Back in June, I gave the following review of the Obi-Wan Kenobi Disney+ show, which I was hugely disappointed by:
As you can tell, the Star Wars franchise, and especially my enjoyment of it, were at an all-time low. They had killed the film series from rushing “Rise of Skywalker” into theaters, and although I’ve enjoyed watching “The Mandalorian,” its success has been both a blessing and curse for the franchise.
Blessing in that it shows Star Wars can work on TV, which is good because the franchise on film is currently dead. But it's also a curse because most of the Disney+ follow-ups seem to be completely modeled on its success, even though it kind of feels like its run its course already, whether Disney realizes it or not. They made a Boba Fett spin-off from the show that was apparently so bad, I still haven’t gotten around to watching it a year later (I probably will before Mando Season 3).
Then to follow that poorly-received show with an Obi-Wan show that actually took the time and energy to bring back Ewan McGregor and Hayden Christensen, then completely wasted them in an obviously two-hour story thinly and haphazardly spread out over almost four and a half hours. With this track record, how could anybody care for a Cassian Andor-focused prequel to “Rogue One,” which is a movie that came out 6 years ago?
And while those questions have apparently led to this being the least-watched of the live-action Disney+ Star Wars shows, it shouldn’t be because this is actually the best Star Wars show, ever. If Mandalorian was Star Wars figuring out what a Disney+ show could look like, then this is Disney+ finally getting its prestige show.
Like, it's HBO-level of quality. It’s genuinely that good and that mature, reminding me a lot of the 1st season of “Game of Thrones,” still one of its best seasons. “Andor” still isn’t R-rated like HBO, but it is a hard PG-13 where they do say “shit,” and don’t shy away from exploring the true dark hold of the Empire, showing what a galaxy under imperialism would actually look like. How it thrives under complicity, apathy, fear, and a lack of hope. This is a show with very clear and tangible stakes, where lots of death is shown on screen.
It’s a downright inspiring show in its best moments though, and it actually get me excited for not only where the show can go next, but the Star Wars franchise to have this kind of smart creativity in it again.
To break the show down in more detail, I want to talk about the show through its unique structure of telling most of its stories through multi-episode arcs. In a medium where every dipshit running a show considers a season of TV to be one-long movie (it’s fucking not, as if you were making a movie, than you would have made a fucking movie), this is actually a refreshing change in embracing the medium and its inherent advantages.
The one disadvantage present throughout the season with the structure though, is the early episodes in each arc are a bit slow in setting things up. They almost always pay off in spades at the end, but it’s certainly something to be aware of.
Specific Spoilers Follow…
Episodes 1-3
Directed by Toby Haynes
Written by Tony Gilroy
Rating: 3 / 5 Stars
⭐️⭐️⭐️
I’m watching this after the fact, but it’s interesting how Disney+ made this 3-episode arc available at launch, but then released subsequent arcs one episode at a time. Strange way to do it when you’re setting up the unique structure of the show, as these episodes really are a pilot, introducing you to what the show is going to be about, and get you invested in these characters and their struggles, even though “Rogue One'' was 6 years ago now.
While I’m not exactly sold yet, it is a solid introduction, even if I am very distracted by how the actor that plays this villain, Syril Karn, looks almost exactly like a young Kyle MacLachlan. What do you say, David Lynch, young Dale Cooper prequel series?
Episodes 4-6
Directed by Susanna White
Written by Dan Gilroy
Rating: 4/5 Stars
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
What I thought about mostly with this arc is how much the heist here is so much better than the two heists in “Solo,” as this does everything those tried to do, but you know, actually good. Dan Gilroy is probably the lesser talented of the Gilroy brothers, but still quite talented in his own right. This is also where the series really expands its perspective, not only letting you get to know everybody involved in the heist on both sides, but also check in on various Imperial mundane business elsewhere. It’s so expansive I’m actually shocked how well they do it, as Dan juggles about a dozen characters, all rather impressively.
I also liked the banal, sinister nature of the Empire, who’s decided this is the last meteor shower event the natives of this planet will be attending, not telling them this of course, because they’re going to make it an exclusive Imperial viewing event. The part where the commander casually explains how the Empire has quietly set up cheap bars along this religious pilgrimage to lure in the natives was also so quietly evil and chilling.
Episode 7
Directed by Benjamin Caron
Written by Stephen Schiff
Rating: 2/5 Stars
⭐️⭐️
You would think this would be better since Schiff worked for several years on “The Americans,” which was a really great show, and hopefully he’ll get a better assignment next season. But this is just a transition episode, setting up lots of stuff, while not exactly fitting into the format of the rest of the season. It’s a thankless job, but alas I just didn’t find this very interesting, and actually thought it took the character of Cassian back a few steps. I did get inordinately excited though when an Imperial security droid, the same model of K-2SO, though it is not him, showed up.
