Calm. Kindness. Kinship. Love. I’ve given up all chance at inner peace. I’ve made my mind a sunless space. I share my dreams with ghosts. I wake up every day to an equation I wrote 15 years ago from which there’s only one conclusion, I’m damned for what I do. -Luthen Rael, Andor, Season 1
Spoilers for Andor Season 2 (and I guess Rogue One?)
I’m a little behind in finishing up my review of Andor Season 2. I took a bit of a break tonight to catch up and finish what remained of the season, knowing that all 12 episodes are now out. Suffice it to say, I was blown away by the scope and breadth the remaining episodes had in store for me.
I knew that leading up, where this was going to end, that it was going to merge pretty seamlessly into the very beginning moments of Rogue One, but there was still so much to wrap up. Luthen, Bix…Dedra. The Ghorman Revolution…and massacre. Moth’s speech.
So much packed into a run of episodes that I felt nearly breathless watching, compelled to keep going and burning through every moment.
This show has done more to bring Star Wars forward than any other property that Disney has been involved in, full stop, period, the end. I honestly think it might just be the zenith, and I know for a fact the upcoming Grogu and Mandalorian movie ain’t going to be this good. It isn’t very easy. It’s dark, gritty, and more importantly, knows how to take its time and focus on just how a real revolution could function. The highs, the lows, the corruption–the villainy. It also shows that you don’t need to focus on huge lightsaber set pieces, that you don’t need a story tied to the Skywalkers.
I’m a sucker for beautiful writing and gorgeous shots. Lingering on shots of an X-Wings pilot in the rain, the closeups of imperial troopers in a ship as they are about to land. Seeing Yavin again. This is the main example I will point to when someone says that Disney didn’t completely fuck up Star Wars.
The remaining episodes flew by in a whirl. The Ghorman revolution was a spark point–it is the massacre, the genocide, that pushes the rebellion into full swing. It had been forming for five years, but quietly. Syril finally reliazes in his final moments, as he realizes just how fucking insane–and devoted that Dedra to the Empire she had become–that this was all for nothing. Scuffling with Andor, and then Syril had the upper hand. He had him on the ropes. But then suddenly, Andor says “Who are you” and his face, the pain–Syril finally understanding that in the greater scheme of things, he didn’t mean shit. And then he dies.
This is just one of the complicated storylines that ties up–Dedra finally gets her just desserts later on, her ambition laid bare as she begins to scavenge too far, all trying to capture Luthen. She invariably gives the Rebellion its most crucial piece of intelligence: data on the Death Star.
Bix is leaving as she realizes that Cassian will never be the thing the Rebellion needs unless she leaves. It was gut-wrenching, especially knowing that Cassian will never see her again. It’s punctuated even further by the final shot of the show–Bix holding what is presumably their baby. In a peaceful field. It was a startingly beautiful moment in a season fraught with dark moments.
We finally get some backstory on Luthen, interspersed between the moments Kleya is trying to get to him in the hospital. After Dedra finally outs him as Axis, he tries to commit suicide by stabbing himself. Seeing how Kleya was rescued, after presumably Luthen killed her family in a battle, was bittersweet. You see that she is the fierce one, and he was conscripted into her mission to do something about the injustices in the galaxy. The moment where she breaks in finally gets to where Luthen is being cared for, only to pull the plug on him–to save the mission…was so utterly heartbreaking. I didn’t know how she was planning on getting him out of there and it turns out, that was never the plan.
The plan is the rebellion first. Everything else is secondary.
Finally getting to see K2SO again after being teased during the Ghorman massacre was just delightful, even if he came from horrible circumstances. Alan Tudyk remains one of my favorite people; Wash on Firefly, Sonny in I, Robot…the man is just an incredible talent, and I’m so glad to hear K2’s dry wit once again. It made the bridge to Rogue One much better. And it helps that he has a badass scene just wrecking Imperials to get Kleya out.
This is the type of writing, the scenery, the score–that I wish would become a better blueprint for Star Wars in the future. You can have humor in a dark, grounded Star Wars story. K2 is evidence of that. And by letting the characters breathe, letting the story run in natural conclusions–showing a deeper side of the Galaxy that is so incredibly massive, full of lore and beautiful tales that we’ve yet to see–you get this gem of perfection, a show that lasts two seasons and more importantly is nearly perfect in every way. Specifically, having something that isn’t chock full of connections to everything else–and I know this is precariously close considering it’s a prequel series to Rogue One, you have something that firmly stands on its own. I’ve already committed to watching Rogue One again after this, knowing what came before it.
I don’t know what the overall future of Star Wars has to offer. I’m someone who is burned out on The Skywalker Saga. While I enjoy Rey as a character, her lore reversal of being a “nobody” to shoehorning her into being a “Palpatine” (err…Skywalker) left a bad taste in my mouth. Rise of Skywalker as a whole was just this weird mishmash of “we lost Carrie Fisher, so we don’t know what to do” and “everyone hated Last Jedi, so let’s play it safe” that I think has ebbed and flowed into everything else Star Wars has done. I said it before in my first review of the series, but the docket for Star Wars doesn’t have me excited.
A Shawn Levy film about Starfighters? With Ryan Gosling? Sure–I hope it’s great. It does sound awfully like the abandoned Patty Jenkins Rogue Squadron movie that got shelved.
Simon Kinberg has a trilogy of movies he’s working on, and his track record isn’t giving me much hope. This is the guy, for the record, who wrote Josh Trank’s Fantastic Four (that made no sense), Jumper, and the universally panned Dark Phoenix. He did write Guy Ritchie’s Sherlock Holmes, so I guess he has a banger in him every once in a while?
I don’t know. I would kill for Tony Gilroy to do another Star Wars property, but I don’t have high hopes. The man himself said he only did this project because he loves the history of revolutions so much that he only did this so that he could do a show about revolutions. It is also eerie (and I think he has commented on this) just how much recent events represent what is happening in our country currently. I hope it doesn’t come to that, but it’s still funny to me how on May 4th the White House shared an AI-generated piece of slop showing Trump with a red lightsaber–saying they were the good guys.
Remember, the Empire thought they were good. That’s all I’ll say about that.
I would love to be excited about Star Wars again. I want to sit my ass in a theater seat as I’m taken to a Galaxy Far, Far away, and have a story that’s fresh, fun, and most importantly it’s even really connected to anything else. Let it be its own thing. I’ve heard Skeleton Crew is kind of that. Maybe I’ll give it a whirl.
Till then.
May the force be with you. Always.
