Andor Season Two Is the Best Television of the Year So Far

In the years since the Walt Disney Company acquired Marvel and Star Wars, its strategy has been to flood the market with as much Marvel and Star Wars stuff as possible until audiences are begging for more. That onslaught has, shockingly, proven less than effective; interest in Marvel and Star Wars projects has waned, both in theaters and at home. A saturation point was reached, and viewers began to move on to other things.

In Disney’s defense, they at least had the prudence to stop making Star Wars movies for a while after 2019’s disastrously incoherent Rise of Skywalker. But the studio has kept plugging away with TV shows, releasing six new live-action Star Wars series since 2021. It’s entirely too much, this desperate effort to capitalize on every square inch of unclaimed narrative property adjacent to the original trilogy of films. Little can breathe when packed in so close to everything else.

Yet one of those series, Andor, somehow manages to be good television. And not just good for a latter day Star Wars show. Andor, which returns for a second season on Disney+ April 22, stands toe-to-toe with any of the great series currently airing It’s a sophisticated epic, a feat of both expansive and granular imagination. The series is rushing toward a foregone conclusion—we’ve already seen its lead character, smuggler turned rebel captain Cassian Andor (Diego Luna), die in the 2016 film Rogue One—but finds endless suspense in the journey toward that fixed point. Creator Tony Gilroy goes for highbrow political intrigue in a way that is complementary to the space-opera fun of Star Wars, rather than disdainful of it. He gives a long cherished galaxy a respectful weight; Andor takes this all very seriously.

Maybe there is some haughty avoidance in Andor; the series never mentions Darth Vader, nor Yoda nor Jabba the Hutt nor anyone named Skywalker. It keeps the wicked Emperor Palpatine safely off screen, though his presence nonetheless looms over the show. Many fantastical elements of Star Wars have to be eschewed for this grave and grownup take on the material to work, a putting away of childish things that may rankle some viewers. Plenty of Star Wars fans do want goofy aliens and mystical heros’ journeys toward cosmic greatness—but Andor denies them that in favor of grim ruminations on fascism and resistance.

Andor’s second season begins a few years before the destruction of the Death Star, which ends the original 1977 film. Andor and his cohort are as yet unaware that such a killing machine even exists. Instead, they are busy furtively amassing the allies and materials that might give them a fighting chance against a force as widespread and well-armed as the Empire.

Echoing the first season, Andor breaks the new run of episodes into several mini arcs, while one grander narrative binds them together. We watch as Andor does his increasingly risky and high-stakes guerilla missions, while on the gleaming capital planet of Coruscant, Senator Mon Mothma (Genevieve O’Reilly) keeps up outward appearances as a mask for her clandestine efforts to funnel funds to the rebellion. Existing between them is a host of spies and opportunists all playing a role in the fomenting of war—many of them orbiting around shifty operator Luthen Rael (Stellan Skarsgård), who works in the light and in the shadows.

Andor gives ample attention to the other side, Empire officials who are ruthlessly devoted to their cause. Cunning secret police officer Dedra Meero (Denise Gough) is handed a high-security assignment involving a resource-rich planet, Ghorman, whose people are French-coded artisans and aesthetes and, true to our own WWII history, dogged underground resistance fighters. Syril Karn (Kyle Soller) has been kicked down the career ladder for his failures last season, but his ambition has found a new foothold.

Andor season one ended with a rousing call to action against despotism, but that spirit has ebbed some at the start of season two. Characters are mired in the frustrating and dangerous process of praxis, their opponents gaining ever more power and ever more willingness to flamboyantly wield it. Gilroy and his writers carefully, patiently spend season two building their way back to righteous fire. What begins as a murmur of dread gradually crescendos into a poignant and stirring vision of revolution’s cost, its noble sacrifices and bitter losses. It’s high drama that stretches across multiple years, and yet is done with a delicate, intimate touch. We peek into so many inner lives throughout the season, even those of seemingly small and ultimately insignificant characters.

In so doing, Andor draws a line between the faraway fantasy of Star Wars and our own sorry, deteriorating world. Corny as it may be to say, the series feels wholly responsive to the here and now, admirably firm in its messaging, its allusion, its allegory. Gilroy is tracing a hard but perhaps necessary path toward better, all housed within an IP television series playing on a streaming service owned by Disney. Andor is a remarkable anomaly, an aberration in the system that challenges everything around it to be smarter, more principled—and, frankly, better made.

Or that’s all insidiously convincing window dressing for what is just another exercise in corporate dominance—Andor may simply one of many assets on Disney’s balance sheet, chiefly notable for the way it uses antifascist politics to placate viewers into submission. But I think Gilroy, at least, is entirely sincere in his intent—that he does want to make a series that is not just reactive to our political times, but prescriptive for them. Listening to Cassian and Luthen and Mon and the rest debate the methods and effectiveness of the fight against cruel authority does actually have an instructive value. At least it did for me, as I toggled between screeners and the exponentially worsening news of the nation.

The show’s argument is supported by breathtaking craft. The series is beautifully rendered, each episode rich with precise visual detail and evocative music. The performances are sharp and flinty, pitched somewhere between realism and modest melodrama. There are dazzling action set-pieces—some giddily thrilling, others bleak and harrowing. While Cassian’s constant wrestling with his calling grows a bit repetitive, and a digression involving Forest Whitaker’s Saw Gerrera is confusing, the season is otherwise tight and compelling, weaving many fascinating threads into a vast tapestry of an endgame’s beginning.

And don’t worry: it’s not all political paranoia and horror. Gilroy graciously allows for moments of levity, most of them involving either a sardonic droid or Kathryn Hunter’s delightfully awful mother from hell. They’re a welcome diversion. After all, even during the darkest days of the Empire, the Mos Eisley Cantina band played on.