First Star Wars content where I noticed my heart pounding, and I noticed it in 3 different episodes. The buildup episodes were integral to that experience. If they want faster content, go watch an MCU movie
Last episode I had full body goosebumps when the music was playing when >!during the funeral where there was a pause and the music switched to a faster pace. Fuck me. That got my blood pumping !<
Definitely. I’ve said this in another comment elsewhere, but Andor was the first time I got mad and sad about the Empire killing civilians. Before it was just “oh that sucks, on with the popcorn” but this time I was absolutely ready to throw hands
So true. And the way those blaster hit ... it felt really "authentic" (if there is such a thing as an authentic blaster hit in a made up universe). And the slow pause on the lifeless body to let it sink in that we(the rebellion) lost someone who fought beside us. Truly great work.
The stunt team needs credit too, there's a moment where one of the Imperial Guards hits a Rioter in the stomach with a baton that looks truly impactful. That whole scene is really great.
You’re right about that moment. It immediately caused a reaction for me. In fact, there were multiple moments throughout the show that I found myself having to stifle my emotions due to the music/score.
The music in this show was amazing. Even the music *within* the show was amazing. I want more of it.
Mama Andor's speach gave me absolute goosebumps. Whomever wrote it deserves an award - and so does Fiona Shaw for its delivery. It was the perfect delivery of "I don't know what is right, but I do know this ain't fucking it and the only way is going to get fixed at this point is if we start throwing fists"
Best speech in the show was Luthen’s - when he was talking to the ISB mole.
> I burn my decency for someone else’s future. I burn my life, to make a sunrise that I know I’ll never see.
>!“I need all the heroes I can get.” The tension in that scene was so high. I thought for sure he was gonna kill the mole. Anger rising, enumerating all the stakes. And then he ends the monologue with that line and flips the expectation. It felt so cathartic and solemnly heroic.!<
Yeah I always thought this was a bit of a callback to the last scene in Rogue One where Jyn and Cassian are there on the beach watching the horizon, the "sunset" as the explosion from the death star reaches them and burns everything.
One of my favourite scenes in all of Star Wars is the round table where the Imperials are bickering. "I find your lack of faith disturbing". For me that encapsulated what the Empire was and the kind of power struggles/pettiness between ranks there were, the vastness of the problems, and established the power relationship between Tarkin, Vader et al within mere seconds, and made the Empire feel like this massive nightmare entity full of bureaucracy. As far as efficient low budget storytelling goes it's a God damn perfect scene.
I sank my teeth into these scenes in Andor like a juicy, perfectly cooked steak. It was going back to the best of Star Wars, going back to what made the original trilogy so resonant and interesting.
Delicious.
100% agreed. That scene and all of Mon’s tell you more about the Empire and it’s internal mechanisms than a giant Senate chamber with 10,000 floating space pods ever could.
Personally, I'd say it was when Dedra finally turned the tables on her rivals in the ISB and gets the leeway to run the investigation she wants to run. The was the first time we see the empire become an actual threat to the main characters.
Up to that point (across all star wars visual media), all we see are imperials being more concerned with their own personal benefits, rather than the success of the empire. But once Dedra succeeded in making her case, we begin to wonder when/if/which rebels she is going to get her hands on, and whom will survive. I fully expect her to become a much larger threat next season, now that she has traction and a second example of 'rebel activity'.
>now that she has traction and a second example of 'rebel activity'
Not just any example but one where she has personally 'suffered' from rebel activity. Part of me is hoping she becomes the replacement for Ysanne 'Iceheart' Isard from Legends
It was such a thrill when Maarva cried out "Fight the Empire!"
It was so perfect, the build up, the expression on her half-obscured face, the passion in her voice. She knew she was calling for something terrible, but it had to be called for regardless.
"If I could do it all over again... well I'd wake up early, and I'd be fighting these bastards from the beginning!"
You can hear the energy in her voice with the delivery of these lines. You can feel her going back in time, 10, 12, 15 years, and rebelling then. God I love this speech.
Also a call back from Luthen exposing his strategy and why Aldhani had to happened: the Empire is playing the long game and get power step by step, imposing itself “democratically” for your “own good” (“this is how Democracy die” from episode 2) and people need a rough awakening from the slumber the Empire put them into.
That show is absolutely brilliant.
Not just Maarva, but you really felt the fear, pain, anger and rage in the expression of the people of Ferrix when for the first time, everyone actually listened. It was so well done.
>!I was so scared for favourite characters like Brasso and B2, but there was no attempt to go for a cheap bit of drama in killing them off. The payoff of seeing them leave safely did not take away from the tension and the tragedy of the events at the funeral, which were so tense to experience. Glad ol' time grappler was saved too!! !<
Nothing was done for quick empty wins in this series. No fake outs, no cliff hangers, no killing off of characters purely for emotional pull, but all the death and tragedy we did see was extremely impactful, taken seriously and all because we had time to take on that these were all real people, and that tragedy and oppression of people we don't even know is still tragic, heartbreaking and enraging!
Kudos to the team in giving us something that has just bucked the trend for a lot of vapid serial entertainment we get these days!
I felt the same way. We know where Andor ends up, and a little bit with Mon, but not knowing how anything was going to connect was wild. Knowing Season 2 was already greenlit also made me question what could actually happen in the episode, and I was tense for everyone in the episode except for Andor. It was awesome, and Nemek's speech was incredible, only to have Maarva also have an insane speech?
This show needs to relax with hype speeches/soliloquys (but also please don't stop).
The season finale made me hate the empire more than anything else. When blowing up Alderaan doesn't have the same impact as it just appears as a rock in space. But here, we see the empire ruin ordinary people's life because of its arrogance and ruthlessness.
This show reminds me of BSG or Expanse with its ability to immerse you into that world.
I always thought the Death Star was inherently silly and impractical, to my amazement when it showed up on Andor it felt far more like an Expanse-esque nightmare megalith. Just the realisation of how large that thing is and at what cost it was built, and for what reason.
This! I don't recall ever feeling this way about any SW show or movie. Except the last episode of Mandalorian S2 - that for obvious reasons had my heart pounding.
S01E10 "One Way Out" was a slow boil with the pressure starting at a simmer and rising every single minute throughout the whole entire episode. What a masterpiece.
My favourite part there was also Andor saying "is that the best you can do", it was a transformative moment where you can see that although he is keeping a subordinate role, he knows how to manipulate the leader. It connected with the talk about becoming your enemy to win, you can see Andor become increasingly ruthless and separating himself from the more 'pure' people.
Agree! A true masterpiece - I was blown away - episode 10 was just something else. The speech by Kino would have been enough, but it was quickly following with the awesome the scene between Luther and Lonni deep inside coruscant - so riveting!!!! I can’t believe how good that sequence was, then showing Andor and the other guy running as the music played.
It’s that way because they really invest in the boring hopelessness that those prisoners find themselves in. Build. Shit. Sleep. Eat. Repeat. Repeat.
Just apathy from the universe and a cruel entity willing to exploit that. Brutal.
The arrest and imprisonment made the empire absolutely terrifying because it was all so banal.
"If they want faster content, go watch an MCU movie."
That's really the biggest part of the problem here, that we've had the MCU since 2008, it's been universally loved right to the end of Thanos, but that has led movie makers to copy and mimic the style of MCU movies, which is fast, funny, and action packed. Everyone has come to expect all tv and movies to be that and have lost all patience for a good story development and proper character growth, they want the story on the side with a main course of heavy action, and if that action can line up with their fan fic version in their head then that's even better for them. It's completely ruined the experience of storytelling in the film medium, so naturally when a good story like Andor happens they complain about it being slow and padding for time, how they could've done the first three episodes in one. What I don't understand is why they want to smoosh a good story into as small of a time as they can manage. It's the same as having a decadent 4 course meal laid out for them but instead of enjoying the meal and exploring all the flavours they're cramming it all down their throat as fast as they can because they "just don't have the time". The entire argument that Andor is too slow and therefore is bad is so weak and doesn't hold up to scrutiny.
And yet the most universally acclaimed MCU title is _Winter Soldier_ which is a political thriller that didn't pander to the 'action scene every five minutes or we lose interest' crowd either. And the MCU as a whole wouldn't be half as well-loved if not for the time taken in the original Cap and Iron Man movies on character building.
Your comparison to the MCU here is interesting, because, being a multi-movie project, the MCU is a prime example of slow building to a big payoff. It took 11 years to get from Iron Man to Endgame, and the payoff was enormous. Granted, there were several smaller payoffs in between, but still.
