‘Andor’ Season 2 Review: The Greatest ‘Star Wars’ Story Ever
The grand finale of ‘Andor’ Season 2 has graced our screens, and Tony Gilroy rests his case as the best showrunner to ever helm a ‘Star Wars’ project. Read our full review.
If you told anyone six years ago that a spin-off about a side character from Rogue One would be good, most people would write it off as uninteresting or unnecessary, which most of the internet promptly did to that announcement. However, you would be vastly underselling it by just calling it “good.” Not only is Andor great, there is a strong case to be made that it is one of the best television series of the past two decades.
Andor follows Cassian Andor (Diego Luna), a thief-turned-spy as he navigates the complexities that come with the job. Multiple parties are thrown in the mix as the story tells the tale of the formation of the unified Rebel Alliance that was first seen in A New Hope.
As a lifelong Star Wars fan, this series is pretty much a dream come true. Every step of production from Tony Gilroy and his writing team, to production design, to visual effects, to the directors, to the actors, are giving it their all to deliver the highest quality show that they can. It feels like a miracle really, that something this elevated squeaked its way onto Disney+, the bar to aim for has just been raised for all other productions making their way onto the platform.
Season one of Andor already reached incredible heights with the Aldahni, Narkina 5, and Ferrix rebellion story arcs, but season 2, for me, exceeded even past those. Specifically, the chunk of episodes written by Dan Gilory, which depict the Ghorman Massacre and its subsequent fallout. Tony and Dan tightrope walk their way through Star Wars canon during the aforementioned arc, not only delivering a satisfying crescendo to what they have built up, but also while enhancing and respecting what has come before — the true mark of a great prequel. The final arc also is a satisfying lead in to Rogue One and will leave you an emotional wreck.
The performances of this season should really be Emmy-winning. Diego Luna, Elizabeth Dulau, and Adria Arjona deserve their flowers for their work here. But to me, the biggest standouts of this season are Kyle Soller as Syril Karn and Genevieve O’Reilly as Mon Mothma. These two performers really stole every scene they were in and elevated the already superb writing to another level, with O’Reilly getting her own iconic Andor monologue scene.
On a technical level, Andor often looks better than a lot of blockbusters being churned out today. The visual effects are nothing short of incredible, with very few noticeable issues throughout the nearly ten-hour duration of the season. The cinematography here also never faltered, providing us with some of the most visually stunning shots in the entire franchise.
While composer Nicholas Britell was only available to score some episodes of this season, but Brandon Roberts was able to step up to the plate and match the quality standard set by his predecessor, providing a sonically coherent and emotionally moving soundtrack.
Overall, this final season provided us with what I believe to be the clear contender for the highest quality piece of Star Wars media thus far, surpassing even the Original Trilogy. I cannot recommend this enough to both Star Wars fans and non-fans alike.
Andor was created by Tony Gilroy and stars Diego Luna, Genevieve O’Reilly, Denise Gough, Kyle Soller, Adria Arjona, Elizabeth Dulau, Ben Mendelsohn, Alan Tudyk, Faye Marsay, Benjamin Bratt, and Stellan Skarsgård. The full series is now streaming on Disney+.
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