Andor brings grown-up storytelling to Star Wars

By Zach Hagadone
Reader Staff

Empires by definition are so huge that they bend reality to their shape — so much so that their subjects often forget they live in one. People are especially good at “getting on with it,” and will tolerate, simply ignore or even exploit conditions that they’d otherwise reject. Imperial structures are so big, what’s the point of resisting? 

That’s true of earthly empires as much as it is of a certain empire located in “a galaxy far, far away,” and an operative principle that makes the newest Star Wars prequel series, Andor, so much more sophisticated than its many small- and big-screen counterparts.

In its first three of 12 episodes, released Sept. 21 on Disney+, Andor opens in a red-light district on the industrial backwater planet Morlana One — part of a “corporate sector” with private security management contracted by the Galactic Empire. 

Andor streams new episodes every Wednesday on Disney+. Courtesy photo.

There we find the titular Cassian Andor (Diego Luna) skulking through the side streets. He’s not on rebel business, though, he’s looking for his missing sister. One thing leads to another, and a couple of security goons enjoying their after-hours in the brothel pick a fight, resulting in both of them dead in an alley and Cassian on the lam.

There is little in this setup, or the subsequent episodes, to directly connect Andor to the wider Star Wars universe. There are no Skywalkers, no stormtroopers, no Star Destroyers or protocol droids, no Siths or Jedis. Being set five years before the destruction of the first Death Star at the end of Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope (1977) — and therefore before Cassian’s participation in the events of Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016) — there’s not even any direct reference to the Rebel Alliance.

Unlike any other Star Wars spinoff, prequel or sequel, Andor goes its own way, choosing to center its narrative on the billions (probably more like trillions) of nobodies whose insignificant lives provide the grist for the Imperial mill. Cassian might be the “hero,” but he’s more than a few parsecs from “heroic” in his opening acts. He owes everyone money. He apparently spends a lot of time with people of low character. In a desperate move, he commits a theft that brings him into contact with Luthen Rael (Stellan Skarsgard) and sets him on his reluctant path to becoming a spy against the Empire.

Star Wars can reasonably be described as the safest intellectual property in entertainment history. Not only is it as lucrative as it is culturally powerful, but its contours are anything but complex. There are heroes and villains who fight an archetypical battle of good and evil, with the latter conquering the former to bring about balance and peace.

Andor doesn’t play that way. Cassian is objectively a shifty-eyed criminal — though to what degree a person might be considered a criminal in an evil empire is a moral dilemma mostly avoided in other Star Wars offerings. Likewise, Star Wars characters are typically important on a galactic scale, even (and especially) if they don’t know it. They also come to their respective roles in the struggle more or less without internal conflict. Meanwhile, the rebellion against the Empire is most often depicted as a foregone conclusion.

A notable departure from this pat formula was Rogue One, which helps explain why it is generally regarded as among the best Star Wars films and why Andor creator Tony Gilroy — who was also a writer for Rogue One — would try to recapture some of the subaltern grit for his prequel-of-a-prequel series.

Critics have been mostly enthusiastic about Andor, calling it things like “mature” and “literary” in comparison to the rest of the canon. It has an 86% on Rotten Tomatoes, 9/10 on IGN, and 8.2/10 on IMDb. Of course, there are many who have criticized the show as slow, thinly written and just plain not Star Wars-y enough. As one negative reviewer put it: “Anyone can break the rules and call it creativity. Being able to create within the boundary is the best kind of challenge.”

Aside from that being one of the lamest descriptions of the artistic “challenge,” it can be roughly translated as: If it doesn’t have lightsabers and TIE fighters, it’s boring.

Not so with Andor, which provides a compelling, nuanced interpretation of what life might really be like under an empire of galactic oppression, and just why an average person might really join an effort to overthrow it. 

Stream new episodes each Wednesday on Disney+.