Andor season 2: 4 BBY (episodes 1-3)

Stellan and the rest of the stellar cast of Andor

Andor’s got a novel approach for season 2: each tranche of three episodes is set a year after the last, and covers only a few days. Then BAM: it’s a year later. The next set of episodes will be 3 years later, then 4, the five, which leads directly into Rogue One.

I admit I’ve been really looking forward to Andor season two. I didn’t have much, or anything really, to criticize about season one, so my expectations were extremely high. 

Season two begins with Cassian (Diego Luna) stealing an experimental Imperial fighter craft. Everything, naturally, goes wrong. 

Meanwhile, Dedra (Denise Gough) is attending a Wansee Conference style pow wow led by Orson Krennic (Ben Mendelsohn), the lisping villain of Rogue One, and Mon Mothma (Geneva O’Reilly) is throwing a wedding party for her daughter, with (surprise!) Luthien (Stellan Skarsgard) in attendance. Banality ensues.

The Space Wedding? Oh dear God no, not The Space Wedding!

The sets are absolutely astonishing. The production design is top notch. The costumes are sumptuous. The direction is solid. The acting is fantastic.

You know where this is going.

The writing did not strike me as being as incisive as in season one.

The biggest issue I had with the first episode one came out of left field, and is admittedly an issue of petty minded personal taste: Krennic opens his nefarious conference by flipping on a big screen TV and showing… a cheesy promo video, complete with anachronistic Fifties-style voice over. It took me completely out of the Galaxy Far Far Away and back to ours so fast I got universe-bubble whiplash. 

I also hated the Fifties-style diner in the Prequels, and I say that as someone who absolutely loves diners.

Yes, yes, obviously, there must be some kind of mass media in the Star Wars universe, and I am admittedly being unfair. Perhaps they are evoking a 1930’s style propaganda film (Star Wars is set in arguably set in a clunky high-tech analogue to earth in the 1930s/1940s). Yet everything else in Andor is SO pitch perfect! Great care is taken to present a universe that feels like a real place, one with fantastic world building integrity. They’ve made up language, machinery, architecture, technology, music, fashion, cultural practices, the works… and then they present a video that feels ripped from Fallout.

Ah well.

The wedding went on longer than I’d have liked, but that’s a wedding for you. Points for painful verisimilitude. The in-universe music was jarringly Top Forty. Another quibble, but I’d have preferred they used otherworldly, unusual music to play. That’s kind of a franchise thing, going back to the Catina band.

You need a drink? I need a drink! This wedding feels all TOO REAL.

Andor’s misadventure was… interesting. It touched on how factionalism and in-fighting hold back many a revolution.

The highlight of the first arc, to my great surprise, was the Lives of of the Fabulous and Fascist: Dedra and Syril (Kyle Soller). Turns out, Syril and Dedra have been shacking up since their high adrenaline escapades on Ferrix. Now, they’re preparing for something far worse: the dreaded introduction dinner to Syril’s ever-charming mom (a gloriously cringe-inducing Kathryn Hunter). 

Forget the Death Star: tremble before the terror of dinner with Syril's mom!

She's all about layering in subtext… with a trowel. 

Or a concrete placement hose.

Dedra mentions that she grew up in an Imperial orphanage, yet lacked for nothing, to which our gravel-voiced terror-mom trolls: except a mother’s love. Not missing a beat, Dedra deadpans back: ‘We didn’t know what we were missing.’

I laughed and laughed and laughed.

It was, hands down, the funniest line in Star Wars since Han quipped, ‘I know’ (which, incidentally, is a line change dreamed up by Harrison Ford, who didn’t like the original, ‘I love you, too’ We owe a lot to actor innovation when it comes to George’s dialogue). 

Can Syril, Dedra, and his mom get their own spinoff sitcom? Pitch it as All in the Space Gestapo Family. 

Who knew this trio could be so damn funny?

The heroes get the great speeches, but the villains... they get the character quirks!

The hit new sitcom spinoff: Fascist Friends

Genevieve O’Reilly has some juicy material to play with; sadly her character has to push feelings beneath the surface, so her performance is more subtle, and requires a lot of pained expressions. Poor Stellan has little to work with, and little screen time. He’s largely wasted. Diego is reactive, overshadowed by a rag-tag rebel rabble.

Other bright spots: the casual, day to day oppression of Imperial rule was convincingly depicted. Absolute authority leads inevitably to abuses; not everything has to be space battles, lightsaber duels and backflips. That’s not to say you don’t need them from time to time! It is called ‘Star Wars’ not ‘Daily Imperial Indignities’, after all.

So… would I recommend Andor season two, year two? Yes, but with caveats. It’s a slow burn, and there are some… jarring choices. As a peek into the day to day in the Star Wars universe, it’s a must watch. 

But season one was better. 

Let’s see what year three brings...