There’s a great and powerful beauty in giving voice to true things that are forbidden to say. This is why authoritarian governments work so hard to keep you from saying them. They will arrest you, they will disappear you, they will strongarm you, they will blackmail you, they will bribe you, they will kill you to keep you from saying them. Nemik’s manifesto points this out when it talks about how frantic tyranny’s efforts have to be to control all the spontaneous outbursts of freedom that threaten it. People want to hear true things, say true things, share true things. True things shield us from the fascists. Eventually, with effort, with sacrifice, when enough people try, true things can be shaped into a sword to kill them with. 

Andor has spent two season avoiding “May the Force be with you.” It’s nearly ignored the Force entirely, except for these last handful of episode, in which its presence is minimal still. This was in large part the point of the show. Stripped of good and bad samurai wizards whose powers effectively demonstrate who’s good and who’s evil, the Star Wars galaxy was remade by showrunner Tony Gilroy and his collaborators into something, hopefully, more recognizable to us. A galaxy of slave labor in prisons. A galaxy of dehumanizing propaganda campaigns against scapegoated groups. A galaxy of arbitrary arrest, imprisonment, and execution. A galaxy of rapists and torturers and murderers in uniform, swaggering around like they own the place. A galaxy of dead friend after dead friend after dead friend, the bodies piling up all around. Andor ground its title character’s face into this dirt over and over again.

Then this man, a kind man, a good man, Obi-Wan Kenobi’s friend, Princess Leia’s dad, walks up to him and says “May the Force be with you.”

These, too, are the words of a dead man to a dead man. Bail will be killed when the Death Star destroys his home planet of Alderaan. Cassian will be dead before then, perishing in the fight to transfer the battle station’s plans to Bail’s daughter Leia. But that doesn’t matter. Forget what Cassian’s done, what he’s seen, what he’s lost, what he stands to lose. There’s good in this world. He’s a part of it. It’s a part of him. He is one with the Force, and the Force is with him.

As if to honor all this, John Williams’s magnificent Star Wars theme actually plays over the end of the closing credits, if I’m not mistaken the first time in the history of the Disney+ Star Wars TV shows that this has happened. Someone up there knows we’ve watched something special.

There are no Jedi in the world we live in, no Sith. No one will deflect a blaster bolt with a lightsaber or choke you out with a gesture. We’re not so lucky to have definitive proof of good and evil. But we can recognize it when we see it; only years, decades of conditioning can convince us otherwise. That conditioning is unnatural. Freedom is not. That’s the force we can be a part of, not a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, but here, now.

After forty years of fandom, forty years of it being a catchphrase, “May the Force be with you” meant something to me again. It moved me. Sitting there with the television paused, I was unable to continue until I processed this feeling — the pure, simple hope for good things to happen to other people rather than bad. Rebellions, of course, are built on hope.

Hearing those words spoken aloud in this moment feels like a miracle. Four decades after it was first said on screen, “May the Force be with you” made me burst into tears. That is the power — the force, if you will — of Andor, one of the best television shows of all time.

I reviewed the series finale of Andor for Decider. This show is a masterpiece.

The miracle of this penultimate episode of Andor is that despite knowing how everything turns out for just about everyone left on the show — their futures are spelled out in the prequel film Rogue One, their legacies cemented in the original Star Wars film, A New Hope — it’s one of the most suspenseful 30-odd minutes of television I’ve ever seen.

I reviewed episode 11 of Andor Season 2 for Decider.

The zeal of the convert is a fearsome thing. The classic Biblical example is Saul, persecutor of Christians, taking the road to Damascus and becoming Paul, Christianity’s greatest and most strident proselytizer. Paul famously saw the light. A man named Sgt. Lear saw the darkness. 

In this episode of Andor, chronicling the final hours in the life of Luthen Rael, we learn that he was once an Imperial soldier during what seems like its birth and initial establishment of dominance. But the wholesale slaughter of civilian populations wrought by his brothers in arms leaves the sergeant cowering in his ship, chanting “Make it stop! Make it stop!”, sometimes in his native language, “Rosh ne luts” — the first and only time we ever hear him speak it. 

I reviewed episode ten of Andor Season 2 for Decider.

When a murderous campaign of wholesale destruction abroad is used to justify widespread repression at home, when few members even of the nominal opposition party will say the things we know to be true, when no one seems willing to use the words we know must be used…I’d like to say it’s heartening, even thrilling, to hear the word “genocide” used by a fictional senator on a television program. But it’s also humiliating that our leaders don’t see fit to talk to us with the honesty of a Star Wars character — and frightening to see how rapidly speaking honestly about what is happening both in Gaza and here at home is being criminalized.

I reviewed the ninth episode of Andor Season 2 for Decider.

