Title: Andor (Season 2)

Starring: Diego Luna, Adria Arjona, Stellan Skarsgård, Ben Mendelsohn, Forest Whitaker, Kyle Soller, Denise Gough

Year: 2025 Episodes: 12 Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Andor is a Disney+ series set in the Star Wars universe. Season two sees the return of Diego Luna as the eponymous rebel Cassian Andor and Adria Arjona as his partner Bix.

Kyle Soller and Denise Gough also return as Cyril and Deedra, the Empire’s frostiest power couple.

Ben Mendelsohn reprises his role as the conniving Orson Krennic, while Stellan Skarsgård steals the show as the equally ruthless rebel leader, Luthen Rael.

At its core, Andor is an anti-fascist parable which uses the Star Wars universe as its framing device. While Star Wars stories traditionally focused on the struggle between good and evil, the world of Andor is notable for its more mature storylines and morally grey characters.

The People’s Front Of Yavin

Andor, the show that made Star Wars feel smart and serious, is back, and this time it’s more Star Wars than ever. Which is great news for Star Wars fans, not so much for the rest of us who enjoyed the space fascist allegory, absence of annoying aliens and complete lack of magical bullshit. 

While season two starts off shaky and has a far higher midichlorian count than the previous one, strong performances by the core cast keeps the series grounded. 

A Disturbing Lack Of Faith

Something strange is happening deep in outer space. 

The two largest stars in all the universe are inverting. 

The silly star has gotten smart, and the smart star’s become an absolute fucking idiot. 

I remember someone describing the first season of Andor to Star Wars’ answer to Deep Space Nine. 

In response, Paramount gave us Star Trek’s answer Phantom Menace. 

Except dumber. 

Sooooo much dumber. 

Section 31 was an abomination, an affront to everything Gene Roddenberry stood for.

And much as I’d enjoy battering those responsible to death with a bakleth, I have to stop and remind myself I’m a grown-ass man. (A sentiment which puts me in the 1% elite percentile of fandom in 2025.) 

So now that Star Trek is now officially dead I can at least remind myself, oh yeah, there’s the other one… 

So yeah, Star Wars. Nothing against it. Three solid moves, three mostly shite prequels, three increasingly worse JJ-quels, two decent series of Mando and one crappy one, plus a hit-and-miss Boba the Muss in between. 

There’s also a ton of cartoon stuff I know nothing about, plus whatever the hell The Acolyte was (bollocks mostly), and eeh, there was some other thing, Rosario Dawson was in it. Did I see that? What happened in that again? Did anything happen in it? Does anyone know what happened in it, or care? Do the producers even know?

Nobody gave a shit about Andor when it came out. We all dismissed it as another cynical piece of “content”. Cuz Disney’s got that bloated Lucasfilm cash cow and it’s gonna squeeze every last drop it can from its swollen blue milk tits.

But then the reviews came in, and shortly thereafter people whose opinions I valued started saying things like, “I know you hate Star Wars but…”

For the record, I don’t hate Star Wars, I just think it’s silly, too silly for its own good at times. 

And although I still retain cherished memories of the original trilogy, I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve shown a disturbing lack of faith in the franchise. #somehowpalpetinereturned

But three episodes into that last series Andor, I realised that this was serious Star Wars. 

No Force, no lightsabers, no bollocks. 

An anti-fascist allegory with the Galactic Empire pared down to the core and a grimy Rebel Alliance I can get behind. 

It’s Star Wars, but for grown-ups. Well, at least most of the time. 

The opening moments of Andor season 2 reminded me that I was, indeed, watching Star Wars. While it may have started with an ominous tone, this was immediately undermined by a slapstick scene where Cassian Andor tries to steal a prototype Imperial fighter before the inevitable miraculous escape. 

This type of seat-of-the-pants incompetence isn’t new, it’s straight out of the Han Solo playbook, but Cassian Andor was built up over the previous series to be this brooding, introspective character, so having such a tonal shift right at the beginning of the series was jarring.  

I immediately assumed the producers received studio notes, “You need to make this less dark.” (It’s all about selling streaming subscriptions and shiny toys, after all. )

The next time we meet Cassian Andor there’s another tonal shift, as we’re made to wade through an eternity of pointless bickering between the People’s Front of Yavin and the Yavin People’s Front. 

Doubt was setting in and I started losing interest. But then I recalled how close I was to bailing out during season one, as we lugged it up the mountain with a bunch of space crusties…

Ok, I thought, we’ve been here before, give it a chance. 

The Yavin scenes were interminable, though in retrospect that was the point, highlighting the fractured tribalism that plagues opposition movements when they lack proper leadership. 

