Andor Season 2 Is Almost Too Smart For Its Own Good
The best Star Wars show sticks to its guns — for better and for worse.
Cassian Andor (Diego Luna) was always living on borrowed time, but that’s also been a large part of his appeal. The character is a relatively new addition to the Star Wars galaxy, a footnote in the struggle between the Rebel Alliance and the Galactic Empire. Rogue One tied him to the most crucial battle in Rebel history and turned his martyrdom into legend. It also allowed his story to continue in Andor, but the prequel series shares the same misfortunes as its namesake.
According to Tony Gilroy — the writer-director who steered Rogue One through its infamous reshoots and created Andor — the series was originally conceived as a five-season affair. But given the time commitment that would have demanded of Gilroy, and the growing divide between the 20-something Cassian and 45-year-old Luna, Gilroy opted to truncate five seasons into two.
That choice has given the final chapter of Cassian’s story a lot to live up to. Andor Season 2 is tracing the four years leading up to Rogue One, bridging the gap between the skittish, self-serving smuggler we left in Season 1 and the rebel spy who’s more than willing to sacrifice his life for the cause. It’s an unenviable task, especially with so many other characters fighting for space, but that doesn’t stop Andor from sticking to its guns. Season 2 is just as unhurried as its predecessor, determined to tell its story at its own pace. That instinct gave Season 1 its subversive charm — but for Season 2, maintaining that under a time crunch is much easier said than done.
Andor maintains the steady pace and smart writing that made Season 1 such a hit, but that proves to be a bigger stumbling block for Season 2 than anticipated.
As the most “prestige” entry in the Star Wars saga, Andor stands almost in defiance to the franchise at large. Rogue One caught plenty of flak for its bald-faced fan service, so Andor went the other way with it, swerving past any opportunities for deepfaked cameos or allusions to the original trilogy. The only characters who returned for Andor were those who played roles in Rogue One, like Genevieve O’Reilly’s Mon Mothma or Forest Whitaker’s Saw Gerrera. They fit seamlessly into a cast of fresh faces, but Season 2 has to work a little harder to justify that insular focus. It’s wading into a part of galactic history that fans already know well, all but inviting Andor to step into that larger world.
Rogue One diehards aren’t wrong to hope for a glimpse of their “glup shittos” — or even the answers to some major continuity questions. Rebellions, after all, are built on hope. And Andor does find ways to indulge us here and there, reintroducing the scenery-chewing Orson Krennic (Ben Mendelsohn) to spearhead some Imperial sabotage, or bringing Cassian’s mouthy droid, K-2SO (Alan Tudyk), into the fray. Other familiar faces pop up in minor roles, but Andor isn’t interested in making Rogue One ½, much as its cast have spoken about recontextualizing the film. Season 2 just doesn’t have the time: It’s splitting years of galactic history into 12 hourlong episodes, jumping forward one year after each arc.
Andor Season 2 retains the intimate scope of Season 1, for better or worse.
This season essentially follows the construction of the Rebellion through Cassian’s eyes. Gilroy and his team focus only on what matters to Cassian, the Rebels, and the Imperial forces hot on their trail. They keep the action on a handful of well-known, gorgeously rendered locales, like Yavin IV, Chandrila, and Coruscant. But that strategy also becomes an excuse to skip over the meatiest parts of this story, the parts that really engage our curiosity.
How does Cassian become the spy who sold his soul? How do figures like Mon Mothma and Saw unite the Rebellion? The answers are unclear: Each chapter of Andor is little more than a glimpse into the life Cassian lived, painting a disjointed portrait of the man and the rebellion he helped build. The series has always been fixated on minutiae — the disorganization of the early Rebellion, the slow, insidious pull of fascism — but here it ties the story into knots. It almost feels afraid to explore this galaxy, lest it run into anything that could be considered fan service.
Cassian doesn’t get to do much in Andor, leaving other fan favorites to pick up the slack.
Even Cassian takes a backseat this season, despite serving as the catalyst for the show itself. His trajectory seemed obvious at the end of Season 1: After resisting the pull of the Rebellion, Cassian finally volunteered to serve under the ruthless rebel spymaster Luthen Rael (Stellan Skarsgård). Our hero was that much closer to becoming the crusader we meet in Rogue One, but for one reason or another, Andor Season 2 abandons that momentum. Cassian resists the natural flow of the story at every turn, becoming a passive bystander in most crucial events. Aside from a few personal missions and some great heart-to-hearts with fledgling rebels, Cassian doesn’t get many chances to grow into the character he’s destined to become.
Fortunately, Andor’s supporting cast steps up when they’re needed most. The season doubles down on the one-two punch of Luthen and Mon Mothma, with Skarsgård and O’Reilly relishing each opportunity to let their respective masks slip. Adria Arjona is shockingly steely as Bix, Cassian’s childhood sweetheart who joins the cause with him. Denise Gough taps into the softer sides of ISB agent Dedra Meero. Elizabeth Dulau might just be this season’s MVP as Kleya, Luthen’s shrewd assistant, while Varada Sethu does a lot with a little as Cinta Kaz. Each gets some well-deserved time in the spotlight, even as regressive tropes threaten to undermine all the good they do in Andor.
Genevieve O'Reilly and Stellan Skarsgård steal the show at every turn.
There’s also the little matter of a planet called Ghorman, which provides a much-needed throughline for Andor’s many time jumps. A region famous for its bespoke twill and anti-Imperial pride, it quickly becomes a pawn in the Empire’s bid for supremacy. Over the years, seeds of revolution take hold — but we’re also helpless to watch as the Empire uses errant propaganda to turn the galaxy against the Ghormans. It invokes countless atrocities from our own history: Ghorman could be a stand-in for the French Revolution (thanks to its alien language that sounds a lot like French), the crisis on the West Bank, or any number of information wars. No matter how you interpret the struggle, it reinforces Andor’s most poignant theme: Resistance is timeless, and it begins from the ground up.
Given its unique time constraints, Andor Season 2 was never going to be completely perfect. It’s a little like life that way — messy and unpredictable, full of surprises, and determined to give us less of what we want and more of what we may need. It deserves all the praise for taking such a massive risk with what’s essentially become popcorn IP, but it’s nearly undone by its need to subvert. Its status as the “smart” Star Wars show keeps it from reaching its true potential, making this Dickensian epic feel smaller than it should be.