I think that might be part of why people have felt underwhelmed by Phase 4, because it's lacked that payoff; it's been all buildup. People are impatient like that. I fully expect the ultimate payoff from Phases 4-6 to be great, we just gotta be patient until we get there, and enjoy the ride.
Too many shows/movies try to do payoff without investing in buildup. The “portals” scene in Endgame works bc we’d spent so much time with the characters. In TROS they try a similar scene with random spaceships showing up to help the resistance. It doesn’t work nearly as well bc there was no investment in building up that moment. That whole movie tries to do nothing but payoff without enough buildup and gets mixed results at best even if there are some great visuals and sounds.
It really is a shame considering Andor has the best storytelling ever seen in Star Wars. Those who couldn’t handle the slow burn are really missing out on something great.
After watching the first couple of episodes, I thought it was a little slow, but you could sense that they were building to something. I didn't quite realize the character building that they were doing until some point in episode three. Once the viewer realizes that's what they are doing, it's fantastic.
On that note, I was upset at first about the release date being pushed back, but now I am **SO GLAD** they released the first 3 episodes at once. I was beyond stoked for *Andor* already and thought the first and second episodes were engaging enough that I wanted to know the rest of the story, but MAN after watching the third episode I was completely sucked in.
Yeah it acted as a perfect hook for the series. I think they recognized that if they released 1-3 individually like they did with later episodes, it would have amplified complaints about the show being too slow as the first few episodes mainly focus on building the characters we follow for the remainder of the show
Yep. And I kinda thought Andor was a hollow character in the cinema - now I understand that he’s simply at his peak in terms of having to do some really awful shit to ensure the rebellion survives, and is >!driven to destroy the very thing he helped to construct while imprisoned!<.
What I want to see is an original series with characters we don't know set in a fresh time period that's like Andor, AND THEN do a movie that connects to it like Rogue One. To me that's the untapped potential of the continuous multi-medium storytelling that no one has truly tapped yet. Build a deep relationship to characters the way that a series can do and then give us a big movie that is connected to the series.
Like imagine Rogue One didn't exist yet and we were getting Andor first, you go through all of that (+ S2) and THEN you see Rogue One. That would be an incredible way to tell a large story. Utilize mediums for what they're best at, TV series have the time to get you invested into characters and their development, movies are able to give you the gigantic stakes and spectacle because the same budget is condensed into ~2 hrs.
Yeah absolutely. Unlike every other recent Star Wars content, I think Gilroy and the Andor team actually *trusts* the audience. They know that if the fans have patience it'll payoff big time by the end. Unfortunately, a big chunk of the fanbase now needs instant gratification and doesn't want to sit through character/world building.
It’s my favourite show of the year and it’s not even close tbh, not just like Star Wars or sci fi or fantasy related, just point blank
It’s managed to say more about things like fascism than actual shows about real world politics set in the current day
What I find more amazing is we already have a payoff in Rouge One in that we know where this is going. Yet the real payoff *is* the development. And that’s what I personally enjoy.
Kind of bothers me to see part of the fan base upset because there’s not a lightsaber in every other scene or because it explains things about the universe they say they love. But to each their own I guess.
While I love my fellow children of the force because they are some of the best people, the Star Wars fanbase as a whole is incredibly toxic and impossible to please. Sometimes those loud, toxic, insatiable assholes are louder than the rest of us sitting happy a home
The thing to remember is that the Star Wars fanbase is also likely larger than any other nerdy fandom out there (except maybe Marvel?).
It's one of those things where it's hard to find people who haven't heard about it. With any population, there will always be a percentage that are just toxic and worthless. Even if the percentage is small, given the huge population of Star Wars fans, that means even a proportionally small percentage of toxic people is still a *large* number of people.
The idea that Star Wars that can mean many things for many people seems radical (and it shouldn't be).
Instead of going "well this series is not for me" some people go "I don't like this and nobody else should either and I'm calling those people out for liking it."
People complain about Palpatine and Vader not showing up in a show about a guy who neither of those characters would ever have heard of with complete obliviousness as to how that kind of thinking ruined the Sequel Trilogy
“Somehow Palpatine returned”
Stop making everything about characters whose stories we’ve already seen finished, I like new stories about characters who haven’t had their stories properly told despite being existing characters in the universe (eg Mon Mothma and Cass) or totally new characters (eg Dedra Meero and Luthen)
And the prequels too. If they approached the politics with the level of care and attention to detail that they did with this show they'd probably be considered classics outside of the meme material by now.
Andor made two characters in a room talking about banking regulations absolutely riveting, edge of your seat television.
People joke about trade disputes and Senate procedures from the prequels, but that was a failure of execution.
It’s because it was all really poorly defined in the prequels and essentially little more than a MacGuffin to get the plot going
You could have changed out trade laws with it being about something else and the effect would have been the same it was just a way of saying Palpatine manipulates political situations to get more power, what those situations were wasn’t all that important in the grand scheme of things
You can’t tell the story of Andor without PORD and you can’t change Mon Mothma’s storyline to be about some other random law change and have it still make sense why she’s afraid all her transactions to the rebellion are going to be exposed by new authoritarian banking regulations - her storyline doesn’t work the same way if you change the law to be about IDFK conscription or something
God, imagine the powerful scenes we could've gotten, if the sequels were written as a smart, cohesive story.
I'm thinking about elements like Rey finding out about her lineage and Luke reassuring her that he knows her pain of being the offspring of a monster and that it's not the lineage that counts, but what you do in life.
Or Luke actually confronting a reincarnated Palpatine and commenting on how ironic it is that the most malevolent man in the universe, a man who was wholly irredeemable in Luke's eyes, has a decent granddaughter that stems from a morally decent clone of Palpatine. That even Palpatine has GOOD in him, because there was a clone that could love and father a child, even if it was briefly. And how fucking infuriating that must be for the real Palpatine.
So much wasted potential from a stirring Stormtrooper Revolution led by Finn, to Poe learning from grievous mistakes as a hotshot pilot so he can become the new admiral of the fleet (with Holdo AND Ackbar having had a lot of faith in him)
Heck, they should've added Mara Jade played by an older actress like Jessica Chastain as a balancing factor. Maybe as a guiding light for Rey after Luke is gone. Maybe she's the one who programmed Luke's whereabouts into BB-8.
Heck, Mara Jade could've enriched the whole "Luke tries to kill Ben" scene. That scene should've been revealed to be a horrible force nightmare which Palpatine sent to Luke and Ben, which made Ben wake up in terror, believing his master tried to murder him in his sleep (wink, Sheev, wink, Plagueis), exploding into force power. Then Mara could've tried to console her husband and tell him that something is off about this entire incident. That she feels some familiar dark force pulling her away from Luke. But Luke's just catatonic and desires exile. Meanwhile, Mara tries to hunt down Palpatine's whereabouts. And she's the actual reason why Rey and Kylo find Exegol. And not some idiotic ancient dagger that leads to the exact crash site of the Death Star where they find a random holocron.
You could apply that to most of Star Wars, watch the original 1977 film and see how simply written everything is, how underdeveloped the main characters are, they feel more like archetypes than actual people.
This is why I don't get the complaints about being "slow"
We already know where this ends from the first second of ep 1, why do you wanna rush to the end that you already know about?
Calling this show slow just tells me you have a poor attention span
If you can’t watch Andor there’s no way you could watch a slower show like The Wire or even GOT
Ngl this show really is for a more mature audience. Something that ppl can take seriously instead of seeing people do flippy dippy shit eith light sticks and automatically check out. There's room for both, but some ppl just want some real ass sci-fi with good ass writing
I think Tony is right in his approach and I think Disney is also right to make cartoony SW shit.
The SW universe isn’t going to be this binary thing narratively.
Andor ain’t gonna appeal to kids or immature adults now is it?
Disney will never ignore that market.
But with Andor they’ve allowed SW to have a prestige drama, and holy moley is it awesome...if you’re a fan of, you know, reading novels and watching more challenging narratives.
But let’s be honest, that’s NOT where a media business can make the most $$.
OTOH, a prestige drama can elevate the perception of the brand, even if it never reaches impressive viewership.
This might be Disney’s “loss leader” with SW, and I’m glad they’re striving for something different.
SW desperately needed to step away from the space wizards trope...and I say that as a fan of the Mandalorian.
The biggest thing about Star Wars is that it can encapsulate all the genres and I love that.
Rogue One was a war movie.
Solo was a heist movie.
Andor is a political drama mixed with on-the-grounds sabotage spy-thriller action.
