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Three episode premiere September 21. Twelve episodes for Season One.

Trailers from newest to oldest:

Official Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cKOegEuCcfw

Teaser Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j5UX1Adanis

Sizzle Reel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gSW-pARyP-M

Oh hell yeah. Rogue One is still my favorite of all the new stuff. More of that kind of jam is exactly what I was hoping for.

Sign me the fuck up. More Saw Gerrera? Fuck. Yeah.

Yeah, this looks exactly like what I wanted out of this series. The tone looks great.

Still think Rogue One is kinda crap, and have no interest in a prequel to a prequel featuring a character that has not stuck in my memory at all.

That said, this show is notable for being the first of the D+ Star Wars shows not being shot in the Volume at all.

This easily looks like the best thing that has come out on Disney +, I hope it lives up to the hype and the cuts we are seeing for trailers.

Have you tried rewatching it? I did so accidentally and it was better than I ever remembered. I did like it a lot more than you the first time though.

I really like Rogue One after a rewatch and with the benefit of hindsight as well.

The fact alone that there was not a Jedi or specifically somebody Force Senstivie related to any of the main characters of the original movies improved it tenfold to that "everybody who isn't a Skywalker is a Palpatine" crap they pulled later.

Also more Saw Gerrera played by Forest Whitaker. Yes, thank you.

I am one with the Force, the Force is with me.

I'm interested. I think this is going to be the test of whether someone at Disney keeps inserting child-friendly goofy shit where it doesn't belong. If something like the scooter mods show up here, that will be proof enough.

A lifetime of meditation bought him 15 seconds of Stormtrooper Marksmanship Academy blaster resistance. But he spent it when it counted.

--Dave

No, but I'll have to rewatch in within the next month or so because I accidentally got the gf into Star Wars a while back and it's the last one she hasn't seen.

Personally I'd rather just show her Seven Samurai or Magnificent Seven and tell her "Rogue One is like this if they didn't make any of the characters worth caring about, opting to coast by on Star Wars imagery instead" but I don't think that's going to fly. I'll grudgingly admit it's better than the low bar the prequel and sequel trilogies set though. Last Jedi and Rise of Skywalker both released after watching Rogue One, so that alone will probably make me more forgiving on a rewatch.

Trailer looks great on its own terms. But I'm starting to think they are serious about leaving the main character out of the k2so show...

He won't be part of this season at least (https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-news/andor-k2so-star-wars-disney-1235191968/).

Shoulda sunk more points into Blast Resistance.

Fuckin' min/maxers...

This had a helluva start. First three episodes are now streaming.

Cassian already has a more interesting backstory than Han Solo and Chewbacca. It was a good call to release the first three episodes together, it's basically a prologue.

This whole thing screams Tony Gilroy. It’s a Bourne Story set in the Star Wars galaxy.

I've watched the first two episodes, and frankly, Andor seems to be the kind of rogue Han Solo wanted to be, but couldn't because he had a heart of gold. This show is a helluva lot grittier than anything they've tried to do other than, obviously, Rogue One. I'm here for it.

Of course, I have RL friends who won't watch it because it's too "woke" and is "stuffed full of identity politics." I just roll my eyes because I know they will never, ever not be assholes.

At this point there are more than a few people who non-ironically identify with the Empire so Rebels, Jedi, victims of the Empire, you name it, all seem "woke".

Well, its a considerate way to let you know that they are dumb fucks whose opinion on anything you can safely ignore.

This series is an absolutely pleasant surprise. I didn't think Disney would go in the required gritty direction to make a worthy successor to Rogue One for the small screen. But it really seems they have the balls to do so.

I'm liking this a lot more than I did Rogue One.  If people hadn't reminded me that this was the Rogue One guy, I honestly would not have made the connection, because I forgot everything from that movie except Donnie Yen doing not nearly enough action scenes, Forest Whitaker doing... something?  and Darth Vader chopping up a bunch of dudes at the end.  Maybe I nodded off partway through.  Anyway, this has been very entertaining.

