Season one of Disney+’s Andor was a force-wide disturbance to the idea that the House of Mouse had no idea what to do with Star Wars. Building on screenwriter Tony Gilroy’s achievements with the compellingly bleak spin-off movie Rogue One, its gritty chronicling of the early years of the Rebel alliance – told partly from the perspective of ruthless rebel Cassian Andor – captured some of the spit and sawdust of the original Star Wars, a film cobbled together on a modest budget by George Lucas in chilly Elstree Studios in London.
Series two arrives in wildly different circumstances. Star Wars is still all at sea – notwithstanding the recent announcement of a big-screen reboot featuring Ryan Gosling. But now, rather than a quirky side-project, Andor and Gilroy are in the unusual situation of shouldering the entire weight of a beloved sci-fi brand. Is this brooding noir-ish affair up to it?
Yes – but not right away. Where other Disney Star Wars shows trip over themselves trying to woo an audience, Andor takes its own time. It also demands something unprecedented of modern streaming viewers: their undivided attention.
The action begins with Diego Luna’s anti-hero Andor stealing an experimental TIE fighter from an Imperial base and then crash landing on a jungle planet (the name of which will set sensors tingling among Jedi die-hards). There, he meets a frustrated rag-tag of rebels, including a pilot played by South African-Irish actress Eva-Jane Willis, who speak in a yeasty hodgepodge of European and British working-class accents.
[ Star Wars’ Andor season two is here. Here is a recap of season oneOpens in new window ]
That is in coded contrast to the dastardly Imperials, who all talk as if they’ve walked out of Jacob Rees-Mogg’s kitchen cabinet. Among their ranks is the excellent Denise Gough, playing ambitious apparatchik Dedra Meero. The Irish heavy-cast is topped out with Genevieve O’Reilly as Mon Mothma, a society posho secretly involved in the rebellion. The Countess Markievicz of the Galaxy, Far, Far Away, you might say.
Andor is taut, thinky TV and rewards the patient viewer. It isn’t very whizz-bang, and the storyline takes forever to click into gear. But it does reconnect with the spirit of 1977 Star Wars and its warnings about the dangers of fascism gathering its forces slowly and then all too quickly. As per Jedi directive, there is the standard-issue cute robot. But that’s the only concession to kid-friendly cliche in a show that will appeal to long-suffering Star Wars aficionados and fans of thoughtful prestige television across the universe.
