‘Andor’ Blew Up the Star Wars Formula and Reinvented Prestige TV

The first season of Disney+‘s Andor isn’t just the best addition to the Star Wars canon in decades, it’s also one of the best shows of 2022. Over the course of its twelve episodes, we’ve seen the Star Wars galaxy expanded past Tatooine, both geographically and emotionally. Thematically, structurally, and stylistically, Andor is breaking new ground and showing how even the most corporate IP can be creatively bent towards righteous rebellion.

Andor, created by Tony Gilroy, is set five years before the events of Rogue One: A Star Wars Story and acts as an origin story for doomed rebel Cassian Andor (Diego Luna) and the Rebellion as a whole. Markedly, it doesn’t follow around Jedi Knights or worships someone with the last name Skywalker; it’s more concerned with depicting the raw human suffering wrought by the Empire. Andor does this not just by showing us public executions and Imperial brutes feeling chipper about torturing folks, but by fleshing out each and every character by showing their most mundane interactions and subtly dialing into their grounded hopes and dreams. And while the show is called Andor, Luna’s character is just one figure in a sweeping ensemble cast of rebels, bootlickers, bureaucrats, and innocents all crushed under the weight of the Empire’s sprawling scope.

Andor succeeds on so many levels, but chief amongst them is in its approach to character. Take the Javert to Cassian’s Jean Valjean: Syril Karn (Kyle Soller). The show deftly introduces him as an incorrigible striver within the Empire’s machine just by revealing that he’s had his corporate uniform tailored to look even more severe. Later, when we see him take the brunt of his mother Eedy’s (Kathryn Hunter) criticism on Coruscant, we understand how he was molded by cruelty to seek the approval of his superiors. We don’t need flashbacks or monologues to arrive here. We have all the details we need of Syril’s backstory in the human interactions he has.

Andor makes its version of the Star Wars universe feel vast by paying meticulous attention to what’s small: a droid fighting off peeing space dogs, the worms that Senator Mon Mothma’s (Genevieve O’Reilly) friends spike into their drinks, a look between lovers about to part ways for the cause (yes, there is actual SEX in this Star Wars saga). This attention to detail makes Andor feel far more realistic than anything we’ve seen in Star Wars in decades. But this obsession with the small parts of the Star Wars universe also epitomizes the show’s ethos. Andor isn’t a show about a “Chosen One” saving the galaxy on his or her own. It’s about the countless choices from countless nobodies that add up — like bricks by bricks building walls — to overwhelm the fascism of the Empire.

The most exciting thing about Andor isn’t its exquisite set design, genius writing, or brilliant cast of actors, but its focus on injustice. Like Squid Game before it, Andor doesn’t flinch away from examining how little respect the ruling class has for the tired, poor, huddled masses. In both shows, the torture inflicted upon the lower classes is “game-ified.” The whole point of Squid Game is to pit players against each other in a series of violent schoolyard games. The only person left alive takes home life-changing riches. Andor‘s coup de grace was a three episode run written by House of Cards writer Beau Willimon that imagined a prison where inmates duke it out on teams for the honor of flavored gruel. Losers get zapped by the electric floor. That Andor imagines a tragically triumphant prison break only means it’s slightly more optimistic than the nihilistic Squid Game.

Andor creator Tony Gilroy deserves all of the acclaim for the way he steered the show’s first season. The Oscar nominee assembled a team of experienced prestige TV writers like Beau Willimon, poached decorated TV directors Benjamin Caron, Toby Haynes, and Susannah White, and even got Succession composer Nicholas Britell to create a truly groundbreaking score. But Gilroy’s most confident creative choice has to be how he plotted the first season’s twelve episodes to include multiple riveting story arcs without a lick of bloat or padding. Andor was all thriller, no filler.

Despite all the pain, Andor is a show about hope. It’s a show that says things can change, not due solely to a character whose blood is infused with midichlorians, but due to the collective action by and sacrifices from the masses. Not only can a ragtag group of nobodies ignite a revolution, but our relationship to big IP can change. Instead of slavishly copy and pasting Star Wars storylines of the past, Andor offers a sophisticated new take on a galaxy far, far away. Andor is a show that makes you look at a world you thought you knew in a different way and that is what we need from TV in 2022 and beyond.