The hyperbolic praise around Andor initially turned me off because I read into the hyperbole a reaction against other Star Wars films and shows, particularly those that dare have multiple POC in their main cast or dare be merely OK. But on my brother-in-law’s insistence, I tried season 1 and really enjoyed it. For season 2, I basically watched the episode 1 one night, 2-3 a few nights later, and then 4-9 over the last two days. Again, I’m really liking it.
I literally said, “You don’t have to be a Star Wars fan to like it” to my partner even though I am a Star Wars fan. To explain that a bit, I think the show does a good job at depicting characters in a way you don’t need the lore to grasp. The idea that the Empire is encroaching on people’s civil liberties little by little, that Cassian struggles to reconcile his avoidance of conflict with a need to do something, that Senator Mothma has to give away everything she holds dear bit by bit to covertly support the Rebellion, that Luthien has chosen the lonely path of war, that Syril has a dogged sense of order and thus has to chase down the one who got away, that Dedra absolutely would pull the trigger on a destructive plan - all of that makes sense even if you don’t know the pre-Battle of Yavin timeline this series is moving through. The characters really are the heart of the series.
It’s hard to delve into character details because the show delivers so much in background or snippets. I don’t know when I’m spoiling something and for whom it’s a spoiler. But to develop one thread: season 1 shows how Cassian Andor is a migrant - his own home devastated by exploitative mining, he lived with other kids until being taken in by adoptive parents who worked as scavengers. His modus operandi at the start of the series is survival - he steals ship parts. It takes a couple of false starts (being recruited and working a mission only to see how fucked up it was and running away, then being imprisoned and almost running away again only to return for his adoptive mother’s funeral) to move him from avoiding conflict to being a resistance fighter. It’s hard to say how the show does that development well, and plot summary doesn’t really do it justice. The character writing works to flesh out who he is growing into.
Also, the show has gravitas. We’re so conditioned to meme specific moments in the films and shows that it can feel hard to come back to the original trilogy and sit with how menacing Grand Moff Tarkin is, how an entire planet and all its people are destroyed, how Luke sees his guardians’ smouldering, charred bones, how Han’s readiness to shoot Greedo says a lot about what he’s running from. Andor has a lot of memetic moments - the prison escape (“one way out”), the Chandrilan wedding dance (where Mon Mothma loses herself in dancing), Luthien cutting apart TIE Fighters with his ship, and lots more. But beneath the memes are effective emotional moments. I’ve watched the end of season 2 episode 3 (the dance) multiple times now thinking about how that scene works. In a pre-internet age, we could perhaps better separate the post hoc memetic reception of these moments and the in-the-moment watching of them. Now, I just hope that the emotional resonance comes through for those who give it a chance after seeing the meme first.
I guess that sums up my response to the hyperbole too. Yes, shows have been written that juxtapose two scenes effectively before, that write effective speeches into their scenes, that show antagonists in a sympathetic light. But I hope that doesn’t take away from the fact that Andor still does it well!