an eye at an eventual crackdown and takeover. Dedra (Denise Gough), looking as close to vomiting as ever despite her inner-circle status (which itself is despite her failure to quell the Ferrix uprising last season), suggests some supplemental action.
To really cement the takeover of Ghorman, they need rebels who “you can depend on to do the wrong thing.” She just means those who, to not-quite-quote Jyn Erso, rebel. But she could also be talking about the screwups with Cassian’s rendezvous, the failure of which helps to kick-start a fissure in this hapless group.
It would be a funny situation (and still kind of is) if not for how it genuinely endangers Cassian’s life; the episode ends with him being dragged through a hail of blaster fire, no easy way out in sight. Though the seriousness and rigor of Andor ’s writing gets a lot of understandable attention — Tony Gilroy is in fine form throughout here — director Ariel Kleiman does a bang-up job with the staging, particularly in the story that probably gets the least screen time: checking in with Mon Mothma at her estate on Chandrila. As she prepares for the multiday festivities accompanying her daughter’s wedding, a marriage that’s been arranged to help keep a lid on her rebel activities, the camera tracks along with her exchanging hostess pleasantries and the occasional covert check-in, until the single shot is interrupted by the unexpected arrival of Luthen Rael (Stellan Skarsgård), the ever-insistent architect of rebel machinations.
Luthen is fussing over the seeming failure of Cassian and Porco to meet up, and the show uses that interrupted tracking shot to illustrate how jarring it is for Mon Mothma to see him in person. We understand her feelings, even without exactly sharing them; seeing Andor again is a comfort, even as it does its best to bring genuine stress back to the Star Wars universe. • Welcome back to Andor ! I’m Jesse, your local Star Wars quack, and I’ll once again be recapping every episode of the second season.
My favorite Star Wars movies are Attack of the Clones and The Last Jedi . My favorite characters are Obi-Wan, Rey, and Watto. No further questions.
• Speaking of the other prequels: Obviously, Tony Gilroy’s Andor is far too serious to get bogged down in the whimsy of bizarre alien designs and callbacks. But I confess, as a major prequel booster, it’s a bit galling to have so much chatter about Death Star construction without so much as a passing mention of the Geonosians, the Attack of the Clones bug creatures who designed the weapon in the first place. • Cassian’s thrillingly clunky TIE fighter escape in the opening is reminiscent of one of the zippiest sequences in The Force Awakens , where rebel pilot Poe and defecting stormtrooper Finn team up to steal a getaway ship.
Is this a deliberate echo/previsioning of that moment, or, perhaps more likely, has Tony Gilroy not actually seen The Force Awakens ? • It seems marginally more likely that Cassian’s missing pilot contact Porco is named for Porco Rosso, the fascist-fighting human turned pig pilot from the Studio Ghibli movie of the same name. • “Everything with you is negative!” Gilroy’s dark wit has been used sparingly in Andor , but the sniping in between the disorganized sorta-rebels is a comic highlight. By submitting your email, you agree to our Terms and Privacy Notice and to receive email correspondence from us.
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