Andor: a rebellion at the heart of the brand

Luca Fontana

21/4/2025

Translation: Katherine Martin

What’s the true cost of rebellion? Andor Season 2 explores this question without fan service or hero’s journey storytelling. Focusing instead on a movement on the brink of annihilation, it’s the bravest Star Wars chapter ever written.

Don’t worry, there are no spoilers in this review. Everything mentioned here has already been revealed in trailers. The series starts on Disney+ on 23 April. Three new episodes will be released every week.

When Rogue One – A Star Wars Story was released in 2016, nobody was asking for a TV series about Cassian Andor (Diego Luna). But with Andor, creator Tony Gilroy has undoubtedly delivered the best, most developed, most relevant Star Wars production ever.

And not for the first time.

Season 1 swept through the familiar Star Wars vocabulary like a Tatooine sandstorm, forgoing Jedi, fan service showdowns and fairy tale logic. Season 2 keeps on doing exactly that. In fact, it’s even more uncompromising, structured and political. An espionage thriller that gradually turns into a war drama. It’s hard-hitting, tightly written and tough. After all, what use is a just goal if it can only be achieved by unjust means?

Rather than posing this question with pathos, Anthos does so with precision. No line is too drawn-out, no image too flat. Everything’s geared towards answering the question of what turns people into perpetrators – and what happens when you start resembling your enemy in order to defeat them.

The man who takes Star Wars seriously

Before I say anything about Andor, I have to talk about Tony Gilroy. The man who treats Star Wars not as fiction, but as a warning to future generations.

Gilroy came late to Rogue One; in 2016, when Lucasfilm was unhappy with director Gareth Edwards and his third act. He took over the project in its crucial final phase, revised the script, supervised the reshoots and was reportedly responsible for Darth Vader’s famous hallway scene. That is, the one where he’s slaughtering his way through the pitiful Rebels.

It’s brutal and unstoppable.

At first, not all fans were keen on this. They said Star Wars was too «grown up» under his stewardship. Too serious. Too political. Gilroy, on the other hand, had long since realised that Star Wars had always been political.

The original trilogy, for example, portrayed the Empire as a fascist regime based on Nazi Germany. What’s more, the prequels weren’t just a gloomy study of the disintegration of democratic institutions. Above all, they depicted the way dictatorships are forged to «thunderous applause», with scenes reflecting today’s global political climate more accurately than we’d care to think.

Gilroy followed this very thread in Andor, tightening the screws even more. Dispensing with Jedi, storytelling formulas and regard for expectations, he had the courage to tell a story in which both the good guys and the bad guys are morally compromised.

Especially the good guys.

Unlike in George Lucas’ Star Wars, the Empire in Andor certainly isn’t a caricature of itself. Instead, it’s a well-oiled machine of control. Bureaucratically organised, with practised rhetoric and ice-cold ideology.

The Rebellion responds with collateral damage, cynicism and figures such as Luthen Rael (Stellan Skarsgård) and Saw Gerrera (Forest Whitaker), who’ve long been prepared to sacrifice their own virtue on the altar of freedom. In Andor, what was once seen as a battle of good versus evil becomes a question of how far individuals are prepared to go – and whether they’ll still recognise what they’re really fighting for in the end.

No, Andor isn’t a fairy tale. You couldn’t describe the first or the second season as such. It’s intended as a political drama that takes Star Wars out of the realm of heroes and back into the shadows of reality. One that constantly forces us to look in the mirror.

The cost of rebellion

We’re getting to see twelve final episodes (there won’t be a third season). Season 2 is told in four mini trilogies, released weekly. Each trilogy takes place a year away from the previous one, allowing Andor to close the four-year gap between Season 1 and Rogue One, when the Rebellion was born.

This makes Andor special in terms of both content and structure. Rather than sticking all the plot points in a pressure cooker, the series lets things simmer first. It observes the way pressure is created; how characters waver, stop speaking out and break. It depicts a galaxy in turmoil. A movement that hasn’t yet come into its own. And characters who can’t tell if they’ve retained their humanity or become tools.

