In a franchise that spans decades and dozens of incarnations, it’s difficult to do something truly new. But back in 2016, Rogue One took a step that was virtually unimaginable in the world of Star Wars: It killed everyone. Sure, a few minor characters made it out alive—and a couple of major ones, like Darth Vader, who weren’t especially critical to this particular story—but the heroes we’d followed for most of the film all ended up giving their lives in the service of the galactic rebellion. What might have been a nail-biting thriller about a narrow escape instead concluded as a tragedy about noble sacrifice.
Unfortunately, Rogue One’s radical embrace of fate was marred by the decision to digitally reanimate the actor Peter Cushing, who died in 1994, so he could reprise the role of the Death Star commander Grand Moff Tarkin, and to use the same technology to bring back Carrie Fisher’s Princess Leia without any contribution from the still-living actress. (Fisher died less than two weeks after the film’s release.) Fortunately, Tony Gilroy, who wrote and oversaw the film’s extensive reshoots, got a second crack at the story in 2022, with Andor, a series about the origins of Rogue One’s devil-may-care revolutionary Cassian Andor (Diego Luna). And this time viewers would know going into the series what had shocked them at the end of the film: These characters don’t make it out alive.
Of course, when Andor’s second season picks up, a year after the end of the first, most of the pivotal players are still alive and kicking: Cassian, his lover Bix (Adria Arjona), the senator and future revolutionary leader Mon Mothma (Genevieve O’Reilly), and the rebel spy and antiquities dealer Luthen Rael (Stellan Skarsgård), not to mention their nemeses, the Imperial security officer Dedra Meero (Denise Gough) and the ambitious civil servant Syril Karn (Kyle Soller). But we already know how and when Cassian Andor will die, and every time the opening caption tells us the story has jumped forward another year, we’re that much closer to the end. (The 12-episode season, which premieres at 9 p.m. Eastern on Tuesday, is split into, and will air as, four three-episode chunks, each covering a year before the Death Star–destroying Battle of Yavin: BBY 4, BBY 3, and so on.) As for the rest, well, perhaps some will make it out unscathed. (Critics were sent the entire season in advance, but not even the Bor Gullet could compel me to reveal what happens.) Still, it stands to reason that if characters as important as this to the rebellion—either as participants or opponents—were kicking around when the main Star Wars story gets under way, someone in those films would have at least mentioned them in passing. In that sense, the final tally is no surprise: As Luthen puts it, when it comes to the Empire, “We’ll put them down or die trying. What else is there?”
Although Andor’s first season was released on a weekly schedule, it wasn’t built like one—early episodes especially seemed to end almost arbitrarily, trusting in the power of the franchise to keep viewers coming back. Its second and final season begins in similarly leisurely fashion, with a story that moves so slowly the show’s protagonist spends most of an episode tied up and immobilized, and an entire BBY is devoted to the elaborate festivities and political scheming around the wedding of Mon Mothma’s daughter. But Gilroy and the show’s other writers, who include House of Cards creator Beau Willimon, The Disaster Artist author Tom Bissell, and Nightcrawler writer-director Dan Gilroy (Tony’s brother; a third, John Gilroy, edits the series), are working at a scope that genuinely deserves to be called novelistic, delving into the quotidian aspects of life under imperial rule that other entries in the series rarely take time to explore. It’s the story of how an entire galactic society, and not just one apolitical scrounger, is moved to the point of armed insurrection, the minor slights and major injustices that push a people to the brink. George Lucas has often said that the first Star Wars was inspired by the Viet Cong, but Andor actually follows through on that idea. (There’s also a chapter that seems to be, rather pointedly, modeled after the Dutch resistance to Nazi occupation.) Its rebellion is messy and brutal, sometimes morally murky, withholding the reassurance that doing what is necessary and what is right always dovetail neatly. There are cold-blooded killings and terrorist attacks, explained but not rationalized, as well as an accumulating sense of what building a guerrilla movement costs, and not just in terms of lives. When it comes to depicting the complexities of a populist uprising, Andor is to Star Wars as The Battle of Algiers is to a dorm-room poster of Che Guevara.
Andor is to Star Wars as The Battle of Algiers is to a dorm-room poster of Che Guevara.
It’s also, to be fair, a lot less fun than Lucas’ original trilogy. Gilroy largely sidelines the fantastic elements of the Star Wars universe, the cuddly aliens and monkish mysticism, although he still makes room for the occasional wisecracking droid. This is a world in which the characters bleed visible blood rather than simply falling over when they’re struck by a shaft of light. Heroes die ignoble deaths, and villains escape their just punishment. The rich texture of the show’s sprawling social portraiture sometimes undercuts Star Wars’ origins in the thrill of pulp storytelling; Luthen’s elaborate schemes have more to do with John le Carré than they do Flash Gordon. And while it packs a cumulative wallop, the second season lacks a single storyline as galvanizing as the first’s mass prison breakout. (There’s also nothing to compare with the previous season’s “Freedom is a pure idea” manifesto, although there are several attempts to create a rhetorical spiel of similar impact.)
It’s also a world in which there’s a lot of talk about mineral resources, and the extent to which the empire can plunder a prosperous planet’s natural riches without provoking the ire of its citizens. If you thought the best part of The Phantom Menace was its depiction of intergalactic trade disputes, you’re in for a treat. But if that element seemed like a bizarre addition to Star Wars’ sweeping space opera in 1999, it feels all too relevant now, with daily push-alert reminders of how economic warfare can serve as a glide path to authoritarian rule. I started watching Andor’s second season on the night Cory Booker began his Senate filibuster, and it felt like I was seeing double, watching Cassian and co. build a movement against apparently insurmountable odds while the real-life resistance was gathering steam—a split screen that moved me to contemplate the importance of symbolic gestures versus the immediacy of direction action.
Andor also has a less high-minded job to do, which is to set the stage for one of the lesser entries in the Star Wars franchise. As the show’s story draws closer to Rogue One’s, the Easter eggs start to proliferate, which is inevitable but still something of a letdown. Unless you’ve seen the movie more recently than nine years ago, you may be confused why the camera seems to linger on certain not-quite-familiar faces. It’s a little like being at a high school reunion and trying to place a classmate you never really talked to. (There’s also one bit of prominent recasting, although it goes over smoothly.) But even though it’s a prequel to a prequel, Andor still finds a way to give its story a sense of weight and finality, closing its own chapter before “Watch Next” pops up in the corner of the screen. For the first time in the franchise’s nearly 50 years, you emerge with a sense of not just what the rebels were fighting for, but who—the ordinary citizens who bent under the empire’s yoke and were inspired to cast it off. For all its death-haunted foreboding, it’s also a show about how people lived, and how the onset of tyranny can poison even the most mundane aspects of domestic life. Gilroy is still telling a fable, but it’s one infused with so much intricacy and thoughtfulness that it feels almost uncannily real, a world you could step right into. Never has a galaxy so far away felt so close.
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