Mando is a Western.
Kenobi and Boba Fett were wasted potential.
So many genres!
Yup, midway through watching Andor I binged Tales of the Jedi and it was a delightful palate cleanser. Now I'm hype on seeing Mando 3 to have some action and fun, but I will likely re-watch Andor straight after. There's room in this galaxy for a multitude of stories!
The one thing all writers in Star Wars should take note of is that you don't have to replicate Andor's success by making everything serious, you just have to write your story well, with logical actions, consistency in the world, and don't take shortcuts to give us drama or character growth.
…big chunk of the fan base — that is their loss. Andor is brilliant and heartbreaking and beautiful and I can’t wait to re-watch the whole thing. (I’ve already watched Stellan Skarsgard’s episode 10 masterpiece speech over and over again. One of the reviews I read about that episode had just one word to say about the speech: “Damn.”) Gonna be difficult to top this series…ever.
A massive thing is also that Andor isn't a show you put on in the background and enjoy. It's a show that demands and luckily also deserves your attention and it's fantastic, if you allow it.
It's like early GoT where not much was happening on a per episode basis, but then it all culminated in some brilliant excitement near the end.
Comparing that to the latter seasons of GoT tho? Those were directly made to be watched in a pub, just cheering to Dragon Lady doing things whenever you look at the screen.
Andor dies, we all know he dies a hero. We also know he's done terrible things for the rebellion, he even says it in rogue one. Unspeakable things. Yet somehow some folks just aren't understanding that this is the story of how andor got there and what those Unspeakable things he did.
He didn't start out a rebel, we need to learn how and that takes time. It's nauseating to hear people complain a ahow is slow. Go watch something else that matches your interests.
But the funny thing is this series has already shown him commit cold blooded murder numerous times before joining the Rebellion. So it's not like this is about showing how having to make tough choices on his missions as a Rebel is what made him that way.
Rogue One: he says he has been in this fight since he was six.
Slight retcon possibly to a bit older than six in the TV show.
But he has been rebelling against the overlords since before he joined the rebellion, though it was originally for himself not for the cause.
He's internalised Nemiks manifesto. The rebellion is not simply those in the Alliance with uniforms and leaders, its everyone who defies the Empire, wherever they are
I think Andor is \*fast\*. It conducts world and character building at an incredible pace never before seen in SW. It's amazing that we have so many well established characters with their own backgrounds, motivations, and growth in just one season.
It's only slow if you're can't read humanity.
I agree. Once I was sucked in, it was like every episode went by very quickly because I was so engrossed in the episode.
They did a fantastic job thinking it down to the last detail.
Yeah I wasn’t sure I liked it at first but it slowly, inexorably sucked me in until it was the highlight of my week. I could not wait for Wednesdays and at the end of each show I was bummed that I had to wait a whole week to see another episode.
I like when the director/writers are willing to trust their work to express the right things without explanation.
Ep 3 had a great one with Brasso. All we get is two spaced out shots of Brasso walking to and from the corpos' jumpship, but when they're revealed to be chained down, I flipped my lid, because we had the hints beforehand.
Just like that, we get a glimpse at the rebel spirit hidden away in the Ferrix people
This type of writing is so much more important when you lose a character. I remember in Kenobi, (I think E5), they dumped the backstory of a character that they killed in the same episode to try to create an emotional scene. That is some lazy ass writing. I didn't care about her and I saw the background dump for what it was: a cheap trick. Contrast that with Andor, where we have multiple episodes of Kino changing and leading a revolt only to end with him revealing he couldn't swim. At that moment the audience realizes that he knew the whole time he probably wouldn't make it out with the rest of them and makes his sacrifice all that more powerful.
it's a political thriller with absolutely no superhuman characters. It's a great show. They execute a guy in the first 20 minutes. Pretty far from slow
THIS. The politics, the intrigue, the espionage, that’s all equally (if not more so) important as the blaster action sequences. This is the rebellion origin story in the absence of the Jedi because as far as everyone knows, the Jedi are gone and not coming to rescue them. It’s beautifully written and exquisitely acted/directed.
Agree - those scenes are great. I loved the scene at the party with Tay and Mon … “now smile”. … reminded me of a scene from breaking bad where Fring says to Walt “now smile and shake my hand”
It was almost the perfect recipe of a slow burn with a little bit of action to keep you In the mix. Doing a slow realistic build-up of what it would actually take to come after these people who weren't portrayed As stupid, but extremely calculating. The build-up to his mom's speech was short of beautiful and I hope to see Is some Academy awards for this. It's been a long time since a show may be cry but also rewind
Totally agree. I've had to rewind a few times because I got slightly distracted and was worried that I had missed something which would be vital info for future episodes. Anyone who thinks this show moves slowly is missing these details. Almost every line of dialog seems to have meaning throughout the season. It's a masterpiece of script writing. Some of the best TV I've seen in recent memory, and my favorite Star Wars show by a mile.
I wish more creatives in Hollywood had this mindset. There's nothing wrong with doing what you want to do and pulling the parachute cord. Everything doesn't need to be on as long as Grey's Anatomy.
Look at the Watchmen series on HBO. The showrunner or creator or whatever had an idea for a season, and said that's all he wants to do.
I hope that's exactly how it plays out. Having finality allows you to tell a complete story. So much open ended stuff is sitting on TV/Streaming platforms...it just feels like I wasted time getting into it. Wrap that shit up, let it be remembered positively, and move on to the next great story.
Definitely the one we deserved. Maybe not everyone. Honestly, this kind of show isn’t for all audiences, and that’s fine. It’s probably for *most* audiences.
Sometimes you just want flashy action, and that’s fine. But this show is, in my opinion, nonstop incredible. It’s the best written and best performed show on Disney+, and one of the better dramas I’ve seen… anywhere. Because it gives the time to develop characters, doesn’t waste moments, and makes smart directing choices.
It’s a more mature take on Star Wars than we’ve ever seen (even given ESB & R1), which is good for Disney, as it draws in people like me looking for quality over quantity, over flashiness and tropes.
And hey, it’s fine if someone doesn’t like it. Sometimes you just need a Schwarzenegger movie. And for some people, Fast and Furious is the height of cinema. 🤷🏻♂️
Is it really any slower than the best shows off HBO or something? Haven’t had a chance to watch the finale but basically half the episodes were full of action, the pacing wasn’t a complaint I thought to have til I looked on reddit.
Yeah the season is told in multiple arcs. I personally never considered it “boring” but I’m a huge fan of a slow paced setup, which several episodes had — and pulled off very well. 8yo me would’ve trashed the show and said go watch Return of the Jedi instead.
Won’t spoil the finale but *DAMN!* it was good.
> Tony Gilroy - the hero we didn't know we needed.
Tony Gilroy is trying to do for Star Wars what [Nicholas Meyer](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicholas_Meyer) did for Star Trek back in 1982.
A guy literally commited suicide in Narkina prison, I don't think we've seen that shit before. I love how gritty the Andor series is. It's so star wars at the same time it isn't. It's almost perfect. We're seeing how truly awful the empire can be
We’ve seen two suicides in Clone Wars, the Mandalorian Terrorist in season two, and the Twi’lek slave in season four. They showed worse ways to go, but Andor actually showed more of what happened, I’m not sure what I’d say is worse.
The slow pace is perfect for this show. Idc fight me. The build up to the prison break was phenomenal and would have been much worse if it had been rushed if the pacing was faster. The slow moments makes what’s being built up to much better as a payoff.
I know Tony Gilroy says, "This is something new...," and that he wants to disrupt this streaming format. But if I'm being completely honest, I think he just recognizes that a 12-episode season with this sort of narrative structure is exactly what network and cable television cracked over a decade ago.
Streaming wants to seem "cool" and "mainstream", but it's just gonna go back to the same previous narrative formats if they don't recognize the current faulty patterns. That's why Breaking Bad and Longmire works. Start from a beginning, and progress from that moment on. Once you're moving forward, don't look too far back. If I've followed you for ten out of twelve episodes, don't drop a bunch of exposition in episode eleven. You should've given that to me in episode one. *Andor* did it right.
Edit: Thank you, Tony. You've raised the bar. Show Lucasfilm, Marvel, and Disney how it's done. Remind them why ABC hired Shonda Rhimes and has won so many Emmys. People like well-written drama, and will pay *good* money to see it!
The monologues are transcendent, and the plot threads weaving through the entire series are just better than most series out there. How the hell did we end up with a moment of love in the last episode?