It is the best thing Disney has done with the Star Wars property since Mandalorian and, of course, Rogue One. That's because it is not even remotely focusing on any of the legacy characters, nor feeling the need to shoehorn in everything anyone identifies with the original trilogy. I'm sure there will be Jedi somewhere in this, but I'm enjoying not seeing light sabers flapping about everywhere, and a protagonist who isn't infallible and bland.

I finally caught up and watched the first  3.

Very very good. Pacing feels pretty good.

This shit right here. The fact that there's even an infinitesimal amount of people that were all. "Yeah, Palpatine was right" makes me want to kick a bunch of motherfuckers in the dick.

This is some John Le Carre shit set in Star Wars and it's fucking great.

The secret to making good Star Wars content is to not stick every other goddamn Star Wars thing into it.

I expect this will eventually go the way of Mando/Boba -- he'll team up with a Jedi, he'll move to Tatooine, and it'll be back to being every other Star Wars thing.  But for now this show is fuckin great.

I'm hoping not. They have already said this show is limited to two seasons. The original plan was for season one to show a short time span and season two makes a five year jump and will also have more time jumps between episodes. That should allow for them to add K-2SO, which Tudyk confirmed he is in the series but not season one.

I think there is good material to mine here, from Zahn's Allegiance/Choices of One books. Good folks trying to do good things for people inside a shitty system, how far can you go, when does it break, showing how to grapple with that would be of value for people struggling with the changes of modern culture. Actually a Hand of Judgement limited series would be great (sans Luke/Han/etc but maybe with Jade).

This show is great Star Wars, but I'm a huge Rogue One fanboy so that was kind of a given.

This latest episode did more interesting world building than every single one of the Abrams/Johnson Star Wars sequels. Just concise, clever storytelling with expositions and easter eggs galore. It's just an hour long setup episode and I wanted more.

Yup literally zero action and still the best episode so far.

This shit keeps getting better.

The scene with Skeen where they are comparing tattoos was just so perfectly unlike most of the character interactions we see in Star Wars, and I'm here for it. This doesn't look like anything else Star Wars (other than Rogue One) and it's characters feel like they have so much more depth than typical Star Wars too. There's just no comparison between trash like Boba Fett and this.

This show is fantastic. I'm just at a loss how this show comes out of the same brain trust as the Boba Fett garbage.

The Book of Boba Fett came from the same brain trust as The Mandalorian, more or less. One "less" is that Robert Rodriguez was the co-showrunner along side Jon Favreau. But really it was the writing that suffered in that show, for whatever reason, though I'm assuming it's cause Favreau did not have as much time to devote to Boba Fett as he did The Mandalorian (hence the co-showrunner).

The series creator, showrunner, and primary writer on Andor is Tony Gilroy, who was the co-screenwriter on Rogue One and has a lot of screenwriting experience (e.g. all but the latest Bourne movie).

Getting stuck with a shitty main character and trying to make an old fat man do action scenes instead of just putting someone capable in the suit ruined that show.

I hope the Rogue One/Andor team gets solidified for regular projects. Best new era Star Wars by a lot, and I like most of the new stuff overall. But with the RO/A stuff, I don't have to engage the 'it's just pulp entertainment, don't overthink it' circuit in my brain, which is a nice bonus.

The imperial officer getting shot by the rebels for trying to get them to release a boy? fuck me that was some good shit. Also I love how there are no Storntroopers in this, even the TIE pilots started with their helmets off.

They've already committed to a second (and final) season. There was a story that was later retracted that Tony Gilroy signed a "first-look" contract with LucasFilm which included plans for more shows and a movie but I would assume they are still interesting in working together and are in negotiations for something after the 2nd season.

I just can't help but shake the sense that Boba Fett went into the shitter mostly it was done on the quick and they actually didn't have any really great ideas for it (resulting in some more obvious and less skillful ripoffs of old films and shows like Lawrence of Arabia). But also I feel like someone involved overall at Disney balked at the possibility of a more amoral tone/storyline that really went deep into the Star Wars underworld, leading to a lot of dumb shit throughout. I also get the feeling that maybe Temuera Morrison was just not up to playing a more dimensional version of the character.

Seems like they understand the creative underpinnings of Rogue One better and have better matches in terms of influences/templates to sustain the series.

Personally I thought the ideas and the acting in Boba fett were completely fine.

