So that’s Andor’s first season, everyone! Let’s talk about it!
Here are some of my own stray thoughts. Spout your own in the comments!
- The best character is Old Long Island Mother.
- The worst character is her son, who exists as an insufferable amalgam of James Urbaniak, James Badge Dale, and Prez from The Wire. Which is to say, it’s impressive he’s more hateable than Vader, who at least wasn’t some loser simp desperate for a sad promotion. You’ve let down the best character, your Old Long Island Mother!
- The second-best character is Andor’s awesome gun. Well done learning the Blade Runner lesson of how cool it is to just have a big ol’ pistol.
- Lotta solid characters, though! Could use more freaks, though. Come on, at least have some weirdo aliens in the prison. As if they wouldn’t be the first to be exploited! Andor should have been bunkmates with a Greedo or whatever. I am not interested in whatever lore reason there is against this.
- One thing I keep returning to is questioning whether Andor is much of a Star War, really. This isn’t a pulpy, fantasy space opera; it’s a political action-thriller that just happens to use (awesome) designs and settings Ralph McQuarrie and his cronies drew up almost a half-century ago.
- I am already done wrestling with that, because who cares? Ultimately, the franchise long-ago outgrew its cultural britches and we may as well just do whatever with this property—just as we can have campy Batmen and grim, serious Batmen. I’m just saying, it sort of felt more like Star Wars as a Mass Effect game than true to the original tone and intent, but that’s fine.
- The Mon Mothma stuff is good and all (and now she’s leaning into Game of Thrones territory with marriage arrangements?), but it’s so funny that Mon Mothma has this big part. She only showed up in Return of the Jedi, where she has a handful of lines, and now she has one of the franchise’s biggest throughlines and stupidest name.
- Though, speaking of Game of Thrones and its associated properties, this is another major event series where I know the names of about three people. I only found out Forest Whitaker’s character from Rogue One was named SAW from a t-shirt I saw a week ago.
- Here are the major players from Andor as I am aware: Cassian Andor; Mon Mothma (name only known because I knew this prior); SAW; Stellan Skarsgård; Ginger Mustache; Guy Who Was the Rapper on the Pretty Bad David Brent: Life on the Road; Loser Simp; His Old Long Island Mother; His Uncle or Something?; Andy Serkis (who was notably never actually shown to not make it out of slave-prison); Platinum Blonde Empire Lady Who Is a Very Major Character So It’s Embarrassing I Still Don’t Know Her Name; These Two Rebel Ladies Who I Thought We Were Done with When We Left the Rest of the Crew After That One Mission but I Guess Are Sticking Around.
- After so much Tatooine bullshit across the board for live-action Star Wars follow-ups, great to see the exciting new location of what’s clearly Space Miami.