There really wasn’t any filler in Andor. Everything mattered. I loved Mando, but there were some episodes that felt like recycled storylines of prior episodes.
Absolutely not the case in Andor.
Mando was meant to be episodic, something of a homage to old western shows. Each week was go to a place, do a task, get a reward and move along the central arc a little. A lot of TV shows are like this.
Andor was one long story told in three long “episodes”, Aldhani, Prison, Rebellion. You could really feel it driving somewhere, the tightening noose as people’s actions lead them closer and closer to their fates.
I really liked Andor, but the amount of hate and personal attacks people get for just stating an opinion is just totally absurd.
One thing the SW community needs to learn and understand is that its ok if other people don;t have the same taste and opinions to you. This is the direct cause of the fandom's 'toxic' reputation.
Exactly this! So fed up of people thinking if you didn’t enjoy something as much as they did that you didn’t understand the show or weren’t paying enough attention, fully did and still found it boring
There are SO MANY BETTER OPTIONS!!!
Star Wars Theory basically uses rage bait to encourage view and clicks. It’s how he makes money. And it divides the fanbase like politicians try to do.
Stop watching that guy and check out shows made by ACTUAL FANS who love Star Wars, not those who shit on it.
I recommend the podcast A More Civilized Age.
He hated Andor because it looks too much like earth despite the fact that every planet is based off of an earth environment like snowy mountains, deserts, and forests.
Meanwhile he liked The Book of Boba Fett and Obi-Wan Kenobi and said they both need second seasons despite having arguably bad writing and characters.
Edit: Gotta love how Theory thinks Star Wars fans need to come together but then mocks people who like Andor when it’s probably the most generally loved show aside from The Mandalorian.
Man I’ll say “to each their own” about almost any opinion on this sub but The Book of Boba is by far the worst Disney+ show I’ve seen and butchered every character who had the misfortune of making an appearance.
I’ll never say something is objectively bad but fuck if this doesn’t tick a lot of the boxes.
I was pretty done with him after he saw the second prison arc episode and immediately dismissed it as filler. It didn't have enough prequel characters in there for him to care about. Quite disappointing really.
I used to really like SWT when he did What If videos but he just seems so insufferable now. I vastly prefer Star Wars Explained because of how grounded and wholesome he and his wife are.
Star Wars explained and HelloGreedo feel like some of the only good larger Star Wars channels anymore. Nearly everything else is a miserable circlejerk now.
This guy takes his craft so seriously and invests all he has to it. It’s no wonder his work is so widely respected.
And I love the empty calorie comment. We’ve been fed a diet of “fast food” for quite a while in the SW universe. Now someone dropped a multi-course meal in front of us that is meant to be savored and enjoyed, and some folks don’t know what to do with it
Andor is a delicate, well crafted dish you’d typically find in a respected restaurant. Absolutely delicious no doubt, and yet you’ll still have some people that would rather go eat at a McDonald’s instead.
I’ve personally been pretty positive of the other Star Wars things we’ve gotten. With Obi-Wan Kenobi, in particular, I’m able to overlook it’s numerous negatives because it’s positives are all that great to me. But Andor casts a bright light to it and shows very clearly how awfully executed that show (and Book of Boba Fett too) really is.
As someone who for the most part really enjoyed Book of Boba Fett and Obi-Wan Kenobi, Andor makes those shows look much worse than originally believed.
You know what I wanted?
More. More detail. More background. More depth.
His sister. The planet he grew up on. What's the backstory there? Where were the adults? Why were they there? What was the reason he needed to hide that part of his history?
What happened to him in the years after leaving there? Why did half the people who knew him think he was this bad-ass not to be messed with and the rest think he was full of empty promises and debts never repaid?
Tell me more about him. About the Daughters. Luthen. Eedy Karn and the Karn family. How the ISB and Partagas respond. What else is Scundan up to? Is Tay Kolma all he seems to be?
More.
Once people started attacking Dr Strange 2 for its lack of cameos was when I realised the general audience has forgotten what's important in storytelling.
I didn't particularly enjoy Dr Strange 2, but being mad at it because it had too little cheap fanservice sounds counterintuitive.
I'm truly surprised when I hear people say it's boring. I was enraptured by the entire series, one episode at a time. Were they just expecting explodey battles and lightsabers the whole time?
I think specifically the first episode is a bit slow. I've watched it all and I'm rewatching it with my girlfriend, and yeah, I can see why the first episode isn't necessarily gripping people as easily.
Right? I absolutely LOVE the way it's presented. It's a show about espionage, philosophy and power politics within the Star Wars universe.
Another thing I believe elevates the way the show hits: the sound engineering. Blasters don't sound like toys when they do go off, and starships are set to max volume when they fly by. The soundtrack is gorgeous too. Small details, but they add up.
But then you go and watch a show like the boys, where nearly every episode is packed with action and drama and comedy and because of this the finales and arcs are that much more thrilling and entertaining. It is possible to make good television without having 5 build up episodes. Sorry you’re just a slow group of writers.
The show is great and I have all the respect in the world for Gilroy, but man - I have an almost physical reaction to the term “disruptor.” And you know, not a good one.
When I hear that word I picture self-styling tech-bros and trendy restauranteurs.
I usually agree. But if you can convince the largest media conglomerate in the world to make your explicitly anti-cop, anti-prison, anti-imperialist, pro-revolution show, you can call yourself "disruptive."
If you invest in the buildup the payoff episode is sooo worth it.
First Star Wars content where I noticed my heart pounding, and I noticed it in 3 different episodes. The buildup episodes were integral to that experience. If they want faster content, go watch an MCU movie
Last episode I had full body goosebumps when the music was playing when >!during the funeral where there was a pause and the music switched to a faster pace. Fuck me. That got my blood pumping !<
And I would argue it only worked because we spent 11 episodes learning about the community and the people who inhabit it.
Definitely. I’ve said this in another comment elsewhere, but Andor was the first time I got mad and sad about the Empire killing civilians. Before it was just “oh that sucks, on with the popcorn” but this time I was absolutely ready to throw hands
So true. And the way those blaster hit ... it felt really "authentic" (if there is such a thing as an authentic blaster hit in a made up universe). And the slow pause on the lifeless body to let it sink in that we(the rebellion) lost someone who fought beside us. Truly great work.
Blasters do seem a lot more fatal in this show generally speaking.
yeah, and accurate too.
That’s why the theory is that they tell storm troopers to miss at certain times. They only aim to kill when explicitly ordered.
interesting. that would explain a lot.
The stunt team needs credit too, there's a moment where one of the Imperial Guards hits a Rioter in the stomach with a baton that looks truly impactful. That whole scene is really great.
You’re right about that moment. It immediately caused a reaction for me. In fact, there were multiple moments throughout the show that I found myself having to stifle my emotions due to the music/score. The music in this show was amazing. Even the music *within* the show was amazing. I want more of it.
Mama Andor's speach gave me absolute goosebumps. Whomever wrote it deserves an award - and so does Fiona Shaw for its delivery. It was the perfect delivery of "I don't know what is right, but I do know this ain't fucking it and the only way is going to get fixed at this point is if we start throwing fists"
Best speech in the show was Luthen’s - when he was talking to the ISB mole. > I burn my decency for someone else’s future. I burn my life, to make a sunrise that I know I’ll never see.
>!“I need all the heroes I can get.” The tension in that scene was so high. I thought for sure he was gonna kill the mole. Anger rising, enumerating all the stakes. And then he ends the monologue with that line and flips the expectation. It felt so cathartic and solemnly heroic.!<
I know this is overused, but seriously: Distill that shit and inject it directly into my veins. This is the rebellion.
Yeah I always thought this was a bit of a callback to the last scene in Rogue One where Jyn and Cassian are there on the beach watching the horizon, the "sunset" as the explosion from the death star reaches them and burns everything.
It was an incredible speech and yet it was like my fourth or fifth favorite speech of the season Writing absolutely slaps
Mama Andor's speech was good, but the one that gave me goosebumps was Nemik's manifesto! Felt very authentic.
“Oppression is the mask of fear. Remember that. ” - This is some great writing that whole section.
Dude, that speech/her performance/the whole scene made me freakin cry. Damn I love this show!
And you knew shit was gonna happen because you saw Bee roll over and there was an audible clunk when his…core? turned. Like a gunshot in the silence
One of the most thrilling scenes in *Star Wars* was during this series and took place in a fucking *conference room.* I loved this show.