The writing was (mostly) bad.

The problem with The Book Of Boba Fett was that they had a Boba Fett movie they wanted to make, and an extended Mandalorian season 2.5 episode they want to make, and then 4-5 hours of screen time to fill with bullshit.

--Dave

I think Boba not making the top ten coolest character list on his own show might have been a problem too.

I'm more surprised that the production team is letting Andor be an absolutely amoral killer than anything. The ending of the scene with Skeen in the latest episode was refreshingly jarring.

They established his older self was like that in Rogue One -- it makes sense his younger self is like that too.

Just watched the last episode of this - I think I need to rewatch Rogue One to see where some of these people end up and don't know if there's a second season planned for this but that was a hell of a way to end a season.

Mon Mothma's dress was exquisite.

There is a second season. Won’t be out till 2024, assuming no delays. Filming starts next month and is scheduled to finish August 2023 and then there will be a year of post-production.

Is this the first SW show or movie that in no way shape or form caters to children? like I can't imagine kids even enjoying this show.

Amazing what you can do with the story rather than having to focus on certain characters.

I would say Rogue One wasn't really for kids, which makes sense.

It still had space battles and tons of action and even some lightsaber stuff. Edit: also humor, which we have zero of so far here. And yeah I know K-2SO is coming next season.

Do you also feel She Hulk needed to be raunchier?

To be clear, I am not complaining just surprised. I think this show is perfect as is and not catering to children vastly improves any property.

My boi Cassian shoots first AND last.  :why_so_serious:

Season's not over, you've got five more episodes.

Kids is a pretty broad range though. Maybe 6-9 year olds might appreciate star wars but not r1. But I think r1 is much more accessible than it would sound from a plot synopsis.

It's kind of amazing really. That little 2-3 minute scene between Mon Mothma and the banker did more world-building about what the empire and the rebellion is than the entire 9-movie series. Like, just absolutely pitch perfect, understated writing with good acting. The same goes for the scene where Luthen tells Mothma what's up, time to shit or get off the pot. This show proves just because there is pew pew and starships and silly droids, it doesn't mean the story can't be mature with real stakes for the players involved.

Andor getting all Kafka-ed at the end was a good touch.

Hopefully the quality of casting, script, and acting here will elevate the rest of the stuff. Pulpy is fun, but it can be pulpy fun /and/ a lot more. If we hadn't had folks like Ford, Fisher, Guinness, and Cushing, there probably wouldn't have been the level of enduring success for the franchise.

I love that the team got a crack at a show and doubled down on stuff they kind of had to hand-wave in the short-format of movies. I'm enjoying the move to longer format, when the production supports it like this. And stuff like She Hulk/Loki/etc can stretch out and get weird. I do hope they can find a slot for something of this show's quality, but still with a hopeful, charismatic quality of the original trilogy's cast. Still down for that show to be Lando with Glover though  :grin: And honestly I liked the guy who played Han in Solo. Throw in something based on Zahn's Scoundrels and you've got a good heist-themed series, just go full Oceans on it.

(Threash, I know, I was just being extra last week)

He made the only logical move there. Go with him and he shoots you in the back. Tell the boss and it's your word against his.

He then explained himself. Paid off the doctor for his ride. And left the rebellion with their haul and one fewer traitor in their ranks. The guy is damaged goods, but he is doing the right thing within his broken little world. Bonus points for it also being a great off-ramp from the gig and potential future rebel entanglements. The dude just wants to be left alone.  (Or so he tells himself.)

Also, the yo mamma joke in the first episode was fucking gold. That scene was prefect

So I hear mostly praise for this show but I saw a video that had a title saying Andor was just ok. Would you believe his main complaint was that it's woke?  :oh_i_see:

Anyway can't wait to see the next episode.

That part. This show flourishes in the gray. He made the least shitty of a host of shitty choices and still ended up with a price on his head.

This is one of the reasons I just don't watch or listen to much critique of Star Wars properties unless I'm already pretty familiar with the person making the critique. Of all the Disney shows to shit on for being too "woke" (and we all know that means having main characters who are not white cis males), Andor is like the last fucking one to get all bent out of shape about. But like most shitty racist incel takes, logic doesn't enter into it at all. I've RL buddies who have refused to watch it because they believe other Internet commentators whose sole take boils down to "It's not white male enough for me" while insisting they aren't racist or misogynist, and I can't even remotely tell them differently without losing my shit. They also say the same shit about She-Hulk, mind you.

