The Series is now over. we can now officially declare we avoided it! Not one Jedi, not one sith, not one appearance of Vader of the emperor, not one lightsaber, not one physical manifestation of “The Force”. They actually did Star wars with zero bullshit.
These couple of weeks, Hexbear has been full of Andor posts. Considering these last 3 episodes were probably the best television I’ve ever seen in my life, I figure there are gonna be a lot of people who want to share their thoughts on the finale.
I’ll be honest, until episode 10, I thought Season 2 wasn’t for me. it’s wasn’t bad but I just felt it didn’t have the punch of Season 1. that season gave us novel tropes like a gold heist, a prison break, a riot, etc. season 2 was a more character focused set up for rogue one.
but the last 3 episodes, they changed everything. every minute was amazing.
Andor is often called perfect for someone who doesn’t think they like star wars. If it was just a standalone sci-fi spy thriller, it would be still be the best thing on television, but what’s truly the crowning accomplishment is that if you do know a lot about star wars, it somehow becomes ever better. This show redeems other media in this franchise. it redeems rogue one, it even strengthens Episode 4.
How much the destruction of the death star cost. In episode 4, the audience is shown “It was a longshot, but somehow a backwater orphan pilot managed to score the killing shot and destroy the battle station.”
in Rogue One, they’re shown “Okay, it was an even longer shot than that, because before they got to that point, they had to do a big adventure culiminating in getting the plans off Scarif with just seconds to spare”
And I always thought that was sort of weak, because it’s a work of fiction. fiction naturally collects around the execution of extremely lucky acts. how ever unlikely their success was is ultimately arbitrary, they can always be written to succeed in spite of the odds.
But it’s not about their luck, it’s about their sophistication. it’s that the rebels were doing all of these things collectively and competently, that they had become what they needed to be at their finest hour, and all the contributions, all the sacrifices of every single character all lead to this being possible.
Or I’m just high an none of this makes sense.
I loved the helmet-less thumb headed wannabe operator ISB SWAT Storm Troopers.
The moustache on the squad leader was certainly something to behold
Heert repeating the orders at him again like he is a child causes such a good reaction shot from moustache man
Krennic has read the uniform code.
Yeah it was never about their luck. I think people focus on the Vader hallway scene for the EPIC shit and not that it is another moment driving home how collective the sacrifices are. We already saw Cassian and Jyn die and as the camera rises above the planet, the bridge of the Profundity is burning, the plans are handed off and a dozen troopers die in a desperate act to just barely slip them through a doorway, one trooper even fucking goes to elbow vader with no weapon, literally just making Vader kill him to buy a second longer.
They didn’t get lucky, they just bought time with their blood
Legit one of the greatest pieces of sci-fi to ever grace the screen
“We fight to win. That means we lose… and lose, and lose, and lose. Until we’re ready.” - Luthen
That makes me feel better about losing all the time.
I liked Season 1 but thought Season 2 was great. Maybe I need to rewatch season 1.
I like that the only surviving ISB supervisor we know by name is Lagret, the bald guy who was just kind of average at his job, the “competent” and ambitious ones like Meero, Heert and Blevin (disappeared off screen) are gone along with Partagaz.
Like perhaps a bunch of sociopaths competing against each other and getting purged for failure isn’t an effective structure for an organisation.
Man I hated star wars before and had to be convinced multiple times to watch this. One of the best tv shows i’ve ever watched, abolutely incredible. Star wars will never be this good again.
I will remember Nemik’s manifesto. And I keep coming back to the Past/Present Suite.
The only way I think they could sustain it is some kind of dense political drama, either about the collapse of the New Republic or the structural rebuilding needed after episode 9.
I wrote a fucking paper on the first season of Andor and I can confidently say I do not regret doing that. I opened the paper with Nemik’s manifesto, and I have probably listened to this one monolog so many times I could repeat it by heart. And then these last three episodes hit, and I’m glued to the screen, keeping it together, and they just play it again, and I’m a crying mess. God, academic writing will never again be this much fun, but also, Star Wars will never again be this much fun.
please share?
Unfortunately, it’d be a major doxx, so no
I am watching Rogue One the next day after finishing the season. And Andor is so good it retroactively ruins Rogue One. The way Cassian is played in the movie, the rest of the characters, etc. This is very messy. It’s still one of my favorite star wars movies, but damn.
Every time I watch it, I’m like this is way worse than I remember. Then that amazing final act swoops in like a MiB memory wipe telling me it’s actually good.
I was literally telling my friends that. The final act saves the movie.
I remember reading through a lot of interviews at the time and people on the set were literally saying that as soon as Disney brought additional writers in, it all came together. I think it wasn’t just Gilroy, but hiring him (&others) seems to have made the final act of Rogue One as good as it was.
When I watch it these days I’ll be patient until we meet Saw Gerrera, then get angry at how they butcher the character, and then enjoy the rest of the movie.
I just went and say Rogue One immediately after the last episode of Andor, and whilst things do tie neatly at all levels from the end of Andor into Rogue One, the focus changes from Andor to Jyn and whilst you don’t really notice a disjunction in how the characters were played between one and the other, the character depth is naturally a lot less in Rogue One.
What does change massivelly is the style of story - Andor is about people (in imaginary circumstances), Rogue One is just an action rollercoaster - and the pacing which is very different between the Series and the Film (as expected, both from the difference in length and the style of story).
It was also interesting to notice how small the role of Senator Mothma was in Rogue One compared to how big it is in Andor - a few other minor characters in Rogue One do get much more fleshed out in Andor but the Senator has by far the most extreme difference in story presence between one and the other.