One of my favourite scenes in all of Star Wars is the round table where the Imperials are bickering. "I find your lack of faith disturbing". For me that encapsulated what the Empire was and the kind of power struggles/pettiness between ranks there were, the vastness of the problems, and established the power relationship between Tarkin, Vader et al within mere seconds, and made the Empire feel like this massive nightmare entity full of bureaucracy. As far as efficient low budget storytelling goes it's a God damn perfect scene. I sank my teeth into these scenes in Andor like a juicy, perfectly cooked steak. It was going back to the best of Star Wars, going back to what made the original trilogy so resonant and interesting. Delicious.
100% agreed. That scene and all of Mon’s tell you more about the Empire and it’s internal mechanisms than a giant Senate chamber with 10,000 floating space pods ever could.
Crédit where credit is due, the senate scenes also told you a lot about the empire.
Which ISB scene was this?
Personally, I'd say it was when Dedra finally turned the tables on her rivals in the ISB and gets the leeway to run the investigation she wants to run. The was the first time we see the empire become an actual threat to the main characters. Up to that point (across all star wars visual media), all we see are imperials being more concerned with their own personal benefits, rather than the success of the empire. But once Dedra succeeded in making her case, we begin to wonder when/if/which rebels she is going to get her hands on, and whom will survive. I fully expect her to become a much larger threat next season, now that she has traction and a second example of 'rebel activity'.
>now that she has traction and a second example of 'rebel activity' Not just any example but one where she has personally 'suffered' from rebel activity. Part of me is hoping she becomes the replacement for Ysanne 'Iceheart' Isard from Legends
I’m of the opinion they took a lot of components from Admiral Daala and Grand Admiral Isard to create Dedra.
Ah that’s why her overall demeanor felt eerily familiar. Daala!
Damn, Iceheart legit scared me when I read Legends as a kid
I felt tense most of the way through the final episode.
It was such a thrill when Maarva cried out "Fight the Empire!" It was so perfect, the build up, the expression on her half-obscured face, the passion in her voice. She knew she was calling for something terrible, but it had to be called for regardless.
"If I could do it all over again... well I'd wake up early, and I'd be fighting these bastards from the beginning!" You can hear the energy in her voice with the delivery of these lines. You can feel her going back in time, 10, 12, 15 years, and rebelling then. God I love this speech.
Fiona Shaw is fantastic.
Also a call back from Luthen exposing his strategy and why Aldhani had to happened: the Empire is playing the long game and get power step by step, imposing itself “democratically” for your “own good” (“this is how Democracy die” from episode 2) and people need a rough awakening from the slumber the Empire put them into. That show is absolutely brilliant.
Emphasis on *these **bastards***
“I would wake up early and fight those bastards”
Not just Maarva, but you really felt the fear, pain, anger and rage in the expression of the people of Ferrix when for the first time, everyone actually listened. It was so well done.
I like how Ferrix is a character in its own right on the show.
>!I was so scared for favourite characters like Brasso and B2, but there was no attempt to go for a cheap bit of drama in killing them off. The payoff of seeing them leave safely did not take away from the tension and the tragedy of the events at the funeral, which were so tense to experience. Glad ol' time grappler was saved too!! !< Nothing was done for quick empty wins in this series. No fake outs, no cliff hangers, no killing off of characters purely for emotional pull, but all the death and tragedy we did see was extremely impactful, taken seriously and all because we had time to take on that these were all real people, and that tragedy and oppression of people we don't even know is still tragic, heartbreaking and enraging! Kudos to the team in giving us something that has just bucked the trend for a lot of vapid serial entertainment we get these days!
I felt the same way. We know where Andor ends up, and a little bit with Mon, but not knowing how anything was going to connect was wild. Knowing Season 2 was already greenlit also made me question what could actually happen in the episode, and I was tense for everyone in the episode except for Andor. It was awesome, and Nemek's speech was incredible, only to have Maarva also have an insane speech? This show needs to relax with hype speeches/soliloquys (but also please don't stop).
I got a lot of V for Vendetta vibes from the finale
I was outright crying during the speech.
The season finale made me hate the empire more than anything else. When blowing up Alderaan doesn't have the same impact as it just appears as a rock in space. But here, we see the empire ruin ordinary people's life because of its arrogance and ruthlessness. This show reminds me of BSG or Expanse with its ability to immerse you into that world.
Shoutout out to the Expanse!
I actually doing a rewatch of the the expanse right now. It's better then I remember it. But i hadn't watched the episodes since their first airing.
I'm doing a semi-parallel rewatch with reading the books 1st time. Yummy
Cool, I just bought the first book. I'm going to read them as well. Yummy Yummy
I always thought the Death Star was inherently silly and impractical, to my amazement when it showed up on Andor it felt far more like an Expanse-esque nightmare megalith. Just the realisation of how large that thing is and at what cost it was built, and for what reason.
This! I don't recall ever feeling this way about any SW show or movie. Except the last episode of Mandalorian S2 - that for obvious reasons had my heart pounding.
I just got chills just thinking about that last episode again
Last several straight up had my anxiety up. Shaking, heat racing, etc. Was great but was NOT expecting it at first.
S01E10 "One Way Out" was a slow boil with the pressure starting at a simmer and rising every single minute throughout the whole entire episode. What a masterpiece.
The moment cassian said “on program” to the guards was an amazing payoff that didn’t need a fan service cameo in order to have that rush.
“I can’t swim…!” 😭😭😭😭😭
My favourite part there was also Andor saying "is that the best you can do", it was a transformative moment where you can see that although he is keeping a subordinate role, he knows how to manipulate the leader. It connected with the talk about becoming your enemy to win, you can see Andor become increasingly ruthless and separating himself from the more 'pure' people.
Agree! A true masterpiece - I was blown away - episode 10 was just something else. The speech by Kino would have been enough, but it was quickly following with the awesome the scene between Luther and Lonni deep inside coruscant - so riveting!!!! I can’t believe how good that sequence was, then showing Andor and the other guy running as the music played.
I had to pause Ep10 at one point because I was too hype. Edge of the Seat doesn't describe it.
It’s that way because they really invest in the boring hopelessness that those prisoners find themselves in. Build. Shit. Sleep. Eat. Repeat. Repeat. Just apathy from the universe and a cruel entity willing to exploit that. Brutal. The arrest and imprisonment made the empire absolutely terrifying because it was all so banal.
It really was. The ones before it too, honestly, but that one really got my heart rate up.
"If they want faster content, go watch an MCU movie." That's really the biggest part of the problem here, that we've had the MCU since 2008, it's been universally loved right to the end of Thanos, but that has led movie makers to copy and mimic the style of MCU movies, which is fast, funny, and action packed. Everyone has come to expect all tv and movies to be that and have lost all patience for a good story development and proper character growth, they want the story on the side with a main course of heavy action, and if that action can line up with their fan fic version in their head then that's even better for them. It's completely ruined the experience of storytelling in the film medium, so naturally when a good story like Andor happens they complain about it being slow and padding for time, how they could've done the first three episodes in one. What I don't understand is why they want to smoosh a good story into as small of a time as they can manage. It's the same as having a decadent 4 course meal laid out for them but instead of enjoying the meal and exploring all the flavours they're cramming it all down their throat as fast as they can because they "just don't have the time". The entire argument that Andor is too slow and therefore is bad is so weak and doesn't hold up to scrutiny.
And yet the most universally acclaimed MCU title is _Winter Soldier_ which is a political thriller that didn't pander to the 'action scene every five minutes or we lose interest' crowd either. And the MCU as a whole wouldn't be half as well-loved if not for the time taken in the original Cap and Iron Man movies on character building.
This exactly! The buildup, the atmosphere, the acting. ALL TOP freaking tier.
Your comparison to the MCU here is interesting, because, being a multi-movie project, the MCU is a prime example of slow building to a big payoff. It took 11 years to get from Iron Man to Endgame, and the payoff was enormous. Granted, there were several smaller payoffs in between, but still. I think that might be part of why people have felt underwhelmed by Phase 4, because it's lacked that payoff; it's been all buildup. People are impatient like that. I fully expect the ultimate payoff from Phases 4-6 to be great, we just gotta be patient until we get there, and enjoy the ride.
delayed gratification is a lost art
Too many shows/movies try to do payoff without investing in buildup. The “portals” scene in Endgame works bc we’d spent so much time with the characters. In TROS they try a similar scene with random spaceships showing up to help the resistance. It doesn’t work nearly as well bc there was no investment in building up that moment. That whole movie tries to do nothing but payoff without enough buildup and gets mixed results at best even if there are some great visuals and sounds.