These are also the same people who insist that it's Kathleen Kennedy who has destroyed with her social justice warrior/woke/feminist agenda, despite her also being involved with projects like the Mandolorian which they totally dig.

I really, really, really don't get the Wokeism complaints about this beyond Disney being one of the IPs that this particular sort of GamerGate dredge have identified as something that is inherently threatening. I mean Andor has still got middle aged white males in all positions of real power and authority. It's got a mix of women, people of colour and white men as protagonists/antagonists. I could maybe see an argument that the senior bad guys are all white men but it's not like there aren't a mix of Imperials and Rebels from all those backgrounds. Fuck, it's not like they're gender or race swapping known  characters (which isn't a problem either beyond being a bit jarring if they're actually meant to be the same person, in the same universe i.e. not a reboot). Anyone who accuses Andor of this is telling you they think that shows need to have white male leads and representation needs to be a minority of background characters are allowed to be women/black/etc.

This show makes the early Empire feel like a real organisation that is starting to bed down and extend its control into everyday life. We are here actually seeing the shift from the co-option of the Galactic Senate and existing Old Republic institutions into the Empire asserting direct control over people's lives. We also get to see the start of the Rebellion and it's believable. The kinds of people who are willing to strike a blow against tyranny and kill if necessary are a mix of idealists, victims and opportunistic criminals. It's gritty in a way that makes it realistic, it's definitely not Space Opera but it is still very much Star Wars.

There is nothing to get about wokeism complaints, every single person that has ever used "woke" or "wokeism" unironically is a god damned moron not worth listening to.

I've been stretching my brain trying to think of things and all I can come back with is the hyper-competent woman in the ISB who keeps proving she's better than her male peer.

It's the new dog whistle for those without a real argument, but somehow want to stir the pot... The trolls are just adding to their lexicon. Anyone using the word 'woke' now-a-days can be dismissed because challenging them will lead to nothing.

why did you need to stretch your brain at all, wokeism means "it has women and people of color".

I don't think it even means that any more, because I'm sure there are things which contain only white men that are still "woke".  It's come to mean "anything that doesn't cater to my fee-fees in exactly the right way."  You can probably find somebody out there complaining that Fox News is too woke.

Just a thought experiment to see if I could find a valid argument there, especially since this show has much less meat for the complainers than something like a She-Hulk.

Not just 'somebody' like it is rare. They're the entire audience for OAN and NewsMax.

--Dave

Yeah, but the male peer was a Black guy so Wokeception.

There isn't a valid argument. Again, it's mostly from guys who "refuse to watch Star Wars because it went all woke." That is just an absolutely stupid statement regardless of what justification they try to use.

I can 100% see someone making the argument viewing the Corpo security guy as a direct attack on them. White guy with delusions of grandeur who is adequately competent and ends up getting absolutely fucked and sent into a meaningless desk job. From the viewpoint of the 'wokeism everywhere all at once' lot I can see them viewing this as basically a direct attack considering the competent Imperials that we see are women or black men (there are clearly competent, more senior Imperials but we don't spend enough time with them to really register). On the Rebel side we've got the art dealer and Andor himself (As someone from the UK I really struggle to get the Latino element, is Andor white for purposes of this or is he hispanic?). We've got two white guys in the rebel group but one of them's a scumbag so that's clearly an attack on white men as well.

Now I think that's a really surface level read of what the Corpo character's story is meant to show. I think he's got something set up for Season 2 but he's also meant to demonstrate that the Empire isn't a good thing even for people who are genuinely dedicated to its ideals, it's an uncaring system of repression that crushes anyone who isn't already in power. However on the surface level it's a white man who is humanised but not sympathetic and who ends up in a shitty situation. If the character had been played by a woman I imagine the complaints would just switch to having too much screen time and a boring storyline. Which really is another big element.

