If you don't enjoy a slow burn then yeah you're not going to be hooked by Andor.

The first 3 eps are protagonist motivation setup. 4 and 5 are pure setup for ep 6 when the heist actually occurs. 7 is setting up the inevitable clash between ISB and the burgeoning rebellion which will occur in a couple of episodes I'm sure. Given 12 total eps, seems like they are doing 3 episode story arcs.

Unrelated:

I'm starting to simp for stone-cold ISB lady. Is that bad? Like... she's a clear-cut Space Fascist. :/

 

I've really enjoyed this show. Definitely took some time to pick up, so I'm glad I waited to binge it, but by ~episode five I was very hooked. It might help that I've avoided most of the rest of the star wars tv shows.

Really enjoy the Coruscant side of things especially - Mon Mothma, the shop, and the internal ISB politics are all excellent.

 

You mean Daphne Spacegrass? Yeah she's very.. authorative.

 

And Yen's voice.

 

Lol at Cassian being sentenced to work in an Amazon warehouse.

And lol that of all the things Cassian has been through in his life, the first one that actually traumatises him is the prospect of having to do work.

 

Andor is so fucking good you guys.

What the fuck, why is no one talking about it here or in general

I wont lie I was never a huge star wars fan.

But for the first time ever, I actually understand the Empire, why its evil and why people would team up to rebel against it.

The fact that settting up a galaxy wide rebellion is so nuanced. The fact the empire is actually really competent(Unlike in the kenobi verse where they are just stupid) makes me want to rewatch some star wars.

I can finally see how having a strong jedi on the rebellion's side is a huge boon for them.

Also, Cassian is better than most star wars movie characters.

I love this show man, I wish more people gave it a chance so we could get more

 

Yes, it's an excellent show.

As to why it's not being talked about... Andor isn't really built for the water-cooler? It's a political thriller/drama that just happens to be set in the SW universe.

They aren't going out of their way to toss in a huge number of references or to set up mysteries to get excited about. Not a lot of theorycraft going on, and the SW fandom lives and breathes on theorycraft.

S2 is already greenlit I believe.

 

Well, it's simple. If a show is actually good, there isn't much to criticize and being positive doesn't stir the blood like being negative does. I'm certainly guilty of it. I raked the opening two episodes over the coals for being boring as fuck and then didn't say much about the thrilling heist episode except "it's fun".

I haven't watched beyond ep 6 yet, I'm waiting for the season to finish so I can binge the back half.

 

It's fun how they are taking a jaunt through various genres. After the disappointing opening 2-3 episodes, we have a heist movie, and now a prison break movie.

The heist was OK but nothing special. The prison break section has been done very well, however.

 

I haven't seen it yet, but I've been checking out peoples thoughts here to see whether it's worth watching, while avoiding all spoilers.

Given the reaction, I'm really excited to get to it.

 

Binge at least the first 3 episodes if you can, the first 2 are really fucking boring. The show begins in ep3.

 

Meera when meeting someone she has complete power over who instead of hating her for it, loves it instead: New kink unlocked.

 

Andor is the greatest Star Wars TV show by an incredible margin, nothing else even comes close. These writers, directors and showrunners should be given a blank cheque and complete creative control to do whatever the hell they want with the franchise.

Andy and Stellan completely owned this episode and should be showered in awards for their work.

 

What I love about this show, besides the obvious, is its ability to make the Star Wars universe feel absolutely vast.
A gigantic ocean of nondescript and ultimately unimportant people, who try to make their way, do their job, don't try to be a hero, and don't care about wider consequences.

In every other show or movie, people tended to have a purpose for the story or be some mindless cardboard cutout.
For example, the guards hiding in that room during the prison break, in other shows they would be faceless goons rushing the protagonist and his men while waiting to be gunned down during one or two pointless scenes.

Here they have a selfish agenda, that alludes to a bigger world outside this very sequence. They have a life outside this prison, that they don't want to risk.

No idea if that makes sense, but it's also a nice contrast to the people that do rise above normal lifes like Cassian, Luthen, and Mon Mothma.

 

ok

 

Brevity is the soul if wit, but maybe say a bit more this time?

