Andor

 

Searching for his long-lost sister, thief Cassian Andor (Diego Luna) ends up on the run from corporate security investigator Syril Karn (Kyler Soller). Andor’s friend Bix (Adria Arjona) puts him in contact with a black-market buyer, Luthen Rael (Stellan Skarsgard), who is actually a well-connected Rebel operative posing as an antiquities dealer. He hired Cassian for an audacious heist to strike at the heart of the Empire, an act that attracts the attention of intelligence officer Dedra Meero (Denise Gough) and makes Senator Mon Mothma (Genevieve O’Reilly), who is secretly funding the Rebellion, nervous. As different factions plot to outmaneuver one another, Cassian could be the one piece that ties everything together.

 

A spinoff of a Star Wars prequel inevitably raises the question “Who asked for this?,” but Andor’s relative disconnect from the greater mythology is one of its biggest assets. Freed from the need to fill in dozens of film-induced plotholes or pander to fans with familiar character cameos, this Tony Gilroy-created Disney Plus series is a refreshingly mature take on a Star Wars series.

 

Part political drama and part police procedural, Andor is a show that demands patience. There is no shortage of action (Cassian and Luthen’s introduction, the aforementioned heist, and a supremely tense finale being a few standout examples), but Andor takes its time to build up characters and their motivations before sending them into the fray. Given the various competing factions and ideologies, this is beneficial in the long run.

 

With neither Jedi nor Sith among the cast, Andor is able to offer a more grounded and nuanced depiction of the Star Wars universe. Luna is good in the title role, playing Andor as a mercenary cynic who eventually finds a cause worth believing in. The always dependable Skarsgard adds a layered performance as Luthen, who is somewhere between Nick Fury and Amanda Waller among ruthless but well-intentioned spymasters. Soller’s buttoned-down, perpetually humiliated Karn plays as a youthful and overmatched Javert to Andor’s Valjean, and Fiona Shaw, as Andor’s adaptive mother Maarva, provides pluck and hearty moral fortitude.

 

Paradoxically, fully appreciating Andor requires both some interest in wider Star Wars canon as well as some distance from it. For those who can strike this balance, there will be a planned second season to look forward to.