I think this one is going to get hate because like Rogue One it really does reject the heroic Space Opera nature of Star Wars and I think that's the real underlying complaint from the MRA crowd. Wokeism is wrapped up in it because there are women and people of colour given prominence and treated as normal characters but ultimately it's because this is rejecting the good/evil and heroic Star Wars conception. The 'bad guys' are still people, with motivations and consequences we can relate to and sympathise with. The 'good guys' actions have consequences for people that are negative. It's a real world and they don't like that. I don't know most of them would realise that's their problem here but I think deep down that's what's making them uncomfortable when watching it and they're blaming it on the surface thing. Except for the ones that saw a black man in a trailer and lost their shit, they're just mindless racists.

The white security guy was forced to move back to Coruscant and live with his mother so that might hit some of the chuds close to home too. As for his competence, he still got in over his head and got a bunch of people killed on a hunch and is now making a nuisance of himself because he still thinks he did the “right thing” despite a bunch of evidence to the contrary.

The stuff they’re building in a he prison this episode? Guaranteed it’s materiel for the Imperial war machine, like TIE fighter parts or some such. The Saw Gerrera cameo was also a solid bit of worldbuilding. From the “was that you?” back and forth denials to the obvious signs of Saw’s already started descent into the mad state we found him in by Rogue One.

He has a noticeable Mexican accent.

His mom is one of the standout actors thus far. Completely nailed the role.

Most instantly hateable character since Joffrey in GoT.

The in-universe explanation is “Galactic Basic Standard” (i.e. English) is not his native language. The tribe he’s from has its own unique language so his Galactic Basic is tinged with the phonemes of his native language.

More details here (you can dismiss the adblocker pop up):

https://www.cheatsheet.com/entertainment/andor-diego-luna-reveals-significance-cassians-accent.html/

I've been paying attention to the accents of different characters and have appreciated that they seem to be making an effort to have it make sense, with the core-world imperials mostly having stuffy British accents and everyone else having varying (if largely American-ish) accents.  Stellan Skarsgard being a possible exception but I guess we don't actually know where he's from originally even though he's now a rich guy living on Coruscant. 

I just kind of handwave the accents away. After all, if we're being really real, none of these motherfuckers are speaking English anyway.  :why_so_serious:

Just binged this up to the current episode.  Overall great show (though wish maybe the episodes were longer and the story moved faster so as to show him getting up to more different adventures).  I agree with most things written so far.  Catching up with this thread, a few things in response...

Wokeism:  Agreed this is about the dumbest show to bring that complaint on, as it avoids any of the usual clichés.  Though I notice you all were trying to figure out what could possibly be woke about this series, and didn't hit the number one thing that stood out to me.  Two of the main'ish characters are bi-racial lesbian lovers.  Like, when I saw that it made me instantly think the usual suspects would throw a hissy fit.  I assume that's probably the main reason people on twitter scream about it and nothing else, because there is pretty much nothing else about it that comes close.

I mean, they made his entire planetary culture a ripe off of indigenous Latin American culture, so makes sense they run with him having an accent.  I wouldn't classify any of his tribe as 'white'.  The actor himself is Mexican.

I don't think it's that. The criticisms I saw were published before the episode introducing their relationship even aired. I think the character of Bix annoyed them (competent, smart woman).

There was more black people in that jail than in the rest of the star wars universe combined.

Finally got around to this and watched all the available eps yesterday.  Jumps up into the very top tier of SW stuff.  I was not prepared for Smoke Show Mon Mothma.

Same actress played her in Rogue 1, she also did the voice acting for Rebels.

This show is just consistently great. For an episode where not a lot happened, holy shit, a LOT happened. I'm not sure how watching an episode of "Death Widget Factory, The Movie" through the lens of Cool Hand Luke in space while advancing a plot line of "bankers moving money on the downlow" and "stalker lusts after spy" was so engrossing, but there it is.

Also, Bix is just perfect eye candy and turns out is a decent actress.

Yeah, she’s been hot since her turn as Dorothy in Emerald City.

As for the intrigue? All of that shit was super intense. From the “we’re gonna fund the rebellion with mob money” to “the guys on level two figured out that no one’s actually getting out, so they murked the whole level.”

Tense as fuuuuuuck.

I just wanted to say I'm really happy to have been completely wrong about this.