Rebellions are rarely won because of their members, but in spite of them. After which the ensuing administration invariably degenerates into ineffectual groupthink, prompting our real-world Palpatines to somehow return. 

But while the big gobs squabble, the real rebellion people do the real rebellion stuff, sacrificing their humanity in the process to defeat the enemy. 

And this is the harsh reality Andor explores further in season two.

So yeah, now that I’ve watched the series, I understand why we spent so much time with the loser alliance. Though I would have still preferred to see more of Andor’s relationship with Bix instead.

By episode three any lingering doubts I had about Andor losing its edge were dispelled.

Because nothing says we’re done with the slapstick space piloting shenanigans like an attempted rape scene. 

…In a Star Wars show…. 

…from Disney. 

Controversial? You better believe it. 

Impactful? Incredibly. 

May The French Be With You! 

This is as good a time as any to mention the cinematography and set design, both in isolation and in tandem. 

The class divide is evident in every interior, the ornate spaces of the wealthy, the Empire’s functional monochromatic spaces, the cramped warrens of the working classes, employing a mesh of battered technologies from the scattered ends of the galaxy. 

While recent Star Trek fare is all chirpy UX and lens flares, Disney’s Star Wars shows have a depth and authenticity to them. The phrase I hear again and again is “lived in”, though I prefer to call it “tactile.” 

The effect is further enhanced by intricate framing, blocking and shot composition, allowing the audience to truly inhabit each space.

And each space, in turn, becomes a character all of its own, like the Tolkienesque alcoves of Chandrila, the bleak and imposing headquarters of the ISB, or my personal favourite, the mountaintop fortress of the Maltheen Divide. 

Half corporate boardroom, half Obersalzberg, all pompous, this is where the Imperial conspirators convene to set in motion the plan which serves as the main driver of season two’s plot.

Those Death Stars don’t grow on trees, you know. They require considerable resources to construct, extreme secrecy to build, and vast amounts of energy to power.

Enter Orson Krennic, with a plan to take over the peaceful planet of Ghorman, destroying the inhabitants so that the Empire can literally strip-mine the planet to death. 

As it’s still early days for the Empire, they need a cover story. So they cook up a phoney rebel threat while brainstorming ways to turn the masses against the planet’s inhabitants, allowing the Empire to proceed unimpeded. 

The scene is perfectly shot, acted and directed, while the parallels with our own world couldn’t be more obvious, or chilling. 

The Emperor’s ambitions reverberate down the hierarchy until they reach Deedra, who’s now engaged in a creepy, co-dependent relationship with Cyril.

The genius of Andor is how, despicable though they are, we come to empathise with both of these characters, to the point where we begin to understand their motivations.

Deedra, we discover, is an orphan seeking structure and meaning in her life. Her ambition is initially rewarded, as is her loyalty. But not her pride, which eventually becomes her downfall.

Andor’s core characters routinely pass exit ramps to salvation – and ignore them every time.

Because Andor is not about happily ever afters. It’s about how institutions like the Empire use people up and spit them out.

Humans are just another natural resource it consumes to expand its power. 

This is how the TRUE Dark Side works.

Cyril receives a crash-course on Imperial protocol while stationed on Ghorman and the realisation breaks him.

The civilian population, meanwhile, bears the full force of the Empire’s cruelty, as soldiers fire indiscriminately into the crowd and security droids toss innocent protesters around the streets like rag dolls.

The Ghorman massacre scene elicits severe cognitive dissonance by design. Imperial stormtroopers have always been a joke, with laughable marksmanship and an acute inability to find the droids they’re looking for. 

So watching them march on civilians in perfect formation, firing blasters with pinpoint accuracy. It’s a violent shock to the system.

Like millions of childhoods crying out in terror, suddenly silenced. 

Rogue Minus One

I honestly thought that was the end. I remember thinking, wow, I can’t wait to watch season 3, before realising there was still another episode to watch, plus three more on the way.

The Ghorman story arc was the fulcrum of season 2, the first spark to ignite the rebellion proper. But there’s more to this story. 

By episode ten we’ve learned to watch each character with professional detachment. 

As each new episode unfolds, we note a clear pattern, as we think to ourselves, “We won’t be seeing him again.”

Because it’s not about good versus evil, not really. Sometimes you can do the right thing and still get punished for all the wrong reasons. 

Nobody encapsulates this harsh reality better than the character of Luthen. And we understand it more as we learn more of his backstory, and that of his protégée Kleya.

We also get to see Deedra’s reward for a lifetime of unwavering loyalty and dedication, another woman in a man’s world punished for being too effective.

Andor’s message is clear – in a totalitarian state, you only ever have two options. 

Become a collaborator or resist. 

There is no standing on the side-lines, because sooner or later, you’re forced to make a choice. 