Whenever a mini trilogy draws to a close, the tension’s almost unbearable. As if the contents of the pressure cooker can’t be contained by the lid. When the explosion finally comes, it doesn’t seem action-packed. Instead, it’s more like the inevitable emotional chain reaction that occurs when people break. Or disappear.

In the next mini trilogy, the simmering starts all over again.

One of the best examples of this in the first mini trilogy – alongside Andor – is Mon Mothma (Genevieve O’Reilly). In the classic films, she was a beacon of morality. Here, we see her as a woman beginning to push her own boundaries. Not loudly, not dramatically, but through a silent movement that changes everything. Inwardly detonating, outwardly barely visible. It’s not strategy. It’s not a strike against the Empire. It’s about loyalty. Or maybe even about guilt. Mostly, it’s about a moment when she allows something to happen that she would’ve prevented in the past.

These kinds of stories, which have no place in the otherwise child-friendly Star Wars universe, make Andor all the more valuable as a series. Mon Mothma’s tragedy lies not only in the decision she makes, but in the fact that she makes it alone. She’s surrounded by men making tactical manoeuvres. By informal networks and rebellious pragmatists. And by Luthen Rael, whose journey lost all sense of morality a long time ago.

Mothma, on the other hand, isn’t just fighting against the Empire. She’s battling a system that’s lost its idealists – and battling her own façade. She’s still part of the political apparatus. Still has to smile, shake hands and think tactically. But inside, she’s beginning to crumble. The further she goes, the more her actions beg the question: who’ll save the people who sacrifice their own integrity to save others?

That’s what I’m talking about when I talk to friends about Andor’s now well-established brilliance. It’s not the big battles that shake me the most – it’s the complicities. The ones whispered rather than commanded into being. If I’m being honest, the deadliest weapon in this series probably isn’t a blaster or a lightsaber – it’s conscience.

And how easily it can be sacrificed.

Television that screams cinema

Little wonder. In Andor, we experience the Empire as a cold, bureaucratic extermination machine. Technocratic, precise and lacking humanity. So it stands to reason that anyone trying to fight that system would need to learn to think just as uncompromisingly.

But it’s the how rather than the what that makes Andor even more extraordinary. In other words, the way the series has been written, staged and composed. All of this goes beyond what you’d expect from a series made for streaming. Each mini trilogy feels like a film in its own right. Narratively, visually and emotionally. And yes, production-wise too. If Season 2 of Andor were a four-part movie series, nobody would complain about a lack of production value.

It’s almost a miracle that Disney has allowed this to happen. Andor wasn’t a guaranteed success when it came out in 2022. Although Season 1 was acclaimed, it wasn’t your typical ratings sensation. Despite its initially modest viewing figures, the series achieved something all the more remarkable. Instead of falling over time – as is usually the case – the figures rose. From week to week, in fact. In the end, the season finale was actually the most-watched episode.

Perhaps that was why Tony Gilroy was ultimately allowed to continue despite all the initial doubts behind the scenes. Why he was trusted. Why, instead of panicking, they gave him the time, resources and creative freedom to tell the story of Season 2 in the very way it needed to be told.

Emperor Palpatine would call it «ironic». You see, Andor isn’t just an exception to the rule that is the Star Wars cosmos. It’s a rebellion. Against the brand, against formulaic storytelling and against the idea that Star Wars always has to seem a particular way.

Luca Fontana

Senior Editor

Luca.Fontana@digitecgalaxus.ch

I'm an outdoorsy guy and enjoy sports that push me to the limit – now that’s what I call comfort zone! But I'm also about curling up in an armchair with books about ugly intrigue and sinister kingkillers. Being an avid cinema-goer, I’ve been known to rave about film scores for hours on end. I’ve always wanted to say: «I am Groot.» more

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