Well, at least until we all realize Luthen is a secret Jedi and we have to congratulate your foresight!  :awesome_for_real:

And there's still plenty of time to jump the shark in season two.

Honestly, I could see Luthen being a Jedi. It’d be particularly ballsy running that kinda shit in Palpatine’s backyard while being Force sensitive.

This is the best Star Wars. I mentioned it in Discord, but this has some of the best world building I've seen with this IP. It just makes me angry because this is the shit we should have had but we've had nothing but garbage with the exception of things like Solo/R1.

I'm really enjoying the ride with this show, but in the grand scheme of things, we're just wasting our time because we know how it ends. Disney will probably just keep making different stories inside the Skywalker saga timeline and never stop. Hopefully we get more Andors and less Boba Fetts.

Filoni should go, imo. Put whomever is the big brain behind this R1/Andor production team in charge of overall properties for SW. If we have to keep Filoni around, keep him in cartoons I can safely ignore. I tried to like the Bad Batch, I really did. I made it maybe 4 episodes.

And I love Favreau, but he's done his Iron Man thing, injecting money and life into the SWCU (or whatever). Helped develop a style working within the Volume. Got some nice practical sets and costuming to set the tone. Now it's time to go, or be limited to a one-shot movie here and there. I still think there's a place for the pulpy kind of stuff the IP grew from, and he hit a lot of good notes (mostly in Mando S1), but it got out of hand and sucked up too many resources for not enough payoff and kept getting more absurd. I don't dislike it as much as most, but given the alternative, I'll take more Andor, even when it's a show about factory workers. More tension around what's going on on Level 2 than basically everything that happened in Mando.

Rogue One had already been a high water mark for the New Era, Andor shows it wasn't a fluke.

Glad to see I'm not the only one who liked Solo. I was sad it cratered a lot of development, especially when it was (imo) better than the Ep 7/8/9 movies.

The trick to Filoni series is to ignore the first couple of seasons. I'm not saying you have to watch through the early seasons for a payoff, just literally skip them. I think he underestimates his audience early on for whatever reason. I think the first two Mando seasons are overrated, but I am interested to see where it goes now.

And solo is a good movie except they should have a word with their lighting guy. I unironically want to see solo 2. I know I never will.

Tbh apart from the two JJA movies and Boba Fett, all the Disney star wars has been at the least fine.

If knowing the ending spoils a story. Then it is a bad story and not worth your time.

Andor is great tv and I want more of it. I love every single second.

However, my commentary is about Star Wars as a whole and what the future will look like and it looks like shit mostly. We know how it ends, it ends with Palpatine returning with a fleet of a 1000 ships somewhere and the good guys win because they held a knife the right angle and someone brought horses to fight on the outside of a Star Destroyer.

I hate that we have clown shoes writing and plots and then we have gems like this.

Maybe the way to think about it is this: World War II ends with two atomic bombs but in between there's a lot of other stuff that mattered, from Stalingrad to breaking Enigma, etc.

Mind you, the last 'main' SW movie is just completely shit and a shit end to the 'main' war but maybe everything else mattered. (After all, no Rogue One, then the Death Star blows up the Rebel base or worse, end of story.)  There are a lot of stories to tell that are powerful that arguably have to have happened for any of the rest of it to work out.


Maybe they can even do a Rogue One like the "it just so happens there was an unshielded port vulnerable to torpedoes" and make some of the last movie make some slight sense, I suppose. (Like, what if Shmi Skywalker was always deranged/lying about the 'there is no father' and the father was just actually Shreev Palpatine all along and Rey is in fact also a Skywalker? What if the whole "I need this knife" is just some nonsense and the knife actually has some kind of telepathic message in it? It's not really worth saving, mind you, but maybe someday some genius will do it somehow.)

I guess I can see the argument that it's ok we know it ends with OT, but less OK that we know know the OT was pointless.

I think my brain has rewired my own personal star wars canon to say that we know Finn, Poe, Rey and Kylo are cool canon characters but just have no idea what adventures they might have been part of. Sadly there's just no way to know what they got up to.

I say this as a certified tLJ enjoyer. Even though the film was fine, the universe it describes makes not a jot of sense.