Episodes 8-10
Directed by Tony Haynes
Written by Beau Willimon
Rating: 4.5/5 Stars
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️✨
If you don’t know who Beau Willimon is, the man who wrote this arc, he has quite the backstory. At Juilliard he wrote a play called “Farragut North,” that was apparently quite good, when it was later staged off Broadway and elsewhere. With the success of this play, people wondered if he was one of our next great playwrights. And perhaps he could have been until the play was adapted by George Clooney into “The Ides of March,” which co-starred Clooney and Ryan Gosling.
The film did pretty well financially, and was nominated for an Academy Award for screenwriting. Willimon became a hot commodity in Hollywood, and eventually teamed up with David Fincher to create the biggest straight-to-streaming show at the time, and the show that is directly responsible for Netflix’s success that it has today, “House of Cards.” The show was successful critically, was nominated for a whole lot of Emmys, and was quite popular. Later seasons dipped in quality and favor, but it was mostly fine until revelations came out about its star, Kevin Spacey, which immediately made him a toxic figure. He was fired from the show of course, but Willimon faced a lot of questions about what he did and didn’t know about Spacey’s behavior, which made him sort of toxic by association.
He wrote a movie, and created another show that was completely ignored, but mostly went quiet for the next few years, partially because he ran for the President of the Writer’s Guild of America, East, where he served from 2017-2021. This is all to say this is the first thing the former wunderkind has written in at least 4 years. And how was his comeback received?
Well, I think this is the episode that finally got mine and other’s attention that this show was to be taken seriously, as everybody raved about it online after it was released. And I do mean raved, as some said it was the best thing to have been released during the Disney Star Wars era. Some even went farther and said it was the best thing ever made in the Star Wars universe, period. Seriously.
I’m of course not as high as those probably hyperbolic opinions, but it is a fucking good episode of TV, no matter what you compare it to, Disney+ or HBO. I’m usually not a big fan of prison drama, as I find a lot of them pretty repetitive and boring, but this really is an exception. The first two episodes may be slow in the build-up, but it all leads to an absolutely incredible culmination where everything pays off like a slot machine, and is downright fucking inspiring in its emotions and performances.
It may seem strange to cast Andy Serkis as a completely different character, when he played Snoke in the sequel trilogy, but once again he proves he’s just as good, if not better, at playing a human, where he’s most well-known for his groundbreaking motion-capture acting. His character starts off as one-note, but as the true heinous extent of the Empire is revealed, and his worldview crumbles, while then asked to step up and lead a prison riot, Serkis just effortlessly stuns. His character’s ending, which is reminiscent of Moses from the book of Exodus, is as heartbreaking as I was led to believe from the hype.
Like “Rogue One,” this angle that creator Tony Gilroy has taken on the Star Wars universe is truly effective. He gives more detail to the Empire’s rule than the broad nazi comparisons of the original trilogy, dives down more smartly into the politics of the universe than the prequel trilogy, and as a result gives infinitely more meaning and weight when characters rise up and sacrifice everything for rebellion.
Before this arc I was worried about where they were taking Cassian himself, but after this I completely buy into what I suspect is him joining the broader resistance full-time. Willimon absolutely sold me on the character’s journey, and where the show will go from here. And oh yeah, the non-prison stuff in the episode was fantastic too. You can never go wrong with letting Stellan Skarsgård monologue.
Episodes 11-12
Directed by Benjamin Caron
Written by Tony Gilroy
Rating: 4/5 Stars
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Yep, as expected, now that the show has fully set-up Cassian as a character, as well as the Rebellion he’s now ready to take part in, the show is fully ready to take off, but in a way that the journey to get here was completely earned. This basically achieves the emotional highs and Rebellion the previous arc took three episodes to set-up, but now can do in two, plus making you hype as fuck for a season 2.
In another show, a post-credits Death Star tease would be cheap and groan-worthy, but not here. LET’S FUCKING GO!!!
That being said, it’ll be a while before we get season 2, probably Fall of 2024. I didn’t know this before researching it just now, but apparently it takes so long to make the show that it started shooting this past November, but won’t be finished until this summer, about 9 months worth. Plus it takes about a year for post-production, so a Fall of 2024 release.
Also, despite a 5-season plan originally, because Tony Gilroy took direct control of running the series and it takes so long to make, he condensed it down to three seasons, and now only two seasons. Which means, next season is also the last season. It will supposedly end by leading directly into “Rogue One,” which means I suspect a lot of the new characters introduced this season will almost certainly die by season’s end, playing into themes of Rebellion requiring great personal sacrifice.