It’s frankly astonishing how well writer Dan Gilroy and director Janus Metz create a taut and tragic political action thriller, working within the contours of the Star Wars sensibility and aesthetic while making them feel fresh and new. In much the same way that the previous episode recaptured the magic and mystery of the Force, this one conveys the menace of the Empire as though we’d never seen it in action before.

The stormtroopers’ death’s-head helmets are menacing, their meaning plain. When Syril walks into a safe room in the Imperial building only to find it primarily occupied by hulking security droids with their own skull-like faces, his fear is easy to relate to. The TIE fighters screeching overhead once again come across like the cries of the sorcerous Nazgûl in The Lord of the Rings. This is the machinery of death, and not even Syril and Dedra can deny it any longer. 

But the superb costuming and sound design put a new spin on the look and feel of the Rebellion, too, from the World War II–era costuming to the unique and unsettling noise of the airhorns the protesters blow on their way to the plaza. Syril and Cassian’s brutal, sloppy fight scene is unique in the entire history of the franchise, a Duel of the Fates set in a hotel bar with glassware instead of dual-bladed lightsabers, thrumming with the violent energy of a Sopranos beatdown rather than a wuxia showcase. Actor Kyle Soller makes these final moments of catharsis feel appropriately out of control, as if this one man, this fascinating character study in how functionaries function, is a stand-in for a galaxy on the edge.

Moving, beautiful, angry, and desperately sad, Andor has done something very special here. That song is still ringing in my ears.

I reviewed the eighth episode of Andor Season 2 for Decider.

Cassian Andor has flown from one end of the galaxy to the other. He’s seen a lot of strange stuff. But he’s never seen anything to make him believe there’s some all-powerful Force controlling everything.

Han Solo’s doubting Thomas routine, paraphrased above, applies both to the hardened Rebel soldier and the show that tells his story. The Force, the Jedi, the Sith, Darth Vader — maybe I’m forgetting something, but I’m not sure any of these mystical elements of the Star Wars legendarium have been so much as mentioned, let alone factored into the plot. Star Wars in general is science-fantasy, or space opera; Andor is science fiction.

This has worked well for Andor. In the real world, there’s no such thing as a verifiable religion, no magical power that can be wielded either to fight or to heal. By eliminating these elements from the story while still looking and sounding and feeling very Star Wars — this despite its comparatively adult approach to the material — Andor has brought Cassian’s experience of oppression and rebellion more in line with our own. 

But keeping the Force out of its Star Wars story makes Andor‘s sudden introduction of it feel more magical and beautiful than it has since Yoda lifted Luke Skywalker’s X-wing out of the swamps of Dagobah. 

I reviewed episode 7 of Andor Season 2 for Decider.

I can’t tell you how much good it does my heart to watch a Star Wars show that’s horny. Actually horny, not just “oh look, it’s a hunky guy with his shirt off, aren’t we all excited” Kylo Ren/Steve Rogers/Disney horny. Horny enough to make Dedra Meero topping Syril Karn more or less canon. Horny enough to finally, finally have a queer kiss onscreen because, despite their danger, it’s been years, and Vel Sartha and Cinta Kaz can’t keep their hands off one another. Horny enough for Bix Caleen to only semi-jokingly ask her boyfriend, Cassian Andor, to bring his glamorous fashion-designer cover identity home with him one night so she can have sex with someone “very, very pretty.” I’m all for a smoldering kiss between Han Solo and Princess Leia, don’t get me wrong, but this is something else. This is sex, not romance, or not just romance, and it makes Andor feel alive even in the midst of death.

I reviewed the sixth episode of Andor Season 2 for Decider.

Syril Karn is living the life of his dreams. He’s involved in highly classified work for the Imperial Security Bureau, pretending to chafe at the Empire’s yoke while secretly setting up its opponents for a sting. He’s working directly with his girlfriend, Dedra Meero, a relationship he has to keep a secret from everyone including his ghastly mother. In both cases, I can only imagine the thrill leading a double life gives to this man — particularly when one of those double lives involves Dedra in all black, commanding him to turn out the lights because they only have an hour together and they need to get down to business. Oooh-whee. Even though House of Cards creator Beau Willimon wrote this script, it feels like erotic fanfic where these two are concerned, and I mean that as a sincere compliment.

I reviewed episode 5 of Andor Season 2 for Decider.

But the highlight of the episode is quiet, wordless. It’s the moment of parting, when Cassian and Bix simply touch each other, hand to hand. Composer Nicholas Britell’s music is minimal yet lushly romantic here — like their love itself, I suppose, which they’ve forced into the tiny compartment left available for love by the world they inhabit. There’s something truly beautiful in that moment. These people are not deluding themselves that the world is okay, that life is okay, that their own lives are okay. But they love each other anyway, because while the government they live under does not value the things that make us human, we do, we can, and we must.

I reviewed episode 4 of Andor Season 2 for Decider.