In the end, the collaborator and the partisan meet the same fate, as, piece by piece, they give their humanity away. 

This is what makes Andor so special.

In a franchise literally founded on good and evil, the dark side and the light, Andor’s characters are murky and morally grey.

Which is why the show doesn’t feel like something happening long, long ago in a galaxy far, far away. 

But rather a mental primer for what’s happening in our world right now.

The Good

Production Design: Watching Andor, it’s easy to forget you’re watching a TV show and not a movie. Disney pumped a significant budget into Andor and it shows, every aspect of the production, the sets, the props, the costume design, is of blockbuster movie standard.

The Technology: This falls under production design, too, but warrants a section of its own based on how credible it all feels. 

Sure, a lot of it looks battered and old, but, you know what? So’s the show’s target audience.

By that I mean all of us first generation Star Wars babies who grew up with the franchise, watching the movies, playing with the toys, immersed in this world for decades. For us the world of Andor is second nature.

Andor’s creative team managed to incorporate outdated designs from the 1970s in a way that makes made them feel not only functional, but unobtrusively banal. 

The Cast: Every actor on Andor is bringing their A-game. Diego Luna in the titular role encapsulates the conflict of a reluctant rebel, not a lot of fire, sure, but plenty of smoulder and smoke. We watch as the fear and frustration builds, threatening to tear him from the inside out, though it never does. 

Forest Whitaker as Saw Gerrera steals every scene he’s in. Unfortunately there’s too few of them. Disney, if you’re looking to do a spin-off origin series, he’s your man. 

My favourite performance of the series, however, is Stellan Skarsgård as the duplicitous rebel leader, Luthen. 

Suave and foppish in public, yet viciously single-minded behind the scenes in pursuit of his ultimate goal, Luthen is every bit as cold and ruthless as the Empire he’s sworn to destroy, and he knows it.  

But you know we can’t mention the cast of Andor without also giving a shoutout to…

The Deedra & Cyril Show: Here’s another series idea for you, Disney – Deedra and Cyril’s domestic scenes felt like a sitcom already, so why not just give us more of it?

You already have annoying mother in law character, so what else do you need?

Jokes aside, I feel as though we skipped over this to get to Ghorman and wanted to learn more about their curious relationship dynamic.

Was there any love between them? Perhaps they chose to believe so. But whether or not two such broken characters can truly love is debatable.

Deedra and Cyril appeared to support each other, at least initially, while also fulfilling their mutual need for companionship. 

But then basic human needs are no match for the insatiable needs of the Galactic Empire.  

The Bad

Slow Start: I almost abandoned Andor early in the first season, but I’m glad I persevered.

If anything, season two gets off to an even slower start, wasting far too much screentime with those squabbling gobshites on Yavin. 

Tonal Shifts: Besides the slow pace, early episodes also suffered from drastic shifts in tone.

The season began with a suspenseful scene of Andor attempting to steal a Tie Fighter before devolving into a slapstick farce of Jar-Jarian proportions. 

The problem reached a peak in episode three, with attempted rape one minute, and EDM Jedi weddings the next. 

The music during the wedding scene felt more like a reality TV theme than music for a science fiction show, and illustrates another issue I had with the show.

From the daytime cheese of “Good Morning Coruscant” to the BBC-sounding news reports on Ghorman, various culturally askew elements broke the spell intermittently, though none were are quite as jarring as…

And The Frenchy

I Will Say Diss Onlay Wunce! I get why the citizens of Ghorman are modelled on the French. It’s a stroke of genius when you think about it. 

Even before we meet them, we can already detect the faint whiff of freedom fries up in the Sith Berghoff as the public relations creeps start their othering campaign in real time. 

It also fits the whole space nazis versus the resistance motif, allowing the creative team to channel French cinema like The Battle of Algiers, Z, and other classics in the same – how you say? – mil-yeeuuugh.

Except, while Americans may consider France to foreign and exotic, Europeans don’t.

Nor is it that distant. I could book a cheap flight there right now and be sipping wine by the Champs Élysées quicker than you can say, “Où et le centre Georges Pompidou?”

This type of explicit cultural shorthand is common in Star Wars, and across sci-fi in general (Dune’s Fremen spring to mind) but it can backfire if not handled with care.

So, while I’m glad they didn’t decide to make the rebels based on Irish stereotypes for once, the whiny Ghorman rebels in their berets and Parisian trench coats were a bit too on the nose for me, and that took me out of the story. 

And while it seems that much care was taken in creating a convincing-sounding Ghorman language, I personally found all the faux-Français distracting, because, despite the subtitles, my brain automatically tried to translate it. 

I often had to stop my brain and remind it,” it’s still Star Wars!”