I’m glad my boy Wilmon is safe
He lives to huff gasoline another day
I had to rewatch that scene like 3 times to understand what the hell was happening
One of those things that younger generations might not realise is petrol/gasoline used to smell great and make you feel a slight high.
People used to huff it before safer Low aromatic was introduced.
That scene kind of echoes that and suggests maybe that is why Saw’s breathing is steadily worsening.
pretty funny that Andor’s sister was a total red herring that was never explored beyond the very first scene of the series.
Oh yes, and that little detail about
young Kleya and Andor’s sister looking very alike was also a funny thing. Yet another red herring, because no, Kleya is not Andor’s sister.
All I can say is, THANK GOD!
I want to see that droid after Endor wearing more medals than Zhukov
Incredible that Tony Gilroy came along and just made the best thing Star Wars has put out since 1980. Why would he do that?
My personal enjoyment of the operatic tragedy that is Revenge of the Sith might edge out Andor, slightly, but loving ROTS is what I imagine it must feel like to have a kid who’s a real screw-up. You love them and you see all the best parts of them, but you can’t deny the mistakes they’ve made. But unlike ROTS I don’t needs to qualify my enjoyment of Andor. It’s not like twenty years from now I’m going to say “oh I like Andor but have you read the novelization? It completely realizes what that show was trying to do,” like I do now with both ROTS and Rogue One.
I think next paycheck I’m going to splurge and buy a lot of the old X-wing novel series if I can find one that’s not too high.
Hey, I’m someone who likes AotC despite its many flaws and I’ve never met a single person who does.
I love AOTC, on paper. A hard-boiled detective story; Star-crossed lovers; A political thriller; All set across the epic backdrop of space in an age where a once great government is coming to its end. What’s not to love?
In practice though if ROTS is a screw-up child, and TPM is like a kid who you thought was going to be president but then ended up as a working mid-tier stand-up comic like just enough to make a living but not enough to “make it”, then AOTC is a kid who grew up to be a serial killer.
Also I’m pretty sure the novelization is by R.A. Salvatore. I’ve not read it but I have read some of his other novels and the man’s not a miracle worker like Stover.
I love the version of AOTC that lives in my head, but every seven years or so when I convince myself to do a rewatch I find I just can’t enjoy it. Some really great ideas, but the execution of them is something else. I really think that with the right script doctor, some judicious editing, and maybe a second director who is just in charge of the actors, it could have been something really great. But what we’re left with is tough to love. But I respect you for doing what I can not.
Yeah, I agree. I will say Beyond the Stars does a lot of heavy lifting and the love scenes are a admirable failure. It’s hard to show two damaged people who are bad for each other genuinely in love without the jarring stilted tone shifts. A better dialogue writer than Lucas (who isn’t a bad storyteller but is so visual it’s hard to fix) could have done it.
Also I can’t believe we learn some of Luthen’s backstory. I just assumed he was someone a bit like Mon Mothma, using his real name and the real identity he had during the time of the Republic as an antiquities dealer as a cover for his rebel activities. Much more interesting to learn that he was an NCO with a penchant for artifacts who got fed up one day and made a choice of where to stand, just like the people he recruits. Interesting that it seems no one, not even Kleya, will ever know Luthen’s real name or who he really was before he rebelled.
Also it’s contributes to the fact Ghorman and Alderaan were simply the violence coming back to the imperial core, the empire was slaughtering people across the outer and mid rim for years, Cintra’s family, Kleya’s, hanging Cassian’s adoptive father etc.
I like that Luthen’s backstory preempts Clean Wehrmacht Myth style talk of the Imperial Army which I think Solo played into a bit
I mean Solo wasn’t exactly making fancy desserts on Mimban. And if you recall Cassian was with the rebels there.
if you recall Cassian was with the rebels there.
I had completely missed that one, good catch
Cassian fought on Mimban but we don’t know where that lines up with Solo.
Cassian also says he wasn’t even fighting imperials but other rebels/partisans, so a backwater civil war between separatists.
Then the Empire came in later to mop up is possible.
Cassian was there with the empire. Remember it was a penal unit, he was jailed for attacking a trooper with a stick, spent time in prison, got sent as a penal battalion according to him though Luthen says he was a unit cook. He was 100% on the side of the Empire as prison labor. The Mimbanese had been Republic aligned and trained by clones, but fought against the Empire sometime later. The scenes are too dark to make anything out, but the costumes for them have them using retrofitted or broken clone armor.
Remember it was a penal unit,
I re-watched the scene, read wookiepedia and a few Reddit threads and the phrasing is pretty ambiguous and there’s a bit of disagreement.
Out of a cell and into the mud could definitely be read as penal unit or a just released prisoner volunteering in a flash point on another planet.
I did actually read it as penal unit the first time I watched and then as separatist after listening to “A more civilised age” podcast on Andor, where that was their take.
Make sense, I was misremembering.
I suspect Mimbaan was a 9 way clusterfuck between the Empire, Republic rebels, Sepratist rebels, Random wierd space-trots, and 4 different types of localist fascist.
I liked how the imperials failed to prevent the superweapon leak because of careerist competition in their ranks, and how each of the fascists who were developed as characters died full of doubt about how they spent their lives. Delicious.
I saw someone describe Karn’s death as “crushing” in an article and it’s like no it was perfect, he sucked.
Crushing from his perspective – in sort of a Javert/Jean Valjean sort of way, but it turns out to be completely one-sided on Javert/Syril’s part.
Yeah I love the one sided part. It was like an inverted version of “But for me, it was Tuesday” from Street fighter.
Perfect encapsulation of how pathetic fascist society really is
I enjoyed it all. The only thing I don’t like is that a Star Wars show seems to be the only way to get a high-budget story about actual empire. Maybe Coogler’s X-Files will go into the deep state more than the original.