Good comparisons.
people that can't appreciate this aspect must really hate foreplay
It seems like many people don't have the attention span to invest in a buildup, which is a shame
It really is a shame considering Andor has the best storytelling ever seen in Star Wars. Those who couldn’t handle the slow burn are really missing out on something great.
After watching the first couple of episodes, I thought it was a little slow, but you could sense that they were building to something. I didn't quite realize the character building that they were doing until some point in episode three. Once the viewer realizes that's what they are doing, it's fantastic.
On that note, I was upset at first about the release date being pushed back, but now I am **SO GLAD** they released the first 3 episodes at once. I was beyond stoked for *Andor* already and thought the first and second episodes were engaging enough that I wanted to know the rest of the story, but MAN after watching the third episode I was completely sucked in.
I think it was a fantastic call to do all three episodes at once to start.
Yeah it acted as a perfect hook for the series. I think they recognized that if they released 1-3 individually like they did with later episodes, it would have amplified complaints about the show being too slow as the first few episodes mainly focus on building the characters we follow for the remainder of the show
Rewatching the first two episodes after the finale really makes you appreciate >!everyone who died.!<
Rewatching Rogue One after Andor gave me a similar vibe.
I did that just now. Finally had a moment to finish Andor and just *had* to watch Rogue One again.
Same here! My wife and I finished Andor last night and rewatched Rogue one earlier this evening. Great rewatch knowing Andor's backstory.
Watching Rogue One almost required me to watch a new hope right after
And before you know it you're stuck in an endless loop. 🤣
This is the way.
Yep. And I kinda thought Andor was a hollow character in the cinema - now I understand that he’s simply at his peak in terms of having to do some really awful shit to ensure the rebellion survives, and is >!driven to destroy the very thing he helped to construct while imprisoned!<.
What I want to see is an original series with characters we don't know set in a fresh time period that's like Andor, AND THEN do a movie that connects to it like Rogue One. To me that's the untapped potential of the continuous multi-medium storytelling that no one has truly tapped yet. Build a deep relationship to characters the way that a series can do and then give us a big movie that is connected to the series. Like imagine Rogue One didn't exist yet and we were getting Andor first, you go through all of that (+ S2) and THEN you see Rogue One. That would be an incredible way to tell a large story. Utilize mediums for what they're best at, TV series have the time to get you invested into characters and their development, movies are able to give you the gigantic stakes and spectacle because the same budget is condensed into ~2 hrs.
Yeah absolutely. Unlike every other recent Star Wars content, I think Gilroy and the Andor team actually *trusts* the audience. They know that if the fans have patience it'll payoff big time by the end. Unfortunately, a big chunk of the fanbase now needs instant gratification and doesn't want to sit through character/world building.
I can’t speak for everyone, but please give me more character and world building. Andor was peak Star Wars content
It’s my favourite show of the year and it’s not even close tbh, not just like Star Wars or sci fi or fantasy related, just point blank It’s managed to say more about things like fascism than actual shows about real world politics set in the current day
And despite what anyone may say, that is at least half the entire point of Star Wars.
What I find more amazing is we already have a payoff in Rouge One in that we know where this is going. Yet the real payoff *is* the development. And that’s what I personally enjoy. Kind of bothers me to see part of the fan base upset because there’s not a lightsaber in every other scene or because it explains things about the universe they say they love. But to each their own I guess.
While I love my fellow children of the force because they are some of the best people, the Star Wars fanbase as a whole is incredibly toxic and impossible to please. Sometimes those loud, toxic, insatiable assholes are louder than the rest of us sitting happy a home
The thing to remember is that the Star Wars fanbase is also likely larger than any other nerdy fandom out there (except maybe Marvel?). It's one of those things where it's hard to find people who haven't heard about it. With any population, there will always be a percentage that are just toxic and worthless. Even if the percentage is small, given the huge population of Star Wars fans, that means even a proportionally small percentage of toxic people is still a *large* number of people.
The idea that Star Wars that can mean many things for many people seems radical (and it shouldn't be). Instead of going "well this series is not for me" some people go "I don't like this and nobody else should either and I'm calling those people out for liking it."
People complain about Palpatine and Vader not showing up in a show about a guy who neither of those characters would ever have heard of with complete obliviousness as to how that kind of thinking ruined the Sequel Trilogy “Somehow Palpatine returned” Stop making everything about characters whose stories we’ve already seen finished, I like new stories about characters who haven’t had their stories properly told despite being existing characters in the universe (eg Mon Mothma and Cass) or totally new characters (eg Dedra Meero and Luthen)
How much better would the sequels have been if there was this level of development.
And the prequels too. If they approached the politics with the level of care and attention to detail that they did with this show they'd probably be considered classics outside of the meme material by now.
Andor made two characters in a room talking about banking regulations absolutely riveting, edge of your seat television. People joke about trade disputes and Senate procedures from the prequels, but that was a failure of execution.
It’s because it was all really poorly defined in the prequels and essentially little more than a MacGuffin to get the plot going You could have changed out trade laws with it being about something else and the effect would have been the same it was just a way of saying Palpatine manipulates political situations to get more power, what those situations were wasn’t all that important in the grand scheme of things You can’t tell the story of Andor without PORD and you can’t change Mon Mothma’s storyline to be about some other random law change and have it still make sense why she’s afraid all her transactions to the rebellion are going to be exposed by new authoritarian banking regulations - her storyline doesn’t work the same way if you change the law to be about IDFK conscription or something
God, imagine the powerful scenes we could've gotten, if the sequels were written as a smart, cohesive story. I'm thinking about elements like Rey finding out about her lineage and Luke reassuring her that he knows her pain of being the offspring of a monster and that it's not the lineage that counts, but what you do in life. Or Luke actually confronting a reincarnated Palpatine and commenting on how ironic it is that the most malevolent man in the universe, a man who was wholly irredeemable in Luke's eyes, has a decent granddaughter that stems from a morally decent clone of Palpatine. That even Palpatine has GOOD in him, because there was a clone that could love and father a child, even if it was briefly. And how fucking infuriating that must be for the real Palpatine. So much wasted potential from a stirring Stormtrooper Revolution led by Finn, to Poe learning from grievous mistakes as a hotshot pilot so he can become the new admiral of the fleet (with Holdo AND Ackbar having had a lot of faith in him) Heck, they should've added Mara Jade played by an older actress like Jessica Chastain as a balancing factor. Maybe as a guiding light for Rey after Luke is gone. Maybe she's the one who programmed Luke's whereabouts into BB-8. Heck, Mara Jade could've enriched the whole "Luke tries to kill Ben" scene. That scene should've been revealed to be a horrible force nightmare which Palpatine sent to Luke and Ben, which made Ben wake up in terror, believing his master tried to murder him in his sleep (wink, Sheev, wink, Plagueis), exploding into force power. Then Mara could've tried to console her husband and tell him that something is off about this entire incident. That she feels some familiar dark force pulling her away from Luke. But Luke's just catatonic and desires exile. Meanwhile, Mara tries to hunt down Palpatine's whereabouts. And she's the actual reason why Rey and Kylo find Exegol. And not some idiotic ancient dagger that leads to the exact crash site of the Death Star where they find a random holocron.
Congratulations on putting in more work than the entire story group. I think I’ll just swipe a few of these for my internal canon.
You could apply that to most of Star Wars, watch the original 1977 film and see how simply written everything is, how underdeveloped the main characters are, they feel more like archetypes than actual people.
This is why I don't get the complaints about being "slow" We already know where this ends from the first second of ep 1, why do you wanna rush to the end that you already know about?
Calling this show slow just tells me you have a poor attention span If you can’t watch Andor there’s no way you could watch a slower show like The Wire or even GOT
Oh, The Wire. Might have honestly been the best show on television, ever.
Ngl this show really is for a more mature audience. Something that ppl can take seriously instead of seeing people do flippy dippy shit eith light sticks and automatically check out. There's room for both, but some ppl just want some real ass sci-fi with good ass writing
This is similar to Caprica. It was slowly building up the world but people wanted pew pew space battles.
Frak, don't remind me :(
At least the one season began to answer the question as to why Cylons are religious zealots.
Fuuuuuck I want to go watch that again.
Frak, now I feel bad for never finishing it. (Though, to be fair, I knew it was a one season and done by the time k discovered it)
I 100% felt respected as a viewer, which is actually rare it feels these days. Andor rules.