I will further clarify what I meant. Because the Star Wars franchise isn't moving forward in any discernable way the efforts of Andor seem wasted on a macro level for the SW franchise as a whole. I don't mind wonderful stories that are told in the universe between larger events. However when you have a show like this, when it's surrounded by terrible story telling, it's just feels awful when you want more of this, and you'll likely get none of it.

Yeah. I'm surprised myself that I haven't been more turned off by everything Star Wars in terms of just how much I absolutely hated RoS; it is one of the worst things in any franchise ever in my view.

I still haven't watched it. Not even out of any especially visceral reaction but just total lack of interest, couldn't even be bothered to watch it on a plane. I hadn't watched Solo either because it seemed like such a dumb prequel premise so I'm kind of intrigued that people think it's good. This has been genuinely well done TV and is a really good story, even if it ultimately ends up as part of an unsatisfying trilogy of trilogies. As other people have said, if a story needs some kind of uncertainty in the outcome in order to be enjoyable then it's a bad story. I think of this a bit like Sharpe novels i.e. historical fiction where knowing what the big events are doesn't change that these individual characters are doing stuff and having arcs within those big, known moments. It doesn't hurt that this particular bit is setting up the Original Trilogy and is doing a frankly amazing bit of work showing what the move from the last days of the Old Republic into the Empire proper is actually like in a more or less believable way.

I'm also not sure why I thought episode 7 was the end of the season but for some reason I thought that was some mega-ballsy dystopian ending. My head canon now insists that everything since then is a recently released season 2.

I still don't get the hate for the new Star Wars stuff. It is obviously not on the level of Andor, but its at least on the level of the originals. Spoiler alert, none of them are great they are just highly entertaining schlock.

Andor has done such a good job of this that it simultaneously makes the OT better (by providing a better backdrop for what the Empire was like and what the Rebellion was all about) and worse (by highlighting how badly ANH failed at that particular piece of worldbuilding).

Honestly, the only things I've absolutely hated have been Boba Fett and RoS. As you all know, I quite loved Last of the Jedi, even despite valid reasons why I should not have, because it opened up rather than closed down storytelling possibilities beyond the story we already knew.

Everything else they've done? It's at least fine, including Solo, which mostly errs in trying to explain things that don't need explanations (like his name).

Honestly I don't really have hate for the new Star Wars. The first new one I found entertaining and I thought there was real potential. The second one just bored me and annoyed me a to a level I didn't want to see the final instalment. I think it felt way, way too much like they wanted to subvert viewer expectations on where the trilogy was going while also making a movie that didn't really make sense in its own context. The result just being that I wasn't really interested in seeing how that story was resolved. It didn't put me off Star Wars as a whole but did make me think best case the new Trilogy was not for me. And I say this as someone who was hyped for the first instalment and thought it was really fun, if formulaic.


The original trilogy I don't put on the same kind of spectrum because they were coming from a time when this whole concept of world building didn't really exist. Star Wars was space opera, Kurosawa in space and a whole species of spaghetti western placed into an existing world that felt organic. I think that latter part was a large part of the appeal, Lucas and his team had an instinct for putting stuff in that felt like it fit without needing to (or at least having time and editorial permission) to explain it. The prequels lent too much into explaining everything. The OT just had the problem of being from an earlier period of film making when something like Rogue One just wouldn't really exist.

That's fair, loving TLJ that much will really make you hate RoS.

Ford and Fisher have been the high water mark of Star Wars that's just now beginning to be tested by the R1/Andor folks. The rest of it, yeah, mostly just pulp scifi, though at the time it was so much more 'realistic' and gritty than the 60s/70s scifi we had as kids, it was like reading bland Tolkein and then reading Moorcock's Elric...or the Black Company  :grin:

This shit just gets better and better. The entire episode I was on the edge of my seat.

What an episode of television.

This shit don’t miss.

Serkis not being able to swim was heartbreaking.

I was screaming at the TV for him to kill those Imperials and use them as a flotation device.

One way out! ONE WAY OUT!

Goddamn, Stellen Skaarsgard can act like a motherfucker.  :drill:

This shit is amazing.

