It’s All Led to This

Star WarsThe modern blockbuster: it's a concept so commonplace now we don't even think about the fact that before the end of the 1970s, this kind of movie -- huge spectacles, big action, massive budgets -- wasn't really made. That all changed, though, with Star Wars, a series of films that were big on spectacle (and even bigger on profits). A hero's journey set against a sci-fi backdrop, nothing like this series had ever really been done before, and then Hollywood was never the same. has had a pretty big issue at its core for a while now: how can it tell stories that feel fresh and interesting and new. This wasn’t as big of an issue when it was just six movies and not much else that was “core cannon” because while, sure, there were books and comics and other media that was associated with the franchise, the only things fans really had to accept as cannon, as true stories, were the six films that George Lucas produced, and they could ignore them rest. You could say the “required list” was short, and if you didn’t want to delve much past that then you didn’t have to.

Lucas, though, got the ball rolling on greatly expanding the accepted cannon when Lucasfilm produced The Clone Wars, the animated movie (released in theaters) that acted as the pilot for the animated series to follow (rebooting away the previous animated series of shorts, Clone Wars), and from there the cannon has been expanding by leaps and bounds. Now if you want to be a Star Wars fan and watch everything in the “core”, you have to keep up with dozens of shows on top of twelve (and counting) movies, all of it looping and weaving and expanding on the same cast of characters within the same era, over and over again.

Most fans tend to agree that Star Wars needs to find fresh stories that aren’t all directly tied to the Skywalker Saga, and slowly the franchise has found ways to do that. The Bad Batch might be set during the rise of the Empire, but it focuses primarily on a cast of characters not seen in the films, not related to any of those characters. Skeleton Crew expands on the New Republic era of the franchise, and side steps almost all the trappings of the Skywalker Saga entirely. And then there’s Andor, the beloved show that manages to be so different from everything seen in Star Wars that it almost could exist in a different franchise.

Many online call Andor “Star Wars for adults”, although I find that term a little condescending. Sure, some of the works Lucas put out were designed for his kids, but grouping one section of the franchise off for children and a different section off for adults makes it seem like adults shouldn’t be watching the other works, that there’s some delineating line that says, “this is beneath you.” That’s shitty in its own right. Andor is different, but not because it’s “for adults”. What Andor does is construct a compelling narrative that’s unlike other stories we’ve seen from Star Wars before. If the main stories are swashbuckling adventures of space wizards and giant bears (inspired by the 1950 serials that Lucas grew up with), Andor is Star Wars as filtered through modern storytelling, modern politics, and modern ideals. It feels different because it doesn’t act beholden to the kinds of stories Lucas liked to tell. It’s a different beast entirely.

Picking up one year after the end of season one, season two of Andor finds Cassian Andor (Diego Luna) working as an agent for Luthen Rael (Stellan Skarsgård), running missions to aid and foment the nascent rebellion against Emperor Palpatine (who, notably, never appears in this series). This involves grabbing intel, stealing tech, and going to various planets to see if the growing cells of rebellion there are ready for the next step towards joining the actual Rebellion as it forms.

One such planet is Ghorman, home to a bustling silk trade and one of the wealthier planets in the Empire. The Ghormans live a very happy life, at least until Imperial pressure starts to weigh down on them. This leads to some among the Ghormans wanting to stand up, to fight back, although Andor, after a visit to see their operation, cautions against. He doesn’t think they’re ready, and he reads their actions as actually feeding into what the Empire wanted… whatever they might have been. And Cassian would be right, as the Empire wants what Ghorman has – not its people, or its silk, but a mineral buried under the planet’s surface, a mineral essential to the Empire’s big plans for a secret super weapon… the Death Star.

It shouldn’t come as any big surprise that Andor builds to the reveal of the first Death Star. Andor is a prequel to Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, which itself was a prequel to Star Wars, Episode IV: A New Hope. Wherever the series went, and whatever stories it told along the way, in the end it had to end at the reveal of the Death Star, and Cassian Andor’s big mission to get the Death Star’s plans, because that’s where he ends up in Rogue One: A Star Wars Story. His fate was sealed by that 2016 film, and the series couldn’t deviate from that in the end.