At other times Disney done that for me, with what felt like a contractually obligated minimum of…

Le Fromage: The bucolic farming scenes on Mina-Rau, Mon Mothma dancing around a discoball droid to EDM trash, her OTT speech to the senate that would have made even George Lucas facepalm, the hearty peasants singing in berets like a scene straight out of the British sitcom ‘Allo ‘Allo… 

For the most part, the world of Andor feels similar in theme to our own, but every so often it gets too literal, robbing scenes of their potency. 

It’s Like Poetry Sort Of  – They Rhyme

That Scene: It’s not that Bix’s sexual assault scene was all that graphic, but rather the fact that we’re watching it on a Disney Star Wars show that’s shocking. It felt all too real. And some people couldn’t deal with that. Because some people can’t deal with reality.

“Ghorman Is Of Great Interest To The Empire”: It’s hard not to notice the WW2-inspired cinematography of the Maltheen Divide scene. One half expects Richard Burton to bust in the door with a Tommy gun and shoot Krennic in the guts mid-speech. 

But beneath the overt nazi visuals is something far more insidious. Note the snivelling propagandists on the periphery, their twisted minds now alert and hungry, steadily gnawing away at the foundations of the Ghorman culture. 

Considering the conflicts in our own galaxy, and the sheer volume of PR and spin surrounding them, this scene feels like we’ve found that final piece of the puzzle…

So this is how the Dark Side operates. 

Sith Mamma: Darth Vader rocked the Dark Side, Darth Maul had the moves, and Palpatine had the menace – but none can match the passive-aggressive maleficence of Cyril’s mother Eedy. 

The Ghorman Massacre: I’ll admit I wasn’t prepared for this scene. I recall watching the gormless Ghormanites singing their faux-French anthem in the street, thinking, yeah, this is kinda cringe, only for the tone to do a complete 180 and subvert everything we thought we knew about Star Wars.

Stormtroopers blasting innocent civilians dead centre with every shot, droids snatching defenceless women as they scream in terror before smashing them against walls…

We’ve seen the Empire destroy entire planets before, but nothing to match the brutality of the Ghorman massacre.

“What Are We Doing Here?” As the carnage unfolds on the streets of Ghorman, Cyril confronts Deedra demanding to know the Empire’s true intentions.

Up until this moment there’s still a glimmer of a chance of redemption, but the world of Andor isn’t generous in doling out second chances. 

“Welcome To The Rebellion” After Mon Mothma publicly denounces the Emperor in the Senate, Andor arrives to help her escape. Following a tense evacuation sequence and the death of an undercover ISB operative, she tells Andor, “I can’t do this.” 

Andor’s curt reply cuts to the very heart of the matter, while serving as the perfect summation of his character’s journey thus far. 

“We Lose And Lose And Lose Until We’re Ready:  The Luthen and Kleya flashback episode is one of my favourites of the whole series.

It’s fair to say Luthen gets all the best speeches in Andor, but of them all, this one best encapsulates his personal philosophy. 

K-S2O’s “Shield”: Oh, how I laughed at this scene! I’m meant to laugh, right? 

Partagaz and Krennic: This is the first time we realise how familiar these two men are. They’re not close. Men in their positions rarely get close to anyone, but you sense they both came up together and share a mutual respect, however grudging. They were never friends, but it’s possible at one time they may have been allies.

But that time has long since passed, Krennic is ascendant, while Partagaz realises his time is running out.

You Always Were An Asshole Ghorman!

Now that it’s concluded, I can say with confidence that Andor is the best Star Wars I’ve ever seen. 

You might even go so far as to say it’s the Empire Strikes Back of Star Wars… No wait, that doesn’t work… 

Sure we got the contractually obliged cringe to remind us it’s still Star Wars but at least we didn’t get any fucking Ewoks. 

So, hands up, who watched Rogue One straight after finishing this? 🙋

Can we skip the recommended viewing section this time then? Because you know what my suggestion is going to be.

I have to say that the end of this series slots straight into Rogue One perfectly, better than any prequel I’ve ever seen. 

A prequel to a prequel that nobody asked for, the show everyone scratched their heads asking, “Why?”

The surprise hit, which helped to elevate the whole franchise, to the point where I think I might even prefer it now to Star Trek. 

Because Andor goes where no prequel has gone before.

Rather than undermining or diluting the material it’s based on, it elevates the franchise while also enhancing Rogue One’s emotional impact. 

Now as you rewatch Andor’s speech about the sacrifices he’s made for the rebellion, it hits extra hard because now we know what he’s gone through. 

We also get more satisfaction watching the ultimate fate of Krennick, especially after all his scheming, backstabbing and jostling to get ahead.

But then that’s the problem with the Empire.  

As a much worse prequel said, there’s always a bigger fish.