Andor: Season 2

The Rebel Alliance is starting to take shape. Senator Mon Mothma and her allies are gathering political backing in the Galactic Senate, whilst Luthen Rael is getting his hands dirty with scheming and planning. The Empire itself is working in secret on a project of tremendous scale, requiring immense resources, including the strip-mining of the planet Ghorman, which becomes an early flashpoint in this struggle. Rebel operative Cassian Andor finds himself drawn back into Luthen's schemes, as he charts his course towards his ultimate fate.

The first season of Star Wars: Andor was a surprise, an adult and intelligent take on the Star Wars mythos that emphasised intelligent characters, interesting storytelling and a vibe that was more 1970s thriller than colourful space opera. "Star Wars as a premium HBO show from their golden age," was a common description. It was also designed to set up a planned five-year arc. Due to variable streaming figures, a significant budget and an immense production timeline, showrunner Tony Gilroy and star Diego Luna agreed to wrap the show up with the second season instead.

Compressing four seasons of television into one is a tough job, but here Gilroy and his writers make a virtue of it. The twelve-episode season (and it's an unalloyed joy to have a decent-length season of television again) is divided into four arcs of three episodes each, effectively meaning four movies back-to-back getting us from the end of the first season to the events of Rogue One. The result is focused and disciplined, with us seeing four important snapshots showing the evolution of the Galactic Empire into a fully repressive fascist state, and the Rebel Alliance into a viable military threat.

There's so much going on in Andor between these four arcs that it can be hard to pare it down. We have Cassian and Bix's domestic life, constantly interrupted by missions for Luthen. There's Luthen and Kleya's intelligence operations (Elizabeth Dulau emerges as the season's MVP, especially in the closing episodes), and Mon Mothma's politicking in the Senate. There's internal politics as the Imperial Security Bureau. There's the slowly-gathering rebels on Ghorman, who don't have a clue about what they're doing. There's Director Krennic (Ben Mendelsohn chewing the scenery with aplomb) throwing around his authority to get his secret project made. But the show moves between these different storylines with skill. There's also little filler or flab. To quote another show, all the pieces matter.

That's not to say it's completely golden perfection. Cassian spends a chunk of the first two episodes bogged down with some would-be rebels who seem to have learned everything from Keystone Cops, in a storyline that drags a little. The time jumps between each set of episodes can leave a bunch of storylines feeling unresolved. Mon Mothma's domestic life with her husband and daughter early on is left dangling in the breeze (with a coda showing her husband re-married feeling like an apologetic sop to viewers invested in that story). A major speech Mon Mothma makes is hyped but we never hear it, because it was already made on animated series Rebels and they didn't want to repeat themselves.

But such quibbles are overshadowed by everything it does right. Luthen's increasingly ruthless scheming (Stellan Skarsgard should walk away with every award going), Dedra and Syril's bizarrely watchable relationship and Major Partagaz's troubles managing the semi-incompetent ISB (Anton Lesser an under-sung hero of the show, as he was in Game of Thrones, The Crown and Wolf Hall). Partagaz lecturing underlings to "calibrate their enthusiasm," is one of the most amusing scenes in Star Wars history, and Director Krennic's weird interrogation tactics are very entertaining. The show also fulfils its potential as an epic tragedy, with heroes dying unmourned in the dark, and the clock ticking with palpable doom towards Rogue One where we know many of these characters will meet their fate. When several of them do survive (at least the end of this series), there's a feeling of relief. The show also delivers good action, not as much as you'd expect from Star Wars, but it instead builds tension and dread like nothing else in the franchise before finally pushing the button.

Andor tells a story of authoritarianism becoming ever more arbitrary, incoherent and violent, and the yearning of people for freedom and expression rising to meet it. It is a heavy story, but one that is also run through with signs of hope. A better tomorrow is possible, if people are willing to work and fight for it.

Star Wars: Andor's second season (*****) is not quite as tight as the first season, but it's bigger, more epic and more emotionally powerful, steered by outstanding actors working with excellent scripts. It's one of the best slices of Star Wars produced since 1977 and restores some faith in a franchise that has faltered too much recently. The season is available to watch now on Disney+.

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