I don’t know how else to say it about Andor: It is just flabbergasting to hear genuinely adult ideas and witness genuinely adult character dynamics in a Star Wars project. Rogue One is an antecedent of course, and I think some of the very early scenes in the original Star Wars — Luke arguing with his aunt and uncle, concerns about work and the harvest, politics as a threatening but distant cloud — have a similar vibe. But to see it on this scale, consistently, is just amazing.
Now, I totally get if it’s not for you. It might not be the kind of Star Wars you want. You might simply be sick of Star Wars in general or post-Lucas Disney Star Wars in particular. But man, get a load of this dialogue from this week’s episode:
“It’s so confusing, isn’t it? So much going on, so much to say, and all of it happening so quickly. The pace of oppression outstrips our ability to understand it, and that is the real trick of the Imperial thought machine. It’s easier to hide behind 40 atrocities than a single incident.”
My dudes, come on. Come on. Does this sound like a reality we’re familiar with or what?
(And yes, I understand the irony of an oppressive corporate entity like Disney presenting us with a ferociously anti-oppression message like that. But Too Old to Die Young and The Underground Railroad, respectively perhaps the most ferociously, brutally anti-cop and anti-racist works of art I’ve ever seen, were both funded by Jeff Bezos. Ooh, baby baby, it’s a wild world.)
I reviewed this week’s quietly remarkable episode of Andor for Decider.