The Candor of Andor

[setsuled]

I'd just about given up on getting a Star Wars show like Andor from Disney. What a lovely surprise. The younger viewers may have been bored to tears but I was delighted by writer Tony Gilroy's thoughtful world-building and characters who weren't screaming their motives every two seconds.



Gilroy and other people working on the show have said Andor was quite intentionally political. But unlike Rings of Power and other badly written shows of recent years, Andor is not, so far, a crude ideological allegory. You could watch Andor as a liberal or conservative, as a Twitter Socialist or one of the people who stormed the White House in January. The show takes no sides with our Earthly politics. It uses the inherent advantage of Fantasy and Science Fiction by placing issues in an isolated environment where you can contemplate them directly. It's not unlike what George Lucas claimed to have done with the prequels. I remember when Revenge of the Sith came out and people said there were obvious references to the Bush administration. But while Lucas was obviously no fan of Bush and even contributed to that impression of Episode III with appearances on The Colbert Report, I think he was telling the truth that the politics of the prequels were based more generally on reading the histories of collapsing governments.

( Review with very mild spoilers behind the cut )

I'm so happy this show exists. Gilroy has described the series as a novel and that's just what it feels like. In a very good way.

Andor is available on Disney+.