Welcome back Astro travelers and cosmic Voyagers alike to another exciting episode of this is your life on Star Wars. Today I want to hit the hyper speed and fly straight into the heart of that galaxy we all know and love, that little spirally looking speck in the sky so very far far away.
As many of you might have guessed, this month’s IMO will be focused upon our favorite Star Wars series of all time, Andor, or is it? Many of you will outright object to this statement and regard anything that Disney Star Wars has created in the past millennium as something that should be sent straight to the spice mines of Kessel or smashed into who knows what!
Now I can say that with some degree of certainty because face it Disney Star Wars has not had the greatest run so far. We have been stuck with very low par entries such as Boba Fett, Obi Wan Kenobi, Ahsoka and the horrendous Acolyte series. I don’t know how many millions of dollars that Disney and Lucasfilm have spent on those shows but they would have been much better to have invested those funds into Cosmic-books because well, I’m awesome. I will admit however that upon second viewing of the TV show Obi Wan Kenobi I actually enjoyed it a little more. However, there were parts of that show that just didn’t sit right with me and this is a big problem with most of these Disney shows. Parts of them are good, parts of them are blah and generally the blah wins like a Sith Lord on meth.
Now I do believe skeleton crew falls into a different category so I’m not going to include it in my general critique. It seemed to branch off into more of an exclusive kid friendly zone that was very Disney and I actually enjoyed it for what it was because I didn’t consider it really Star Wars.
Andor on the other hand is like Star Wars amplified but not in a meth sort of way more like a good bottle of whiskey and a cigar. Many have attributed Andor as being akin to Star Wars for adults and I have to agree with this sediment; it’s a very mature take on the subject matter. The idea that Star Wars deals with mature content is something that Disney has been actively avoiding even with their major motion pictures.
As many of you know Andor is a TV show based upon the motion picture called Rogue One. Rogue one Is the unofficial prequel to Star Wars a New Hope as the movie basically takes place 5 minutes before a new hope begins. The movie, not without its own flaws, was still pretty good and told an all right story starring Diego Luna as the infamous Captain Cassian Andor. There were of course other actors involved in the movie Rogue One but only a couple transferred their roles into the TV show. Now I have to warn you this is where spoilers begin so if you haven’t watched season one or two of Andor I suggest you go watch them and enjoy.
The TV show basically takes place before the events of Rogue One and leads up to those events by exploring the life of Andor and how he becomes the daring pilot we see in the movie. Of course all things being fair in the universe of Star Wars the TV show turns basically into a giant dystopian soap opera full of drama, intrigue, love and revenge. All the good stuff. This works so well in Andor because it explores topics that are indeed more mature and adult orientated as it really digs deep into the psychological framework of not only those individual rebels fighting the empire but the imperial forces themselves.
This is also where Andor has taken a lot of criticism because of all the talking and build up, some called it slow, others called it intense. I thought it was overall very entertaining. I thought some of the strongest scenes in the show were of the characters just doing basic things that normal people would do like making supper or going to the bathroom. Now season one was released a few years ago in 2022 to great review Season two is being released in 3 episode dumps each week for 4 weeks.
We are all excited to see how this story will end… I mean we know the ending it’s just how do we get there.
Andor season two is a lucasfilm/ Star Wars/ Disney production, produced by Kathleen Kennedy, Bob Iger and Tony Gilroy. It stars Diego Luna as Cassian Andor, kyle Soller, Adria Arjona, Genevieve O’reilly as a brilliant Mon Mothma, Denise Gough, Faye Marsay and Stellan Skarsgard as Luthen Rael.
May the lightside guide your spirit