It's been a while since I have had any kind of review on this blog, but I think today is a good day for another one. This morning I finished watching season one of the Disney+ show Andor. Set in the Star Wars universe, the show follows Cassian Andor, the deuteragonist of the only really good Disney Star Wars film, Rogue One.
Andor is wildly different than the other Disney+ Star Wars originals. Instead of being an action show like The Mandalorian, The Book of Boba Fett and Kenobi, Andor is more of a thriller/drama. There certainly is a lot of action, but compared to those shows it's a lot slower paced and high brow.
The show essentially has four arcs. The first is the origin story of Andor and is by far the weakest part of the story. The first two episodes are hurt by the baffling decision to have constant flashbacks to Andor's childhood. These scenes would have been fine on their own but they are interspaced between the main plot, Andor being on the run for killing two corporate goons and the investigation trying to bring him in. The flashbacks totally wreck the momentum of the first two episodes. The arc gets better in the third episode, as the plot picks up, but the first two episodes are the weakest part of the series.
After that, the plot moves on to a new arc focused on a heist of an Imperial payroll. This arc was a lot more consistent and didn't have the constant annoying flashbacks. A slew of new interesting people are introduced and we get to see how Andor starts to transform himself from a outlaw mercenary into an actual rebel. The finale of this arc is beautifully shot and has some great scenes.
The real meat of the show is the third arc, the prison arc. The arc is set in an Imperial prison and at first I was skeptical of the direction the show was going. But Andy Serkis as Kino and Stellan Skarsgård as Luthen make the arc. Indeed, the conclusion features incredible speeches from both characters that rank either at the top or close to it in terms of acting and writing in the Star Wars series.
The final arc concludes the story and for the most part it is satisfactory. The ending brings most of the stories together and gives a decent conclusion for most of the characters, though there were a few misfires. The only problem is that the conclusion of the last arc in episode 10 was so strong it was very hard to follow up on in episodes 11 and 12.
The interesting thing about Andor is how much the side characters outshine Andor himself. Don't get me wrong, Diego Luna does a great job as Andor and the show does a lot to make him interesting, but he can't hold a candle to characters like Mon Mothma, Kino Loy, Syril Karn and, critical, Luthen Rael. These characters hold the show together and without them it would not be anywhere near as interesting as it was.
Luthen is one of the more interesting, and subversive, characters in Star Wars and it's easy to see why. Without getting into spoilers too much, Luthen is an accelerationist. That means he's the kind of person that plans crimes and terror attacks because he is counting on the backlash to inspire others to join the rebellion. He's a true rebel and wants to make things worse before they get better and is extremely aware of how high the costs of doing so will be.
To say this is subversive is an understatement. Most people were introduced to the concept accelerationism by the New Zealand Mosque shooter, Brenton Harrison Tarrant. And it's an idea that is extremely popular among certain factions of right wing America. Though Luthen isn't portrayed as being a "good" character he is portrayed as being right. The narrative says that without his actions, the rebellion would have been doomed from the start. It's not something I expected to see in a Disney show. I don't know if the choice was a deliberate act of subversion or simply a case of Disney not realizing how the show could be interpreted, but it is refreshingly new and interesting to say the least.
Another aspect of the show I liked is how it humanized many of the imperial characters. In much of Disney Star Wars, Imperials have been one dimensional without any depth at all. I can't remember the last time that Disney portrayed an Imperial as anything other than a card carrying villain (unless they end up redeemed in the end). That is not the case at all. Syril Karn and Dedra Meero are both staunch and dedicated imperials but are also complex and even sympathetic characters. And they are actually competent as well! In short, they are human and not simply evil for the sake of being evil. They are still the bad guys but are more interesting than most of the villains in Star Wars of late.
The show also does a lot of "show, not tell". This is a minor spoiler but in the last episode we see a minor character building a bomb. Instead of telling us he's preparing an attack, they show us building a bomb. Instead of telling us he's doing it because he wants revenge for the death of his father, they show him watching a hologram of him. Many other shows would have the guy make a speech but this worked a lot better and Andor has a lot of little moments like that, which elevates the quality of the show.
My biggest criticism of the story has to be the first two episodes, and I think it really worked against the success of the story and probably caused a few people to give up on the show before it got good. The constant flashbacks to Andor's childhood really destroyed the pacing of the series. When I started the show, I was very afraid that it was going to be the same thing as the Book Of Boba Fett, which was ruined by the constant flashbacks. Both shows would have been improved if the flashbacks had just been a separate episode (or the first act of an episode).
I have a few other criticisms. The Mon Monthama story is interesting but barely intersects with the main plot and is mostly about Monthama trying to hide her support for the Rebellion. There isn't much wokeness in the show but the lesbian relationship between Vel and Cinta felt a bit forced, though it helped a lot that both actors did a good job with it and were fairly attractive too.
What really hurt the show though is the rest of the Star Wars universe. We all know what happens to Andor in Rogue One, but that's not anywhere near the worst part. If you have seen the Disney sequels, you know that the rebellion is pretty pointless because the New Republic falls and the Empire inexplicably comes back. Mon Mothma, one of the more interesting and well acted characters, had one of the dumbest fates in the post-Return of the Jedi eras where she becomes the Chancellor and is responsible for the absolutely idiotic decisions to both ignore the First Order and disband the fleet. If you aren't aware of the direction the rest of Star Wars went the show is very good, but with that knowledge it really detracts from the quality.
Not helping things is the absolutely negative reception to much of Star Wars after Disney bought it. I have seen many people that concede that Andor is a good show, but won't watch it because they have been burned by Disney so consistently. I can't say that I blame them, out of the five Disney films, only Rogue One was good, with the rest either being mediocre (Solo, The Force Awakens) or really, extraordinarily, bad (The Last Jedi, The Rise of Skywalker). Star Wars TV is pretty contested as well, with only the Mandalorian being considered decent. Both The Book of Boba Fett and Kenobi were controversial at best and the cartoons have been controversial as well. And that's not getting into the absolute nonsense we are seeing in the expanded universe.
Still, as long as you can ignore the fact that Disney has been hit or miss at best Andor is a really good show. It's worth watching just for Episode 10, which, as I said before, has some of the finest scenes in Star Wars history. I fully recommend watching the show, even if you aren't a big Star Wars fan or have felt burned out by the series or Disney's management of it.
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