In 2016, Star Wars violated its own formula with Rogue One. Directed by Gareth Edwards and written by Tony Gilroy and Chris Weitz, it jettisoned the space wizards and coming-of-age stories in favor of more straightforward space thriller action, all spun off of two sentences in A New Hope’s famous opening crawl text from 1977.
Rogue One was to be the first of many anthology films, telling stories in the Star Wars universe outside of the increasingly played-out Skywalker family saga. But after Solo’s mediocre box office performance and the pandemic set Disney down a course toward streaming, those energies were directed toward creating live-action series. Coming three years after the debut of The Mandalorian, Andor is the best of the bunch.
Diego Luna stars as the rebel super spy Cassian Andor. When we first meet him, he’s far from the ideologically motivated utilitarian who sacrifices himself to give the Rebellion a fighting chance in Rogue One. His first brush with the Empire is with one of Palpatine’s subcontractors. He’s in a brothel searching for his missing sister. He hasn’t seen her since he was rescued from the dying planet Kenari by Maarva (Fiona Shaw), a kindly scavenger making a living from collecting discarded Imperial technology. Andor attracts unwelcome attention from a couple of security contractors looking for a quick shakedown, and when things get out of hand, he kills them and flees back to Maarva’s home on Ferrix. On the run, he decides to sell the most valuable piece of contraband he owns to buy passage offworld. His buyer turns out to be Luthen Rael (Stellan Skarsgård), one of the founders of the Rebellion against the Empire, who recruits him for an impossibly dangerous mission: stealing the Imperial payroll for an entire planet.
Meanwhile, a corporate security officer named Syril Karn (Kyle Soller) is trying to track down and arrest Andor for the murder of his two employees. His bungling attracts the attention of Dedra Meero (Denise Gough), an Imperial Security Bureau officer who believes Andor is the key to unraveling the galaxy-wide conspiracy that will become the Alliance to Restore the Republic.
Rogue One screenwriter Tony Gilroy has developed Andor into one of the most compelling characters on television. The 12-episode series starts slow, but the first episode is also the worst. It gains momentum as Andor’s perspective changes. At first, his only goal is survival. But when he tries to flee the politics of the fragmenting Empire, he finds that wherever you go, politics always finds you. Before he even understands what he’s fighting for, Andor is already making sacrifices and hard choices for the sake of the Rebellion.
Just as interesting as Andor’s commando missions and prison breakouts is the intrigue on Coruscant, where wealthy Senator Mon Mothma (Genevieve O’Reilly) plays cat and mouse with Imperial investigators as she tries to coordinate and arm the rebellion’s restless factions.
While there is the requisite cute robot (B2EMO, voiced by Dave Chapman), Andor’s tone is different than the space opera we’re used to from Star Wars. The action on the Imperial capital planet Coruscant resembles the Cold War tension of The Americans; I would watch an entire series that’s just scenes from Mon Mothma’s marriage to the clueless playboy Perrin (Alastair Mackenzie). I still don’t side with the people who say all of Star Wars should be gritty and “realistic” (whatever that means in a universe with space wizards), but it certainly works for Andor.
On Wednesday, November 23rd, the first two episodes of Andor will air on ABC, while the series finale will join the other 11 episodes streaming on Disney+.