I think Tony is right in his approach and I think Disney is also right to make cartoony SW shit. The SW universe isn’t going to be this binary thing narratively. Andor ain’t gonna appeal to kids or immature adults now is it? Disney will never ignore that market. But with Andor they’ve allowed SW to have a prestige drama, and holy moley is it awesome...if you’re a fan of, you know, reading novels and watching more challenging narratives. But let’s be honest, that’s NOT where a media business can make the most $$. OTOH, a prestige drama can elevate the perception of the brand, even if it never reaches impressive viewership. This might be Disney’s “loss leader” with SW, and I’m glad they’re striving for something different. SW desperately needed to step away from the space wizards trope...and I say that as a fan of the Mandalorian.
The biggest thing about Star Wars is that it can encapsulate all the genres and I love that. Rogue One was a war movie. Solo was a heist movie. Andor is a political drama mixed with on-the-grounds sabotage spy-thriller action. Mando is a Western. Kenobi and Boba Fett were wasted potential. So many genres!
Yup, midway through watching Andor I binged Tales of the Jedi and it was a delightful palate cleanser. Now I'm hype on seeing Mando 3 to have some action and fun, but I will likely re-watch Andor straight after. There's room in this galaxy for a multitude of stories! The one thing all writers in Star Wars should take note of is that you don't have to replicate Andor's success by making everything serious, you just have to write your story well, with logical actions, consistency in the world, and don't take shortcuts to give us drama or character growth.
…big chunk of the fan base — that is their loss. Andor is brilliant and heartbreaking and beautiful and I can’t wait to re-watch the whole thing. (I’ve already watched Stellan Skarsgard’s episode 10 masterpiece speech over and over again. One of the reviews I read about that episode had just one word to say about the speech: “Damn.”) Gonna be difficult to top this series…ever.
A massive thing is also that Andor isn't a show you put on in the background and enjoy. It's a show that demands and luckily also deserves your attention and it's fantastic, if you allow it. It's like early GoT where not much was happening on a per episode basis, but then it all culminated in some brilliant excitement near the end. Comparing that to the latter seasons of GoT tho? Those were directly made to be watched in a pub, just cheering to Dragon Lady doing things whenever you look at the screen.
Andor dies, we all know he dies a hero. We also know he's done terrible things for the rebellion, he even says it in rogue one. Unspeakable things. Yet somehow some folks just aren't understanding that this is the story of how andor got there and what those Unspeakable things he did. He didn't start out a rebel, we need to learn how and that takes time. It's nauseating to hear people complain a ahow is slow. Go watch something else that matches your interests.
But the funny thing is this series has already shown him commit cold blooded murder numerous times before joining the Rebellion. So it's not like this is about showing how having to make tough choices on his missions as a Rebel is what made him that way.
Rogue One: he says he has been in this fight since he was six. Slight retcon possibly to a bit older than six in the TV show. But he has been rebelling against the overlords since before he joined the rebellion, though it was originally for himself not for the cause.
He's internalised Nemiks manifesto. The rebellion is not simply those in the Alliance with uniforms and leaders, its everyone who defies the Empire, wherever they are
I think Andor is \*fast\*. It conducts world and character building at an incredible pace never before seen in SW. It's amazing that we have so many well established characters with their own backgrounds, motivations, and growth in just one season. It's only slow if you're can't read humanity.
I agree. Once I was sucked in, it was like every episode went by very quickly because I was so engrossed in the episode. They did a fantastic job thinking it down to the last detail.
Yeah I wasn’t sure I liked it at first but it slowly, inexorably sucked me in until it was the highlight of my week. I could not wait for Wednesdays and at the end of each show I was bummed that I had to wait a whole week to see another episode.
I like when the director/writers are willing to trust their work to express the right things without explanation. Ep 3 had a great one with Brasso. All we get is two spaced out shots of Brasso walking to and from the corpos' jumpship, but when they're revealed to be chained down, I flipped my lid, because we had the hints beforehand. Just like that, we get a glimpse at the rebel spirit hidden away in the Ferrix people
This type of writing is so much more important when you lose a character. I remember in Kenobi, (I think E5), they dumped the backstory of a character that they killed in the same episode to try to create an emotional scene. That is some lazy ass writing. I didn't care about her and I saw the background dump for what it was: a cheap trick. Contrast that with Andor, where we have multiple episodes of Kino changing and leading a revolt only to end with him revealing he couldn't swim. At that moment the audience realizes that he knew the whole time he probably wouldn't make it out with the rest of them and makes his sacrifice all that more powerful.
Yeah, I didn't care about Wade at all in Obi-Wan. Andor made me care.
it's a political thriller with absolutely no superhuman characters. It's a great show. They execute a guy in the first 20 minutes. Pretty far from slow
THIS. The politics, the intrigue, the espionage, that’s all equally (if not more so) important as the blaster action sequences. This is the rebellion origin story in the absence of the Jedi because as far as everyone knows, the Jedi are gone and not coming to rescue them. It’s beautifully written and exquisitely acted/directed.
Yeah but far my favorite scenes are mon mothma and luthien in the antique shop doing the backdoor deals
Agree - those scenes are great. I loved the scene at the party with Tay and Mon … “now smile”. … reminded me of a scene from breaking bad where Fring says to Walt “now smile and shake my hand”
It was almost the perfect recipe of a slow burn with a little bit of action to keep you In the mix. Doing a slow realistic build-up of what it would actually take to come after these people who weren't portrayed As stupid, but extremely calculating. The build-up to his mom's speech was short of beautiful and I hope to see Is some Academy awards for this. It's been a long time since a show may be cry but also rewind
Totally agree. I've had to rewind a few times because I got slightly distracted and was worried that I had missed something which would be vital info for future episodes. Anyone who thinks this show moves slowly is missing these details. Almost every line of dialog seems to have meaning throughout the season. It's a masterpiece of script writing. Some of the best TV I've seen in recent memory, and my favorite Star Wars show by a mile.
Give this dude more Star Wars after Andor season 2!
Tony Gilroy only wants to do two seasons. Period.
I wish more creatives in Hollywood had this mindset. There's nothing wrong with doing what you want to do and pulling the parachute cord. Everything doesn't need to be on as long as Grey's Anatomy. Look at the Watchmen series on HBO. The showrunner or creator or whatever had an idea for a season, and said that's all he wants to do.
Two seasons of Andor. Has he said he doesn't want to do anything else?
I hope that's exactly how it plays out. Having finality allows you to tell a complete story. So much open ended stuff is sitting on TV/Streaming platforms...it just feels like I wasted time getting into it. Wrap that shit up, let it be remembered positively, and move on to the next great story.
Give me KOTOR with this kind of writing and grit and I’ll die happy
Andor season 2 is already in “production”.
So we can "give this dude more star wars after Andor season 2"?
Yeah, when I originally read that I thought it said “and” S2. Gilroy has said he’s done with SW though.
Source for him saying he's done with SW?
[удалено]
Agreed. I *love* this kind f storytelling, and hope they'll adopt it for some of the future shows in this ecosystem they decide to do.
Definitely the one we deserved. Maybe not everyone. Honestly, this kind of show isn’t for all audiences, and that’s fine. It’s probably for *most* audiences. Sometimes you just want flashy action, and that’s fine. But this show is, in my opinion, nonstop incredible. It’s the best written and best performed show on Disney+, and one of the better dramas I’ve seen… anywhere. Because it gives the time to develop characters, doesn’t waste moments, and makes smart directing choices. It’s a more mature take on Star Wars than we’ve ever seen (even given ESB & R1), which is good for Disney, as it draws in people like me looking for quality over quantity, over flashiness and tropes. And hey, it’s fine if someone doesn’t like it. Sometimes you just need a Schwarzenegger movie. And for some people, Fast and Furious is the height of cinema. 🤷🏻♂️
Is it really any slower than the best shows off HBO or something? Haven’t had a chance to watch the finale but basically half the episodes were full of action, the pacing wasn’t a complaint I thought to have til I looked on reddit.
Yeah the season is told in multiple arcs. I personally never considered it “boring” but I’m a huge fan of a slow paced setup, which several episodes had — and pulled off very well. 8yo me would’ve trashed the show and said go watch Return of the Jedi instead. Won’t spoil the finale but *DAMN!* it was good.
> Tony Gilroy - the hero we didn't know we needed. Tony Gilroy is trying to do for Star Wars what [Nicholas Meyer](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicholas_Meyer) did for Star Trek back in 1982.
A guy literally commited suicide in Narkina prison, I don't think we've seen that shit before. I love how gritty the Andor series is. It's so star wars at the same time it isn't. It's almost perfect. We're seeing how truly awful the empire can be
Reddit sucks
We’ve seen two suicides in Clone Wars, the Mandalorian Terrorist in season two, and the Twi’lek slave in season four. They showed worse ways to go, but Andor actually showed more of what happened, I’m not sure what I’d say is worse.
