I focus so much on the writing of this show, the shocking and rewarding ways that it deviates from the Disney Star Wars norm, that I feel I neglect the performances. Frankly, they’re uniformly excellent. Genevieve O’Reilly, conveying Mon Mothma’s imprisonment in a gilded cage. Denise Gough, making Dedra Meero one of the most magnetic and frightening villains in the Star Wars legendarium. (She’s serving Peter Cushing, baby.) Diego Luna, a rat in a trap, always searching for a way out, never letting himself let up. Andy Serkis, showing layers of weariness and fear under Kino Loy’s bluster, emotions that finally give way to anger when he realizes he’s been had. Kyle Soller barely keeping it together as Syril Karn, all desperation to prove himself to someone, anyone, to be respected, perhaps to be loved. Kathryn Hunter as his mother, a passive-aggressive martinet, making his life worse even as she purports to be making it better. It’s such a wide range of performances for such a wide range of characters, all of them handled with care, all of them, even the bad guys, treated as three-dimensional human beings.
Unless things go badly wrong, Andor has already cemented itself as one of the best science-fiction shows of the century, up there with Battlestar Galactica, Dark, and Raised by Wolves. I simply cannot wait to see how far it goes.
I reviewed this week’s excellent episode of Andor for Decider.