Alright guys lets chat about this.... OH MY GOODNESS what a series ... “I think we used up all the perfect.” That Luthen line to Kleya sums up the feeling of watching Andor’s credits roll for the final time. After its transcendent, transformative run, Andor is done. And it concluded as it proceeded: with hardly a note or a quote out of place. There was no trench run in the three-part finale, no battle between massed fleets, no lightsaber duel. No set piece more explosive than run-ins with a few agents and troopers at a hospital and a housing complex. There wasn’t even one last mother of a monologue: Like the last two episodes of Season 1, the ending of the second season and the series couldn’t help but be a bit overshadowed by the high points that preceded it. Yet the last of Season 2’s four mini-movies, directed by Alonso Ruizpalacios and written by Tom Bissell, was everything it could or should have been, considering the story constraints imposed by Rogue One: poignant, elegiac, devastating, inspiring, even somewhat surprising. I’m so sad that I’ve seen all the Andor, and also so fulfilled. It’s hard to remember now, in its moment of triumph, but much like the rebellion, Andor had humble origins, hype-wise. Forgive me for memeing, but this image more or less sums up my reaction when I first heard about the series: Cassian Andor wasn’t exactly Glup Shitto, but the concept of a prequel to a prequel, and a spinoff of a spinoff, seemed symbolic of Disney’s recursive Star Wars storytelling strategy: The success of Rogue One would instantly be mined for more content tied to the original trilogy. I didn’t suspect that Andor would, one day, be as luminous as any other Star Wars project in the Lucasfilm firmament. However, Tony Gilroy’s involvement suggested that the series might be more than derivative franchise fodder, and once the first footage surfaced, I was sold—a testament to the difference visionary creators can make, even working within a franchise framework. It’s not as if a Breaking Bad prequel series centered on Saul Goodman sounded so great—and yet. Just as Better Call Saul became more than a prelude to Breaking Bad, Andor doesn’t seem like well-executed setup for preestablished Star Wars narratives. In my mind, it’s no more a prequel than Episode IV is a sequel. It’s not backstory; it’s just story. I’ll never watch Episode IV again without wondering what Wilmon and Kleya and Vel think about the Battle of Yavin, or how Bix and her (and Cassian’s) kid are doing, or whether Mon Mothma mentally thanks Luthen when the second Death Star is destroyed and the Emperor is (at least temporarily) toppled. More than that, though, I don’t need to watch Episode IV to feel Andor’s impact. I know that the big battles and victories are still to come as Cassian sets off for Kefrene. But Andor’s fine-grained portrayal of the roots of the rebellion, which Cassian has cultivated as carefully as the plants he waters at his house on Yavin, is so absorbing, so convincing, that it seems like the hard part—the important part—is already done, even before the Force users arrive. Andor isn’t only for Star Wars obsessives, but it gave fans like me something precious: the feeling of communally experiencing Star Wars as if for the first time. I was born after the original trilogy ended, and the first Star Wars movies I saw on big screens were the special editions. While I fell for those films just as hard as the generation before me (and the ones after me), I’ve always envied the fans who had the high of seeing a subtitle-less Star Wars in ’77, when it felt fresh and limitless. No wonder I’m still so attached to the Star Wars Expanded Universe, de-canonized or not: The characters in those books, comics, and video games felt like my Star Wars, the Star Wars that didn’t predate me but bloomed just as I discovered the series at the tail end of the on-screen lean years between the first two trilogies. Tony Gilroy on the Final Three Episodes of ‘Andor’ Season 2 The Watch • May 14• 1 hr 2 min Andor undoubtedly exists in close conversation with the rest of the saga: Not only is it situated within the same universe and chronology, but it also seems so transgressive and revolutionary largely because of the contrast in tone between Andor and stereotypical Star Wars. Nonetheless, the series suggested that Star Wars could do more than strive to imitate its ancestors—that in some respects, it could be better today than it was a long time ago. Andor proved it was possible to redefine a franchise after almost 50 years—not only to recapture the spirit of classic Star Wars, as the best of Rebels or The Mandalorian did, but also to pioneer a new framework for the franchise. Nostalgia is nice, but as those plucky freedom fighters on Yavin know, it’s exhilarating to be present at the start of something.
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