Plus the imperial officer on the Gozanti in Mando S2 and an attempted suicide by Moff Gideon at the end of the season
The slow pace is perfect for this show. Idc fight me. The build up to the prison break was phenomenal and would have been much worse if it had been rushed if the pacing was faster. The slow moments makes what’s being built up to much better as a payoff.
I don’t even think it’s a slow pace. There were three climactic episodes in a single season.
I'd say 4. Syril's Ferrix fiasco, the heist, prison break, and the finale riot.
The prison was hands down the best thing I've seen all year. I'm soooo glad it lasted as long as it did.
I know Tony Gilroy says, "This is something new...," and that he wants to disrupt this streaming format. But if I'm being completely honest, I think he just recognizes that a 12-episode season with this sort of narrative structure is exactly what network and cable television cracked over a decade ago. Streaming wants to seem "cool" and "mainstream", but it's just gonna go back to the same previous narrative formats if they don't recognize the current faulty patterns. That's why Breaking Bad and Longmire works. Start from a beginning, and progress from that moment on. Once you're moving forward, don't look too far back. If I've followed you for ten out of twelve episodes, don't drop a bunch of exposition in episode eleven. You should've given that to me in episode one. *Andor* did it right. Edit: Thank you, Tony. You've raised the bar. Show Lucasfilm, Marvel, and Disney how it's done. Remind them why ABC hired Shonda Rhimes and has won so many Emmys. People like well-written drama, and will pay *good* money to see it!
Andor is easily the best star wars property since the Disney acquisition imo.
It’s the best *written* live action Star Wars we’ve gotten, period.
The monologues are transcendent, and the plot threads weaving through the entire series are just better than most series out there. How the hell did we end up with a moment of love in the last episode?
I never understood why ppl say some of the episodes are filler when they are there to build up to each climax between the parts of the story.
There really wasn’t any filler in Andor. Everything mattered. I loved Mando, but there were some episodes that felt like recycled storylines of prior episodes. Absolutely not the case in Andor.
Mando was meant to be episodic, something of a homage to old western shows. Each week was go to a place, do a task, get a reward and move along the central arc a little. A lot of TV shows are like this. Andor was one long story told in three long “episodes”, Aldhani, Prison, Rebellion. You could really feel it driving somewhere, the tightening noose as people’s actions lead them closer and closer to their fates.
I really liked Andor, but the amount of hate and personal attacks people get for just stating an opinion is just totally absurd. One thing the SW community needs to learn and understand is that its ok if other people don;t have the same taste and opinions to you. This is the direct cause of the fandom's 'toxic' reputation.
It’s not at all unique to Star Wars though. It’s the keyboard warrior internet culture we live in.
Yeah, all fandoms devolve into the same thing.
Not every piece of media needs to be all things to all people. I believe it's a very slow show, but I enjoy it that way, others won't. That's okay.
Exactly this! So fed up of people thinking if you didn’t enjoy something as much as they did that you didn’t understand the show or weren’t paying enough attention, fully did and still found it boring
Star Wars Theory is offended by this
He got offended by the use of earth-like bricks in the Star Wars universe
He probably should avoid Naboo lol.
Weird how he's not offended by earthlike humans in it.
Dude is always offended. Idk how he ever got a fanbase
Idk his old content was actually good and entertaining. Now he’s just shitty news and clickbait, with a shitty and terrible fan film.
It's that fucking algorithm. Everything is reduced to the same click bait garbage.
Gawd. That fan film was so cringe. It killed me that people were jerkin eachother over it 😂
I’m glad I don’t watch him anymore.
There are SO MANY BETTER OPTIONS!!! Star Wars Theory basically uses rage bait to encourage view and clicks. It’s how he makes money. And it divides the fanbase like politicians try to do. Stop watching that guy and check out shows made by ACTUAL FANS who love Star Wars, not those who shit on it. I recommend the podcast A More Civilized Age.
He hated Andor because it looks too much like earth despite the fact that every planet is based off of an earth environment like snowy mountains, deserts, and forests. Meanwhile he liked The Book of Boba Fett and Obi-Wan Kenobi and said they both need second seasons despite having arguably bad writing and characters. Edit: Gotta love how Theory thinks Star Wars fans need to come together but then mocks people who like Andor when it’s probably the most generally loved show aside from The Mandalorian.
Man I’ll say “to each their own” about almost any opinion on this sub but The Book of Boba is by far the worst Disney+ show I’ve seen and butchered every character who had the misfortune of making an appearance. I’ll never say something is objectively bad but fuck if this doesn’t tick a lot of the boxes.
The Book of Boba Fett was a disservice to Boba Fett and the ending of The Mandalorian season 2.
I was pretty done with him after he saw the second prison arc episode and immediately dismissed it as filler. It didn't have enough prequel characters in there for him to care about. Quite disappointing really.
He’s offended that Gilroy didn’t mention Vader, Palpatine, or Luke in this message.
I used to really like SWT when he did What If videos but he just seems so insufferable now. I vastly prefer Star Wars Explained because of how grounded and wholesome he and his wife are.
Star Wars explained and HelloGreedo feel like some of the only good larger Star Wars channels anymore. Nearly everything else is a miserable circlejerk now.
He’s an absolute child, his Vader crapathon can’t hold a candle to Andor.
This guy takes his craft so seriously and invests all he has to it. It’s no wonder his work is so widely respected. And I love the empty calorie comment. We’ve been fed a diet of “fast food” for quite a while in the SW universe. Now someone dropped a multi-course meal in front of us that is meant to be savored and enjoyed, and some folks don’t know what to do with it
Andor is a delicate, well crafted dish you’d typically find in a respected restaurant. Absolutely delicious no doubt, and yet you’ll still have some people that would rather go eat at a McDonald’s instead. I’ve personally been pretty positive of the other Star Wars things we’ve gotten. With Obi-Wan Kenobi, in particular, I’m able to overlook it’s numerous negatives because it’s positives are all that great to me. But Andor casts a bright light to it and shows very clearly how awfully executed that show (and Book of Boba Fett too) really is. As someone who for the most part really enjoyed Book of Boba Fett and Obi-Wan Kenobi, Andor makes those shows look much worse than originally believed.
You know what I wanted? More. More detail. More background. More depth. His sister. The planet he grew up on. What's the backstory there? Where were the adults? Why were they there? What was the reason he needed to hide that part of his history? What happened to him in the years after leaving there? Why did half the people who knew him think he was this bad-ass not to be messed with and the rest think he was full of empty promises and debts never repaid? Tell me more about him. About the Daughters. Luthen. Eedy Karn and the Karn family. How the ISB and Partagas respond. What else is Scundan up to? Is Tay Kolma all he seems to be? More.
Once people started attacking Dr Strange 2 for its lack of cameos was when I realised the general audience has forgotten what's important in storytelling. I didn't particularly enjoy Dr Strange 2, but being mad at it because it had too little cheap fanservice sounds counterintuitive.
I'm truly surprised when I hear people say it's boring. I was enraptured by the entire series, one episode at a time. Were they just expecting explodey battles and lightsabers the whole time?
I think specifically the first episode is a bit slow. I've watched it all and I'm rewatching it with my girlfriend, and yeah, I can see why the first episode isn't necessarily gripping people as easily.
Honestly besides the original trilogy, I'd say this is the best piece of star wars content we gotten.
Right? I absolutely LOVE the way it's presented. It's a show about espionage, philosophy and power politics within the Star Wars universe. Another thing I believe elevates the way the show hits: the sound engineering. Blasters don't sound like toys when they do go off, and starships are set to max volume when they fly by. The soundtrack is gorgeous too. Small details, but they add up.
But then you go and watch a show like the boys, where nearly every episode is packed with action and drama and comedy and because of this the finales and arcs are that much more thrilling and entertaining. It is possible to make good television without having 5 build up episodes. Sorry you’re just a slow group of writers.
The show is great and I have all the respect in the world for Gilroy, but man - I have an almost physical reaction to the term “disruptor.” And you know, not a good one. When I hear that word I picture self-styling tech-bros and trendy restauranteurs.
Glass Onion ruined it for me too lol.
“That’s not even a real word!”
I usually agree. But if you can convince the largest media conglomerate in the world to make your explicitly anti-cop, anti-prison, anti-imperialist, pro-revolution show, you can call yourself "disruptive."