 

We watched the finale of Andor last night, and all I can really say is damn.

This show is exactly what I've been waiting for. It was Star Wars, and yet it was so much more than all the other Disney Star Wars offerings we've had so far (even the Mandalorian). It didn't waste its time winking into the camera, or finding convoluted ways to incorporate that robot that was in one scene of the original trilogy 'for the fans'. It focused on character and theme, and it did a damn good job of it.

It's not like 'Imperialism/Fascism Bad' is in any way a new idea in Star Wars. It's basically the foundation that the entire edifice was originally built upon, but Andor managed to do something with the idea that elevated it above everything else we've had from Star Wars recently. And it didn't need Vader, or a Jedi, or even so much as a Lightsaber, to do it. Instead it showed us a world in which ordinary people can be co-opted into ensuring their own oppression, and it asked why.

In some ways, I suppose, you could argue that it is a low-fantasy story when Star Wars has always been high-fantasy. Despite this, by keeping the core theme, and through a wonderful attention to detail in the crafting of the specific locations, they have managed to craft a work that really is able to stand beside the original movies without an ounce of shame.

The finale was fantastic, and I love how the showrunners restrained themselves from making Andor a big damn hero. While the OG trilogy told the story of a hero rising from nothing to save the galaxy, none of that would have been possible without the people around him, and I think Andor is really a celebration of those people. The everyday rebels weren't Jedi (or suspiciously Jedi-like) heroes, they were everyday people who had woken up to the harm being done to everyone by the Empire. It would perhaps have been easier for them if they'd kept their heads down, if they'd avoided the conflict, but if everyone did that, then the injustice would have kept on and on and on.

So the finale of Andor focuses not on Andor himself, but on his mother, his father, his friends, and their friends. The entire series comes together into a fully coherent whole in that moment. All those reasons why people allow the creeping threat of fascism to encroach into every aspect of their lives is brought crashing down, turned entirely on their collective head.

I started off completely unconvinced by Andor's very premise. I was sure that it would fail just like Fett or Kenobi and for a while I didn't even think I'd bother. Even as the show progressed, I wondered if the slow growth would be thrown away in the final act. It wasn't. And I am immeasurably glad. This was a show which required a quiet moment of reflection at the end and honestly, I thought the chances of seeing that were basically nill.

That said, it's now going to be even harder to go back to what we were getting before now that I've seen better. I can't see Ahsoka managing this kind of self-restraint or thoughtfulness (which is kinda ironic, when I put it like that).

 

I'm frankly amazed that this show came out of the same Disney that brought us the disjointed sequel trilogy, the ??? Han Solo origin story (was anyone clamoring for one?), The One That's Mostly A Borefest And Then Awesome Battle (Rogue One), The Mando-yawn-man, Power Rangers: Desert Drift and Kenobi: A Coarse, Rough and Irritating Story.

 

Whats even more surprising is that Andor got a really huge budget to make their own authentic sets and everything.

Like I could understand if Kenobi got that treatment, but not Andor.

Especially when most of everyone kept asking, "who asked for Andor" or "who or what the fuck is Andor"

Just goes to show that Gilroy truly had quality on his hands, and the head honchos at disney knew it.

Its a shame we won't get the planned 5 seasons though.

 

I guess that they were just desperate enough to try something original, which in my opinion worked out because Andor is my favourite piece of Star Wars media produced by Disney after TCW season 7. Still, while a lot of the other Star Wars TV shows were full of nostalgia bait and fanservice, I think that helped them appeal to a much wider audience than Andor can.

For example, my dad loved the writing, cinematography, and related a bit too much to the CorpoSec commander in the first episode. I tried watching it with my mam and my sister, and neither of them made it past the first episode because it was too dark and slow. In contrast to this we watched about 4 episodes of the Book of Boba Fett together before giving up, and despite my misgivings the whole of Kenobi.

Andor is great tv, but it's not easy to watch, and it won't appeal to the average Star Wars fan because it so radically differs from the movies.

This worries me a bit, because I feel like the Disney execs might force season 2 to pander to audiences more, which might drive away fans of the first while only sort of drawing in new people, leading to season 3 being cancelled. That's pessemistic I know, but Disney has a horrible track record.