Also everything about the sequels is garbage. TLJ was worse trash than ROS because TLJ made the bandaid that was ROS even possible.

Fuck everything about it.

Andor is art.

This could redeem Star Wars...if everyone associated with the sequels is fired, they were declared non canon, and the people who made this and R1 were given total control to make a new sequel trilogy.

It definitely improves the original trilogy. The true evil of the Empire, never really laid out, becomes clear: A machine to harvest suffering and turn it into the tools that create more suffering.

--Dave

And the only goal of the Empire seems to be control for the sake of control, power as its own end and means.

So… they’re the GOP.

Not quite that on the nose. They're authoritarianism as institutional baseline. Authority as it's own foundation and justification, the Emperor sucking his own dick because fuck you, why not, what are you gonna do? Let chaos and madness into the galaxy, because that's all he's left as an alternative?

This creative team would fill the gap between the Empire's fall at Endor and the sequels with a nuanced view of the chaos and death released when there weren't Sith Lords ready to Force Lightning the fuck out of the anarchy. You don't overthrow an entire Galactic power structure without consequences.

--Dave

They could do justice to Wendig's Aftermath trilogy.

There are no amount of stories that could redeem the sequel trilogy. They shouldn't ever try.

What would be very fun would be the whole Clone Wars prequel era story but told in this style where Jedi and Sith are way way above the power level and point of view of the storyteller.

I'm a broken record here, but they just need to move far away from this timeline and start fresh. And no more cartoons.

This crew could probably do a good explanation of how the First Order came into power. It'd be like the colossal incompetence of the Trump administration as run by a ginger fuck and an emo teen.

That part.

And Wendig’s shit was solid.

Goddamn. Talk about bringing the pew pew and the zzzzhhoooo zzzzhhooooo.

So was that a lightsaber hilt Luthen had? we already saw him give Andor a kyber crystal so at this point I have to assume he is a former Jedi.

Thats the extendable walking stick he also had in his first meeting with Cassian Andor, but yes even then I thought he was holding it very lightsabery.  :awesome_for_real:

(https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcTNZPBR3tZdFsfe2xnlMLb_a9GehZvpzYAKXQ&usqp=CAU)

Yeah,  that'd be a pretty good camouflage for a lightsaber.

He shares his dreams with ghosts.

The shit they did to Bix is fucking criminal.

S2 just started filming, scheduled to wrap in August 2023 with a very loose unofficial estimate of Fall '25 release. https://collider.com/andor-season-2-filming-schedule/

I have a feeling that's going to seem like forever in Star Wars land. I hope some of the newer D+ showrunners and all the movie people hit these sets and take notes on how to make SW that isn't cartoons (live action or otherwise).

2025? I bet it will be out in late summer 2024.

I posted about this earlier:
Again, assuming no delays, it should be out in 2024 around the same month as season one -- i.e. late September or early October 2024.

Great ending to the season, the show peaked with the prison escape though. Speaking of there is a post credit scene.

So good. I thought this episode was as good as the escape. They way they ramped up the tension with every character in the same space was masterful.

That fucking reveal.

The stinger was a great easter egg. I got to agree with Ab though - the ramping up of tension as they brought all the characters into alignment was just masterful. I am going to miss this show so much.

I feel shafted. From here. (https://www.empireonline.com/tv/features/andor-denise-gough-interview-building-star-wars-villain-dedra-meero/)

I must admit - Gough really was one of a number of standout performers in this.

I wanted to run her through with a lightsaber at every turn, so yeah.

I'm not a Star Wars fan generally, but I enjoy the potential the setting has. I would say that this show captures that potential the best since the original series.

It does go pretty slow in parts and maybe could have been a tighter 10 episode season if you re-edited it, but when it goes right it goes really right.

Enjoyed it a lot. I think the final episode was better than the prison escape. Had more heft and narrative weight. Holo speece was nailed on.

I'm reading through the Thrawn books right now (on the eponymous novel currently) and there are a lot of scenes that feel like they would be perfect for this team to tackle. When he works with the ISB in particular, for obvious reasons. Not just thematically, but I could see the whole doonium hoarding stuff dovetailing directly into s2 of this show (not that it will, but it would be amazing and work).

Just don't let Filoni near it.