What it could do, though, was provide context and color. Developed by Tony Gilroy (who co-wrote Rogue One: A Star Wars Story), Andor functions as a story that develops and deepens the later film’s big mission. It takes one of the two leads and gives him so much backstory and development that he feels more realized now than he ever could have from a single film. Cassian goes from a character you want to know better, who hides everything about himself from the world around him (because that’s his job) into a deeply constructed character with skills and nuance. He becomes the kind of rebel leader we knew he could be, we just needed to see it. Now we do.

Season one was about showing how Cassian Andor became a rebel. We needed to know who he was before he joined the Rebellion so that we could then appreciate his growth and the decisions he made. With season two, though, Cassian finds himself on an inevitable path, a set point that he doesn’t know is coming (although it is hinted at to him), a fixed point in his lifetime that, having joined the Rebellion, he now can’t escape. The Death Star is that fixed point, the locus of two movies and a television series that shows how much the Empire invested in this super weapon and just what it would do to get what it wanted. All of this while one man, who didn’t even realize he was tied to the project, worked behind the scenes to eventually bring it all down.

While it should feel silly, almost, that Cassian is tied so inextricably to the Death Star, it actually has a kind of poignance within the context of the show. Cassian has his path, he can’t escape it. He is not part of the Skywalker Saga, but in a way he’s almost more essential to it than any of the “main” characters. Without him, his skills and perspective, the Rebellion might not ever be able to fight back. A super weapon that can destroy planets is the kind of gun the Empire could hold over anyone, at any time. It would cement the power of the Empire for thousands of years. But it’s one guy, a grifter from a backwater planet, who eventually becomes essential to bringing it down. And no one will ever know his name.

That’s the thing about Andor that this second season really illustrates: it’s not the famous characters, the people that get medal ceremonies or who become high ranking members of government, that get the work done. People like Cassian Andor, like Luthen Rael, made the Rebellion and got it working. They were the ones on the front lines who would give their lives for the cause. They know that the world their building isn’t meant for people like them, but it’s the better place everyone else deserves to have. Andor wasn’t radicalized by the Empire, he just was formed into the person he was always meant to be.

The television series, especially in its second season, underscores that point and illustrates how all of the people on the show were made into their true selves by having to fight back against a massive, evil power trying to rule them all. It adds context and nuance to the great battles from the movies we’ve seen while making the universe feel more lived in and real. These characters aren’t the main heroes we know, they aren’t going to suddenly get to meet Luke Skywalker or Obi-Wan Kenobi. They aren’t “special” in the way many past heroes suddenly are (looking at you, The Mandalorian). Instead these are the people left unknown, unremarked, and Andor gives us their story and makes it compelling.

Andor’s season two is great because it gives us a story we haven’t seen before, in a way Star Wars seems unable to often provide. It doesn’t want to just say, “here’s all the callbacks we can make to what you knew, enjoy!” Instead it wants to really delve into what makes the Rebellion work and why its actions were important. It’s not lip service political theater, it’s a story that feels real, lived in, and essential. It has an immediacy to it that many other Star Wars works lack.

After watching it, my primary takeaway from the show was, “I want more.” Of course, there’s no way for the series to continue because we know exactly where it ends. But it’s the mark of a good series that even getting the perfect story, the perfect satisfying ending, we want more of it. Twenty-four episodes across two seasons feels like too little for this show, and if there were a way to get more of it I’d greedily accept. But by making it two seasons and a tight set of stories, the series keeps its quality high. I’m glad the series didn’t drag itself out, and that the creatives in charge knew when to end it and keep it just right.

Andor is near perfect Star Wars, which is something coming from a guy that doesn’t even really like Star Wars all that much. The show was so good it won me over. And now, I guess, I have to go back and watch Rogue One: A Star Wars Story all over again. Even though I know where it all ends, I have to see it again.